Inbound email cases assignment

[asher_bitton]

Hi,

We have setup an inbound email which also creates cases.
The feature is working fine with only one problem, it seems the created cases are always assigned to one user and there is no way to change this (we created a group user in sugar but can not assign it in an appropriate field), we do not see any option in the inbound email configuration to set\change an "Assigned to" value, we also do not see any "Assigned to folder" option (which was mentioned in some forum threads but seems less relevant).

Some lower priority questions\issues are:
In addition we would like to be able to to see which email address caused this case (from email address), right now cases are created as user administrator and we cannot see which user\email actually asked for the change.

A feature which would also be good (if available for the CE) is to set values in the case based on the content of the email (e.g. priority), but we assume this will require a customization.

We are using the community edition (6.1.2).

Thanks in advance for the help,
Asher

[asher_bitton]

OK, We have managed to get one thing working. After doing some internal SugarCRM digging we found that the folders table has an 'assign_to_id' field, It had the wrong user id set int it and we could not find ANY way to modify it within the SugarCRM UI. Once we have changed the value of "assign_to_id" to the group user id (created from the users tab) the cases were created and assigned to the group user (we actually thought it would pick one of the users in the group, but it didnt).
Still, we have not figured out why the round robin feature does not work (only one of the users from the group, seems to be the primary) receives the emails.

[asher_bitton]

One more thing. we have noticed that the "Folders" tab in the email settings is missing and also the option to choose from the groups dropdown when creating a new inbound email.
We installed a fresh copy of 6.4, and got the same problems (we also tried to rebuild our SugarCRM working version but it didnt help)
We assume the two issues are related, but have no idea what causes this.

[Chris_C]

Did you have a look at the Sugar Application Guide ?

It walks you through creating a new Group Mail Account, that monitors folders, creates cases, and set the Distribution Method to either Round Robin or Least Busy:

Here it is for 6.4.0RC3 (on Page 157.. or page 151 if you look at the numbers printed on the pages of the PDF) :
https://www.sugarcrm.com/network/hel...e_6.4.0RC3.pdf

Here is your version (6.1.2 CE) on page 147 (as printed on bottom of PDF page) :
https://www.sugarcrm.com/network/hel...uide_6.1.0.pdf

[eshnash]

The Autoassigment of Cases in the version open source SUGARCRM Community is posible ?

I have the version 6.4 and i can't customize this

some idea ???

Did you have a look at the Sugar Application Guide ?

It walks you through creating a new Group Mail Account, that monitors folders, creates cases, and set the Distribution Method to either Round Robin or Least Busy:

Here it is for 6.4.0RC3 (on Page 157.. or page 151 if you look at the numbers printed on the pages of the PDF) :
https://www.sugarcrm.com/network/hel...e_6.4.0RC3.pdf

Here is your version (6.1.2 CE) on page 147 (as printed on bottom of PDF page) :
https://www.sugarcrm.com/network/hel...uide_6.1.0.pdf

[Chris_C]

The Autoassigment of Cases in the version open source SUGARCRM Community is posible ?

I have the version 6.4 and i can't customize this

some idea ???

Did you look in the Sugar CE 6.4.0 Application Guide ?

http://www.sugarcrm.com/network/help...de_6.4.0GA.pdf

The step-by-step to setup the Auto Assignment of Cases is on page 150-152.

Try it, and post back here with your results !

[roblaus]

As far as I know these assignment methods never worked and still don't. But if somebody does prove (as in testing) that it does work now we'd be quite happy.

[Chris_C]

As far as I know these assignment methods never worked and still don't. But if somebody does prove (as in testing) that it does work now we'd be quite happy.

roblaus, do you want to try this, and post back your exact results ?


I found these instructions, featured in the official Sugar KB. They provide additional information about the cron jobs, missing from the 6.4.0 Application Guide.
» How to Automatically Create Cases From Inbound Emails | Blog Archive | SugarCRM Knowledge Base

Probably it's the cron job (Sugar Inbound Email Scheduler) which isn't running automatically, or has passed the "Date and time end".
» How to activate the Inbound Email Scheduled job | Blog Archive | SugarCRM Knowledge Base
» Why is the Scheduler Not Checking for Inbound Emails? | Blog Archive | SugarCRM Knowledge Base

How to Automatically Create Cases From Inbound Emails
Description

Need to configure SugarCRM to automatically create cases from emails.
An example scenario is to have cases automatically created for all emails that go to your support email address.

Solution

Note: The email functionality changed significantly in Sugar 5.5.1. For detailed information, see the Sugar Application Guide for 5.5.1 or later versions.

Preconditions:
You need to have Administrative privileges.

In Sugar Enterprise and Professional, teams need to be configured. For help on configuring Teams check the Installation and Administration Guide (for Sugar 5.2.0 and earlier versions) or the Sugar Application Guide (for Sugar 5.5.0 and later versions) under the Users – Team Management section.

Schedulers need to be set up to run automatically. For help on setting up schedulers, check the Installation and Administration Guide under the System – Scheduler section.

Inbound Email Scheduler needs to be active. Refer to the article How to activate the Inbound Email Scheduled job for more information.

