How do I enable automatic case creation from emails?

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 the email. For this, you must set up the following: 

• Mailroom rules in the CRM 

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 rule to create cases:

1. Log in to your CRM account.
2. Click the User Menu on the top right corner of the screen.
3. Click Settings.
4. Select Mailroom under Automation.
5. Click Open Mailroom. This step is available only when you are setting up mailroom for the first time.
6. Click See Default Actions.
7. Click +Add New Action.
8. Fill out the following details:
   1. Criteria - Criteria defines when a case record must be created. For example, consider that [email protected] is the contact email of your customer support team. You can set up the criteria as ‘If Email Recipient contains [email protected]’, Then, Mailroom creates case records from the emails that are sent to this email address. You can set up similar criteria on From email address, email body, and email subject. 
   2. Action - Action defines what must be done when the criteria set up in the previous step is true. 
   3. Select Create/Update Cases.
   4. 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)
   5. Check Create Contact as well if you want to create a contact record using the details in the email. (This step is optional)
   6. Assign the case to a group/team using Assign to Group.
   7. Assign the case to an individual (who is a CRM user) using Assign to User.
   8. Assign an SLA to the case using Assign to SLA.
   9. Enable Autofill values from Email body to map the text in the email body to CRM fields. 
   10. Choose a delimiter. For example, if the email body contains ‘Issue: I received a damaged phone’, then, the ‘issue’ can be copied to the Summary field in cases. In this case, ‘:’ (colon) is the delimiter.
   11. Enter a sample email body. For example, if you enter ‘Issue: I received a damaged phone’.
   12. Click Click here to find values from email body.
   13. Map the values entered the email body to CRM fields. For example, you can map ‘Issue’ to the Summary field and email subject to the Case Title field.
9. Click Save.

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

• Auto-forwarding in your email client

When you set up auto-forwarding in your email client, any email received in your email client 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 [email protected].

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 above the mailroom rules under Settings > Automation > Mailroom.
8. Click Next > Proceed> OK. A verification email will be sent to the mailroom (Settings > Automation > Mailroom). 
9. Go to mailroom, open the email, and click the verification in the email. Then, click Confirm.
10. Go back to Settings in Gmail.
11. Select Forward a copy of incoming mail to and select the forwarding address (vtiger mailroom address) and fill out other details.
12. Click Save Changes.

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