MS CRM: How to create workflow to send an email when case is assigned

Recently I became administrator of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM installation after been using one for a couple of years. And there is so many things to learn, and the fact that Microsoft CRM seems to have some sort of its own internal logic does not make it any easier.

We are running our support through CRM, so whenever somebody sends a support request through our online form og send an email directly to the support mail address, it gets tracked in CRM and converted to a case by a workflow. Our project managers assigns all the development related cases to our developers, but have to tell them that a case has arrived.

So i wanted to setup a workflow, that would send an email whenever a case was assigned, to the one the case was assigned to. But I had more trouble making the workflow than I expected, and googling the issue, didn’t offer me much more insight on the matter. Finally I got it to work, and here is how I did it.

1. First you go to Settings>Workflows and create a new workflow. Give it a name and choose Case as an Entity, since the workflow is going to be triggered by a case.

2. Press Ok and open it to configure the workflow. In the configuration you choose Organization in Scope, and below that you mark Record is Assigned in the Start When. As shown below:

3. Next you press Add Step in the frame at the bottom and choose Send Email. Keep “Create New Message” and press Set Properties. Remember to give the step a meaningful name.

4. Now you have the email properties window open. Fill the From field with whoever you want the emails to be sent from. In my case I chose to have the system support user to be the sender.

5. In order to have the workflow send an email to the user the case is assigned to, you need to insert a dynamic value in the To field. At the right in your windows you see the Form Assistant, which will help you create a dynamic value.

Choose Case in the Look For field and below that you choose Owner (since the owner change when you assign a case, so this would be the assignee). Press Add and the OK, and the value has been added to the To field (notice the dynamic value is yellow):

6. Next you’ll want to write something nice in the email body, and perhaps even adding some dynamic values to it as well. My final email came to look like this:

7. So all you need to do now, is to save and close the email properties, save and close the workflow and publish it.

That’s it. I hope its useful and please comment if you find any errors in my article, or you have suggestions to better ways to do this