Email to case and acknowledgements

How it works

1. A customer emails your support address, for example support@yourcompany.co.uk.
2. Dataverse's server-side synchronisation brings the email in, and the app makes a case in the queue with that address: Channel Email, the sender as the contact (a new contact is made for a new address), the email as the description.
3. The customer gets an acknowledgement with their case number, if you turn it on.
4. Replies carry the case number in the subject, such as [CS-001234], so the customer's next email finds its case. A reply to a resolved case reopens it; a reply to a closed one starts a follow-up case.

Set it up (once per address)

1. In Exchange, make sure the shared mailbox exists.
2. In the Power Platform admin centre, check the environment's email uses server-side synchronisation with Exchange Online.
3. Create a Dataverse queue to hold the mailbox (Advanced settings > Business Management > Queues), with the support address as its Incoming Email, then Approve Email and Test & Enable Mailbox on its mailbox. Approving needs an Exchange or Global administrator.
4. In the app, Administration > Setup > Queues: set the queue's Email Address to the same support address.
5. Send a test email from an outside address. A case appears within a few minutes.

Acknowledgement emails

In Service Settings, choose Acknowledgement Email:

• Send Automatically: the customer is told at once that their request is logged, with the case number, from the address they wrote to.
• Draft for the Agent to Send: the acknowledgement waits on the case's Timeline for an agent to check and send.
• Off: no acknowledgement.

Change the words in Acknowledgement Text. It takes the same placeholders as canned responses: {contact first name}, {case number}, {case title} and {queue}. If a placeholder cannot be filled, the acknowledgement is kept as a draft so a customer never sees a placeholder. An acknowledgement never counts as the first response: that is a person's reply.

Other settings

• Case Number in Email Subjects: keep this on so replies find their case.
• Reopen on Reply Within (Days): how long after resolving a reply reopens the case.
• Blocked Senders: addresses or whole domains (one a line, such as @newsletters.example.com) whose mail never becomes a case. Bounces, out-of-office replies, delivery reports and no-reply senders are ignored anyway, and are never acknowledged.
• A case number quoted in a subject is trusted only from someone the case knows: its contact, its customer, or an address on its earlier emails. Anyone else's email starts a case of its own.
• The owner is told by notification when a customer replies.