Associate emails to multiple records (preview)

As you might or might not know, today we only have the ability to relate activities to ONE row (or record) in Dynamics 365 CX by setting the ‘regarding’ field on the activity. This can be problematic, because there might be a need to save a record to multiple rows (or records). A good example of when there would be a need to associate an activity (like an email) to multiple rows is when you receive an email from a customer that could have details related to multiple opportunities in it. Today there is no way to relate that email to multiple opportunities, which is a feature I have heard customers and partners ask about for a long time. The preview feature I am discussing in this article allows for exactly those types of scenarios: allowing users to relate an email message to multiple rows! Yes, I said emails because during this preview this functionality will be available for emails only. (I am hoping that this functionality will be coming to other activity types as well at a later date.) There are a couple of things you need to be aware of, which I will discuss in this article. First let’s take a look at how this works and what needs to be done to get access to this preview feature!

How does it work?

The first thing I want to explain is that this functionality is tied to a brand-new column (field) on the email table. This is NOT extended functionality to the pre-existing ‘regarding’ field that is available for all activities in Dataverse, and this field is also NOT replacing the existing ‘regarding’ field. This is simply added functionality, and both columns are completely independent of each other! The name of the new column on the email table is ‘Related’ and this is an activity party type column, meaning that multiple rows can be selected in the field, which associates the email to multiple rows. For each row that is selected in the ‘Related’ column, the email will show up in the timeline. Keep in mind that not all tables will be available when a user tries to populate the ‘Related’ column. Only tables that have the ‘Can have a contact email’ setting checked will be available. This is a setting you can view or update by navigating to the table in make.powerapps.com. You’ll need to open the table you want to check or enable this for and click on the ‘properties’ button in the ‘table properties’ section of the table. From here you’ll need to expand the ‘Advanced Options’. Scroll down to the ‘Rows in this table’ section where you’ll see the option. Please note once this option is enabled for a table, it can’t be disabled.

Another important thing to note is that this new column does NOT have parental relationships with the rows that are selected in the field. NOTE: Relationships and their cascading behaviors can only be configured for lookup type of fields. The existing ‘Regarding’ column is a lookup type of field and is configured with the parental relationship between the email and the parent table by default, which means (parental) cascading rules will only apply for this relationship. For example, if the ‘ABC account’ is populated in the ‘Regarding’ column of an email activity and the ‘ABC Account’ is deleted, according to the default parental cascading rules, the email will be deleted too, because it’s a child row of the ABC account. If an email has the ‘ABC account’ populated in the ‘Related’ field and the account gets deleted, then no cascading rules apply, and therefore the email will not be deleted.

Things to note

The ‘Related’ column will not be automatically added to the email forms, so to give your users access to this preview feature, a system admin will need to add the ‘new ‘Related’ column to the email form(s). There are some very important things that you need to keep in mind when testing this functionality in your sandbox. The first thing I want to mention is that the ‘Related’ column will not be automatically populated when you track an email from without outlook, Copilot for Sales or Dynamics 365. As you might or might not know, when an email is tracked in outlook, the email will sync over to Dynamics 365 with a status as ‘Completed’. This status makes the email row read only, which usually means that you will NOT be able to update any columns, however, the ‘Related’ column will be editable if you add it to the body of the form, even for emails with a ‘completed’ status.

NOTE: If the ‘Related’ column is added to the header in the email form(s), the data in this column will be read only for emails with a ‘completed’ status and users will not be able to edit the column.
If an email has data in the ‘Related’ or ‘Regarding’ columns, and a user responds to that email from within Dynamics 365, the values in both the ‘Related’ and ‘Regarding’ columns will be copied over to the newly created email. I also noticed that when I receive a response to an email that has values populated in the ‘Related’ or ‘Regarding’ columns, the values in those columns are also copied over when I track the email response to Dynamics 365.
Lastly, when a new email is created from the Timeline control in Dynamics 365, the ‘Related’ column isn’t automatically populated with the parent row. Example: If you open an opportunity and create a new email from the timeline of that opportunity, the ‘Related’ column will not be prepopulated with the opportunity row. However, if needed, an admin can change this behavior by enabling an environment database setting named AddParentEntityToRelatedOnNewActivityCreate. Please check this link for instructions on how to change environment database settings.
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