How do I create cases using Mailroom and auto-forwarding?

Customers may sometimes report their issues by sending an email to your customer support team. In such scenarios, you can automatically create case records using email. For this, you must configure two things:

1. Mailroom rules in the CRM
2. Auto-forwarding in your email client

Setting up mailroom rules

You must set up mailroom rules to create a case each time a customer raises an issue via email.

Follow these steps to set up a mailroom action to create cases:

1. Click your display picture in the top right corner.
2. Click Settings.
3. Select Mailroom under Automation.
4. Click Open Mailroom. This step is available only when you are setting up a mailroom for the first time.
5. Click See Default Actions.
6. Click +Add New Action.
7. Fill out the following details:

1. Criteria: Criteria define when a case record must be created. For example, consider that supportteam@vtiger.com is the contact email of your customer support team. You can set up the criteria as ‘If Email Recipient contains supportteam@vtiger.com’. Once done, Mailroom creates case records from the emails sent to this email address.

 

2. Action: Action defines what must be done when the criteria set up in the previous step are true. 
   1. Select Create/Update Cases.
   2. Check Match Organization if you want to link the email to the organization (where it came from). If the domain name of the email matches the domain name of an organization’s primary email stored in the CRM, the email gets attached to the matching organization record. (This step is optional.)
   3. Check Create Contact as well if you want to create a contact record using the details in the email. (This step is optional.)
   4. Assign the case to a group/team using Assign to Group.
   5. Assign the case to an individual (who is a CRM user) using Assign to User.
   6. Assign an SLA to the case using Assign to SLA.
   7. Enable Autofill values from the Email body to map the text in the email body to CRM fields. 
   8. Choose a delimiter. For example, if the email body contains ‘Issue: I received a damaged phone’, the ‘issue’ can be copied to the Summary field in cases. In this case, ‘:’ (colon) is the delimiter.
   9. Enter a sample email body. For example, if you enter ‘Issue: I received a damaged phone,’.
   10. Click Click here to find values from the email body.
   11. Map the values entered in the email body to CRM fields. For example, you can map ‘Issue’ to the Summary field and email subject to the Case Title field.

8. Click Save.

Your mailroom will be configured after performing the steps above. You must then set up auto-forwarding in your email client.

Setting up auto-forwarding

When you set up auto-forwarding in your email client, any email your email client receives will be forwarded to the mailroom. If you consider the example of the customer support team in the previous section, you must set up auto-forwarding for the email address, supportteam@vtiger.com

What is an email client?
Email clients are computer applications or email services that help you manage your emails. For example, Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Office 365, etc. 

Follow these steps to set up auto-forwarding in Gmail:

1. Log in to the Gmail account that you have set up as a mailbox in Vtiger CRM.
2. Go to your Gmail.
3. Click the settings icon located on the top right.
4. Select Settings.
5. Click the Forwarding and Pop/IMAP tab.
6. Click the Add a Forwarding Address button under the Forwarding section.
7. Enter your mailroom address in the textbox. You can find your mailroom address under Settings > Automation > Mailroom.
8. Click Next > Proceed> OK. A verification email will be sent to the mailroom (Settings > Automation > Mailroom). 
9. Click the verification in the email and click Confirm.
10. Go back to Settings in Gmail.
11. Select Forward a copy of incoming mail and choose what to do with Gmail’s copy of the email.
12. Click Save Changes.

To stop auto-forwarding your emails, select Disable Forwarding in the Forwarding section.