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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived) / How to prevent infinit...
Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived)

How to prevent infinite email loop caused by Workflows and Outlook tracking?

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Posted on by KG_CRM

The company I work for is gradually rolling out MS CRM to our employees.  One of the issues we ran into recently is an infinite email loop.  We have a workflow setup to send out an email notification to a case owner whenever a received email is created in CRM that is regarding their case.  The problem is that some users are also using the Outlook plugin to track emails related to their Cases.  So when their plugin tracks a an email, it creates an email record in CRM which triggers the workflow and sends the Case owner a notification, which in turn gets tracked by CRM and creates another notification, and so on.  Does anyone have any suggestions on how to prevent this?

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  • Suggested answer
    tpeschat Profile Picture
    tpeschat 4,930 on at

    Does your email notification created by the workflow has some unique text, subject or sending email address?

    Then you could add a check condition to your workflow, when emails with this text/subject or owner or a combination thereof is being created in CRM.

    Hth Thomas

  • KG_CRM Profile Picture
    KG_CRM on at

    Hi Thomas,

    There's nothing particularly unique about the subject or description  of the notification sent by the workflow, but they do come from a unique sender; a Queue in the system.  Having the workflow prevent sending notifications when the sender is a Queue would prevent the infinite loop.  The system should then only send one notification and then stop, but I'm trying to find a way to prevent even sending that one notification.

    It would help if there was a way in CRM to know which email records were created by being tracked vs. being received by the email router.

  • Suggested answer
    tpeschat Profile Picture
    tpeschat 4,930 on at

    What about created by? In case of tracking the created by is the user. In case of email router or workflow the created by is most probably some service user.

    Maybe you can add that criteria?

    br Thomas

  • KG_CRM Profile Picture
    KG_CRM on at

    Using 'Created by' would prevent sending the notification when a user clicks the Track button in the Outlook plugin, but I think subsequent emails that are then automatically tracked by the plugin would also be created by the 'System' user.  I looked into one of our cases that had gone into an infinite email loop and almost all of the emails were created by 'System'.

  • tpeschat Profile Picture
    tpeschat 4,930 on at

    Would you mind sharing a screenshot of your workflow definition?

    br Thomas

  • KG_CRM Profile Picture
    KG_CRM on at

    Unfortunately I can't.  Our current attempt stops the workflow if any of our Queues appears in the To or From fields but we have a dozen or so queues, some of which have names that would give away the company I work for.  I could try to edit it in MS paint, but then half of the workflow would be blacked out.  I'd also have to explain some of the other customizations we've done in CRM for it to make sense.

  • KG_CRM Profile Picture
    KG_CRM on at

    If we can't determine which emails were created by the Outlook plugin via tracking then I think the best option might be to track which users are using the Outlook plugin via their user record.  IE create a custom field to record this and use it to not send an email alert.  But there's still the possibility that a User could have the plugin installed and not have the field set on their user record.

  • Syed Moosa Profile Picture
    Syed Moosa 5 on at

    Hey. Did you find a solution for this? I have the same problem.

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