System Email Settings are configured. For help on setting up the system email settings, check the Installation and Administration Guide under the Emails – Email Setting section

Using the Sugar theme, follow these steps for implementation:

From the Home page, click on the Admin link at the top of the page
Scroll down to the Email section and click on ‘Inbound Email’
On the left hand side, click on ‘Monitor New Mail Account’
Enter in the Name of Inbound Mail Account. For example, you can name it something like ‘Support Email to Case’
Enter in the mail server address. Commonly set to mail.yourdomainname.com. Enter in a valid username and password that has an account set up on the mail server that you are using.
Select the mail server protocol you wish to use

For IMAP:
For Monitored Folders, select the folder you wish to monitor. By default this is set to INBOX.
For Trash Folder, select the folder you want to designate for Trash. Click OK.
For Sent Folder, select the folder you want to designate for Sent. Click OK.
Check the Use SSL checkbox if you are using SSL. If you are not sure, then leave this blank.

For POP3 (supported only in versions prior to Sugar 5.5.1)
Check the Use SSL checkbox if you are using SSL. If you are not sure, then leave this blank.

For Sugar Enterprise and Professional, in the Email Handling Options section, assign the inbound mail account to a Team.

In the Assigned to Group folder select the group folder you wish to use. If you do not have a group folder or need to create a new group folder:

Click the Create button.

Enter in a new Folder Name. For example, Support Emails.

Click Save.

Set Possible Actions to Create Case.

Choose the Distribution Method: Round Robin = Assign emails evenly between users or Least Busy = Assign emails to a user who has the shortest queue of assigned cases.

For Create Case Reply Template, select an existing reply template or click Create to create a template. To create a template, take the following steps:

Click the Create button.

Enter in the Name of the Email Template.

Select the Team

Enter in the Description field. The information in this field does not get sent to customers.

Enter in the Subject and Body.

Save

Select the Email Template in the ‘Create Case Reply Template’ drop down menu.

For the ‘No auto-reply to this domain field’, enter in any domain name that you do not want auto replies to go to.

Leave Messages on Server should be set to Yes. Caution: If you say No, then emails will be deleted from the mail server as they are are pulled into the SugarCRM group folder.

Enter in the remaining fields: From Name, From Address, Reply-To Name and Reply-To Address.

Click on the Test Settings button next to the Save and Cancel buttons. If the Test Settings process was successful, continue on to the next step. If the Test Settings process was not successful, ensure that step 5 was set up correctly with the right mail account settings. You may need to work with your IT group to troubleshoot the mail settings further.

Click on the Email Tab

Click on the Settings Button

Select Folders.

You should see your new Inbound Group Mailbox in the Available Group Folders box.

You will not see folders such as INBOX for Group Folders. Only a group or personal mail account will show the mail account folders such as INBOX. Group folders will simply collect the emails from their subscribed boxes and display them.

Send a test email to the email address used for your group folder.

The next time your scheduled job runs SugarCRM will pull emails from the configured mail account, create cases for the emails, and distribute them appropriately.

Note: If you do not see cases being created after you know for a fact that emails have come in, enable debug logging to see what might be going on. Click here for instruction to enable debug logging.

Note: To ensure that the Account record is associated to the case at the time the case is created, the email address of the contact sending the email will need to be associated to the account record (not the contact record). Also, Contacts are not associated to cases when the case is automatically created from email. This issue is resolved in 520f.

Note: By default, Sugar does not set the case Status field to a particular value. To tell Sugar to set the value to New, you can make the following changes at the code level:

In the function handleCreateCase() in the file modules/InboundEmail/InboundEmail.php.

Under this line

$c->name = $email->name;

Add

$c->status="New";

[Chris_C]

As far as I know these assignment methods never worked and still don't. But if somebody does prove (as in testing) that it does work now we'd be quite happy.

Automatic Inbound Case Creation works on Sugar CE 6.4.1 !

I just setup and tested the inbound email (group email account) automatic Case creation, with automatically assigned case number (the numbering starts at 1, in case you were wondering).

To test, I used a free webmail account to sent an email to the email address of the group email account (on my sugar intsance, I configured support@mydomain.com as the group email account).

I just filled in the subject and the body of the message.

Email with attached documents - receive at the group email account - seem to work as well - though I did not test - there's an available spot for them on the Case detail view.

Sugar CE created the Case automatically - with the Subject of the email copied to the Subject field of the Case, and the body of the email copied to the Description field of the Case.

For Sugar to retrieve cases from your "support@" (or anything@) group mailbox, it requires you to setup the cron job, and activate it on the Admin panel / Inbound Email / Schedulers.

And obviously, you must do all the relevant steps on the 6.4.0 Application Guide - pages 150-152.

My Sugar SCheduler - Check Inbound Mailboxes - is running every 1 minutes.

This is great..

Note... Sugar CE offers "Round-robin" and "Least-busy" methods of Assignment of the Case to Sugar users.

It's not clear how you could use Teams in CE to assign Cases to ONLY the Support staff , for example - because the Teams module is missing in CE.

Maybe Roles could be used as a workaround for the missing Teams module.

Any suggestions ??

[roblaus]

Creating cases and auto-answer did and does work for ages. The distribution is the issue. So I said if somebody proves (as in testing) that it works - great.