Create Email with a workflow in MS Dynamics Crm 2011 and dynamically fill the "To" field

Question

I'm working on Ms Dynamics Crm 2011 development and I encountered following problem. My situation:

I want to be able to automatically send an Email after a change on a specific status field on a record of the Entity "MyEntity". "MyEntity" has an Email-field. I try to create a workflow which sends an Email to the Email-field address of the "MyEntity" record after the status has been changed. My problem is that I can't add in the Email Creation workflow to the "To" field this "MyEntity" Email-field adress. I need to somehow specify in the workflow to dynamically add the "To" field, the relating Email address from the specific "MyEntity". Is that possible? Is there a workaround for that? It could be done with a plugin I guess, but by now I'm trying to avoid the plugin solution.

Thanks in advance

John

Solution

Yes, you should be able to. First go to Solutions, bring up your entity, go to Fields, bring up your e-mail field and ensure the Format is e-mail. Publish.

Work around: If you have more than 1 e-mail Format text field, change the others temporarily (to text from e-mail) and Publish. Otherwise, the next step is ambiguous and we don't have control over which field CRM sets up as the email to use when this entity is used for e-mail.

In the solution frame, select your entity node in the tree. Under Communication and Collaboration, check the box 'Sending e-mail (If an e-mail field does not exist, one will be created).' Save/Publish.

Fix the work around above if you had more than 1 e-mail format text field. Change them back to e-mail. Publish.

In Workflow, select your To Field. Under the Send e-mail step, select 'Set Properties.' Select the 'To' field. In the form assistant you should not be able to select your entity. NOTE: You will bind to the 'Key' field and NOT to the particular e-mail field.

This only works for a single e-mail field on your custom entity. There is no way to use a text field as an address in a CRM 'to' field.

Comments

[Anwar]

I have never thought that there is a work around. Useful information for me.

[cja]

I wish I could have used this solution but the "Sending e-mail (If an e-mail field does not exist, one will be created)" checkbox is disabled for the Case entity.