A Step by Step Guide to Setting Up Email-To-Case in Salesforce

Turn Support Emails into Cases Automatically with On-Demand Email-To-Case

Email-to-case feature in Salesforce enables you to convert the emails received at your support email address into cases. You can then inject these emails-turned-cases in your organization’s customer support queue and follow a systematic approach to track & resolve it.

Here is how the process works

Salesforce Email-To-Case Process

Email-To-Case comes in two flavors

  1. Email-To-Case
  2. On-Demand Email-To-Case

Here’s a quick comparison of both features.

Email-To-CaseOn-Demand Email-To-Case
Desktop client requiredDesktop client not required
Keeps email traffic inside network’s firewallKeeps email traffic outside network’s firewall
Accepts emails larger than 25 MBRefuses emails larger than 25 MB (including header, message & attachment)
Max. no of emails converted to Cases each day is 2500Max. no of emails converted to Cases each day depends on number of user licenses multiplied by 1,000, up to a daily maximum of 1,000,000

For the purpose of this blog post, we will go with the 2nd option – On-Demand email-to-case. On-Demand Email-To-Case uses Apex Email services. Setting it up is very simple. Just enable it, specify the support email address, set up forwarding in your email system and you are good to go!

Next time when your customers send an email to your support email address, a Case will get created automatically in Salesforce and Case fields will get populated. The support reps can reply to emails from within Salesforce so there’s less switching between the apps. The setting ‘Insert Thread ID in Email Subject’ adds the thread ID to the subject of email. The thread ID is a unique identifier that identifies the organization and Case associated with the outgoing email. It helps ensure that replies to the original email are associated with the correct Case.

That’s enough of talking! Let’s learn how to convert emails into cases in under 30 minutes

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24 thoughts on “A Step by Step Guide to Setting Up Email-To-Case in Salesforce”

  1. Hi Ashish,
    We have set up Email-to-Case for two routing addresses. service@xyz.com (a new case is created with Record type Z) & fieldservice@xyz.com (a new case is created with record type S). We use case feed from case (Record type Z ) to send an email internally to other department. A Case creation with two different record types seems to be working fine.

    In following two scenarios a new case (Record Type S) is not generated,

    1. If the person replies to the email from case feed of Record Type Z & adds routing email address – fieldservice@xyz.com, it appears only in the case feed of other Record type Z, as the reply contains Thread ID.

    2. If we send an Email directly from case feed of case (Record Type Z) to the other routing address fieldservice@xyz.com, then also a new case (Record type S ) not created, only sent email appears in the case feed of the Record type Z.

    Thanks in advance,
    Best Regards,
    Suhas

    1. Hi Suhas, looks like Salesforce is handling those emails differently internally. It will be better to log a case with Salesforce support and get their advise.

  2. Hi Ashish, I unable to configure email-to-case in my outlook, I have setup email service address in manage rules and alerts in the outlook but not able to get create case in the salesforce. Please help

  3. Thank you so much! This is amazing.
    One question though. I implemented this in Dev..How do I deploy to full test sandbox and prod? Please advise

    1. Hi Sirisha, I am not sure which part of the guide you are referring to, but please note that the “Email Service Address” created by Salesforce will be different in each org. So, you will have to set it up manually. I don’t think it can be deployed from one org to other.

  4. Charles Thompson

    Hello, my old colleague!
    Your post here is all about On-demand. Are there instructions anywhere you know of that show how a heavily-regulated company can avoid using on-demand (i.e. avoid forwarding outside the firewall) but can still use E2C? Your small table here calls that solution “Email-To-Case”, which of course is a little confusing. In the configuration for E2C, you simply uncheck “Enable On-demand Service”, but I can’t find anything in the documentation that says “then what?”.

    1. Hi Charles, great to hear from you. If you do not want to use on-demand email to case, previously you needed to download and install an agent on one the servers. But now the URL https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.customizesupport_email_to_case_settings.htm&type=5&language=en_US it says “Previously, Email-to-Case relied on an installed agent instead of the on-demand service. The older version is no longer supported, and the agent isn’t available for download.” So now, I am not sure what is the alternate of on-demand email-to-case. You will need to check with Salesforce Support.

  5. Another excellent guide! Thank you, Ashish, for sharing these guides as they have helped me multiple times with Salesforce!

  6. Hi Asagarwal,
    My company is using email-to-case, however, when a client sends in incoming email with a merge field in it that includes a reference to a record variable ({!$Record.FieldName} – for example, when they are trying to show us flow errors they’ve received), the email messages are not arriving in Salesforce, and not creating a case. Is there any workaround for merge fields?

    1. Hi Priyabhavana, there isn’t an out-of-the-box feature to do that, but you you should be able to achieve it either using custom code and Apex, or execute some post case creation logic using Flows. Will depend on what exactly you want to control.

  7. We have case Assignment Rules in place. Whenever an email is sent to “Example@company.com” address, a case would be created and assigned to Admin queue. But for every reply or forward to that email with “Example@company.com” address, another case is being created(multiples cases are created based on replies & forwards). Is there a way to handle this? Thank you.

    1. Hi Harshita, there is not out-of-box functionality in Salesforce for this. But you should be able to achieve this through custom code using Apex.

  8. Hello #ohana! I set up Email-to-Case. I have a specific email address and verified it but cases are not being created however if I use the long SFdc email address, the case is created. Any idea how to resolve this?? Thanks a bunch.

  9. Amazing post on email-to-case. Just a quick question. In addition to the scenario explained i need additional feature. What would be the optimum solution?

    If the case status is Cold, i want to route it to tier 1 team
    If the case status is Warm, i want to route case to tier 2 team
    If case is hot, I want to route it to Manager . How do i achieve this ?

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