How to create a workflow that creates an activity?

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Posted on by USA80

Hello,

I have a workflow setup that sends out an email to users when a certain field is changed to complete. However, I need to add a step in the workflow to add an activity to the parent entity to show that an email was sent. Is this possible, if so how? (The parent entity is Opportunities and then I have a child entity underneath)

Thank you.

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Hi USA80,

If the instance you are using is not heavy on email activities, you could try the following:

Create a new workflow that, when an email status changes (as your trigger), add a check condition to see if the regarding is an opportunity and if the status reason of the email is Sent, then create the activity on the parent entity:

You could add in additional condition checks to see if the email subject contains a certain subject line.

Obviously when choosing to send an email, you cannot reference that email in other steps or conditions. Therefore, you might need to set it to create the email, then set its status reason to Pending Send in order to trigger its sending:

Then, waiting until its status is Sent (or wait 5-10 minutes), and create the activity for the opportunity if the email was indeed sent.

Let me know if this helped.

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USA80 26 on at

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The email that is being sent is coming from the child record, not the parent. So does the above still work in this situation? I also don't have an email status field.

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Hi USA80,

It should so long as there is a reference to the parent. If there is a reference, when creating the activity for the parent, simply put the parent of the regarding child record as the dynamic slug of the activities regarding lookup field. If there is no reference, then you may need to consider either adding the parent lookup to the email as a reference or creating a custom workflow to connect it.

Out of the box Dynamics 365 Emails have two status fields, namely Activity Status and Status Reason. The status reason field will have the values: Pending Send, Sending and Sent.

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USA80 26 on at

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I am on CRM 2016

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Hi USA80,

Those same fields exist on CRM 2013, 2015, 2016 and Dynamics 365.

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USA80 26 on at

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I am on the child entity, and when I go into my workflow, I add a step for Create Record and select Task. When the next window comes up, I don't see where I can select activity. Am I doing this right?

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Hi USA80,

Could I ask for a screen shot, not sure I follow.

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USA80 26 on at

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USA80 26 on at

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Hi USA80,

As mentioned before, if you are going to use the Send Email step, you will not be able to reference it in later conditions or steps.

If you are going to use the second option I gave you, it would need to look like this:

As stated before, creating the email as a record allows you to reference the email and any other activity. You will need to set the created emails status to Pending Send to ensure that it is sent.

You will also need to be aware that conditions are instant checks. Emails, depending on your configuration, can take up to two minutes to send, meaning your create task will be created regardless of the email being sent or not.

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