Email alerts are emails generated by a workflow rule or approval process and sent to designated recipients whenever specific business actions trigger the workflow rule or approval process.
Often the recipients are your users, such as sending an email to the opportunity owner when their opportunity becomes approved, or to sales reps when leads reach a certain qualification status in their territory.
Sometimes, you may want to send an email to a non-user, perhaps to a mail distribution list. This can be achieved two ways, Additional Emails and Email Fields.
1. Additional Emails
Email Alerts have an Additional Emails section that let you enter up to 5 email addresses. These email addresses do not have to belong to users in your Salesforce org. These recipients are in addition to the users chosen in the required Recipients section. I have personally used this feature to copy a customer service mailing list when certain opportunities are approved; the opportunity owner was the primary Recipient.
2. Email Fields
Another option is to choose an Email Field as the Recipient. Any email field on the object associated with the email alert is eligible. Email fields are neat because they can be chosen as the sole recipient of an email alert (if desired) and the field’s value can be set either with default value on the field definition or via field updates. This provides a lot flexibility in who receives email alerts that aren’t actual Salesforce users. I have personally used this feature to send a specific email alert to a distribution list when no actual Salesforce user would be a Recipient.
Doug-
This is great information. One question. If you use an email distribution list is it limited to only 5 email addresses the same as free typing the email addresses into the box?
Kim
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Hi Kim,
Thanks for the kind feedback! That is a great question. I’m not sure, I’ve never had to send an email to more than maybe 3-5 recipients. I’m assuming you are referring to how many “related user” recipients can you choose for an email alert? (e.g. Owner, creator, custom email field, etc) I don’t think there is a limitation, at least, I’m only aware of the limitation when typing the 5 comma separated addresses.
Thanks,
Doug
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Hi Doug, I was directed to this blog by the Salesforce Community and I am hoping you can suggest something for a issue I have. Our company runs a Helpdesk for industry when they have testing requirements or other issues, and we put them in touch with our team of Service Providers. I send e-mails to Service Providers in relation to helpdesk enquiries to see if they can assist. The Providers are not users and are not associated with the account record created when the client sends in an enquiry.
At the moment I send the request for help to our Service Providers from Outlook and then transfer it into the helpdesk enquiry record using the Salesforce sidebar. This is so that all correspondence in regards to an enquiry is kept within the enquiry record.
I can’t send the e-mail from the ‘Send Email’ button because the only options I have are Users and Contacts associated with the clients Account record.
I did set up ‘Contact Roles’ function within the enquiry object but found that the e-mails sent to Service Providers were then stored on the recipients (Service Providers) record rather than the enquiry record.
I can’t set up the Service Providers as Users and I can’t associate them with every account record we have as that does not make sense.
Do you know of any way round this that I can try? I am relatively new to Salesforce and have customised our system to suit our needs and find the whole system fascinating, but this problem has me stumped for a solution. When I asked the community they pointed me in the direction of this blog, so I hope you can help a ‘Newbie to Salesforce’
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Hi Ann!
Welcome to Salesforce community! I can see your dilemma here. Any chance you all are using Cases or have the option to explore using Cases to track these inquiry requests? I ask because Salesforce Cases have built in support for email-to-case that lets you send emails to anyone from Salesforce page and those recipients can reply back to the thread and their response tracked right within the case – automatically! The recipients don’t have to be users or contacts or nothing. π
https://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTViewHelpDoc?id=customizesupport_ondemand_email_to_case.htm&language=en_US
If you cannot use standard Case object then my next suggestion is to recreate the wheel and develop custom apex email service handlers for receiving the replies and auto attaching to the inquiry as well as coming up with email templates that you use when sending the email from salesforce so that the subject and body will include a unique identifier in them that the apex email service handlers can parse and use to link the email reply to correct inquiry. This is a much more complex alternative and I would definitely encourage you to consider standard Case object if your salesforce users already have “Salesforce” license and not just Force.com license.
Click to access salesforce_case_implementation_guide.pdf
If you can’t use Cases and don’t want to develop custom code then you might consider a third party app like BMC Remedyforce, https://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N30000003GrDmEAK
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.
Doug
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Hi Doug,
Many thanks for taking the time to reply, it is very much appreciated. I am very interested in the Cases option and will investigate that option further. I believe that when the system was set up by outside consultants they used Cases as the destination for all enquiries from the website, so that seems to be my first solution to investigate.
Thanks again Doug, enjoy your continued journey on Salesforce
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Hi Ann,
Absolutely, any time!
Let me know how your investigation goes and if I can be of any help =)
Doug
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Hi Doug,
Great article! I’m currently trying to set up a Workflow Rule for my company to send an email alert to a Lead’s email address when they are created IF the Lead Source=LinkedIn. I set everything up and tested successfully in Sandbox, however, I was hoping the email (since it is sent from SF) would be logged in the Lead’s Activity History. Ideally I would like the email alert that is sent out, and the replies to said email, to be added as Activities. Is that an option?
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Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the kind feedback!
At this time, no, sending email alerts from Workflow rules, Process Builder, or Flow do not show up as Activity on the contact. You would need to have a second action that creates a completed Task record with details in it.
Please see this help article and vote for related idea:
https://help.salesforce.com/HTViewSolution?id=000005058&language=en_US
https://success.salesforce.com/ideaview?id=08730000000BroKAAS
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Hi Dough,
I was wondering is it possible to change Default Workflow User to something different from Salesforce Users email addresses? We have a generic email address that we send our email from, but it doesn’t have an account in Salesforce, hence I can’t associate it to the workflow user.
Many thanks,
Inna
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You need to create a new user whose email address is your generic email then assign that user as the default workflow user.
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Doug, what should happen if the additional email is the only email in the email alert and the recipients section is blank?
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Hi Charles, that is fine. The email alert would still send to the people in “Additional Emails” even if you do not select anyone from “Recipients” picklist.
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Thank you for this info Doug. I have a question- can non SF users approve or give feedback within a approval workflow? I know additional users can receive emails regarding workflows but once they click on the link to open a workflow, it won’t work- is that a correct statement?
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Hi Shakil,
No, non-Salesforce users cannot approve records via email reply. The system matches the sender’s email address to their user record and validates their access and permissions to approve the record as if they were doing so from the website directly.
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Hi Doug,
Great info, glad I located it. We have a situation which may not be directly down this discussion path but I’m hopeful you can add guidance. There are some situations where an integration to another application is sending information via API to SFDC causing emails to come through the email alerts. Is there a way to block those emails. If it FROM: aSpecificUser ?
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Can this be triggerd by a Flow. We are using this additional field and it does not work. Any other Tipps?
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is there any way through which we can send email alerts to more than 5 users that don’t belong to salesforce?
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