How to set up Dynamics 365 workflow send email?

In fact, stats say that for every dollar you spend on email marketing, you get back about $42. Most experts consider email the most effective marketing tool to reach out to both new and old customers. And automated emails are a step further. Automated emails can help optimize your customer relationship management and reach out to your customers even more effectively.

As your business grows, so will your contacts. Keeping track of every contact list and sending emails for every purpose manually can be burdening and time-consuming while reducing the overall effectiveness of the campaign. The popular CRM platform, Microsoft Dynamics 365, provides a solution to tackle this issue. It allows you to send emails as part of configurable workflows automatically.

Here is a brief overview of the workflow in Dynamics 365 and how you can configure it to send an email.

What's a workflow in Dynamics 365?

A workflow allows you to automate business processes in Dynamics 365 CRM. Each step or method is executed sequentially. The workflow processes are made to run in the background or as real-time processes and can be made to wait for particular user inputs as well. Workflows can also be executed based on certain triggers, conditions or can be started manually.

Workflows in Dynamics 365 can be classified into two types:

Asynchronous

These workflows run on the Windows CRM server and make use of the windows service for the workflow engine.

Real-Time (Synchronous)

Real-time workflows can be easily used by non-coders as well, and they make use of the event execution pipeline to perform the workflow operations. They can only be executed before the create operation or after the delete operation. These workflows can be rolled back to initial states on cancellation.

Who can configure Dynamics 365 workflows to send email?

Both administrators and users can create workflows to send an email. But the relevant steps will vary depending on the rights of an admin and a regular user.

Administrator

The administrator user is a superuser with full access and edit rights to the CRM data. They also set the specific privileges and rights for individual user accounts.

User

User refers to anyone with access to the Dynamics 365 platform. The rights and data access privileges of a user will differ based on their authorization levels and roles.

Both admins and users can configure the behavior of email workflows in Dynamics 365.

Configuring Dynamics 365 workflow by administrator

Here are the steps to configuring Dynamics 365 workflow as an administrator.

Configure the email parameters

Go to the Email Parameters page and set the following settings on the configuration tab:

• Batch email provider - Set the mail provider you will use for associating with your batch process;
• Attachment size limit - Set the maximum file size to be allowed for email attachments.

From Platform update 32 onwards, you also get an additional email history page that lets you review all the previously sent emails, and any errors encountered. You can set the number of days for retaining email history, which has a default value of 30.

From platform update 40 onwards, you get an email throttling section that allows for a non-interactive email to stick to the per-minute sending limit.

Configure the SMTP

The SMTP parameters to be configured include:

• Outgoing mail server - hostname of the SMTP server. For Outlook users, the value is smtp-mail.outlook.com;
• SMTP port number;
• Username and password;
• Specify if SSL is required or not

Admins can also configure the email distributor batch process to send emails directly from the server without user inputs or interaction. To start, go to System Administration > Periodic Tasks > Email Processing > Batch And Enable Batch Processing.

To override the default send from address, set the Sender Email Parameter on the Options page.

Configuring Dynamics 365 workflow by user

As a user, you can follow the below steps to configure the email processes:

Go to the Options page via Settings > User Options and open the Email Provider Selection section under the Account tab.

The parameters that you need to set values for are:

• Email provider ID
• Sender email

You can set parameters of the How Would You Like To Send Email dialog box. The fields you can configure are:

• Use an email app;
• Use exchange email server;
• User the system email client;
• Do not ask again.

For Send Email dialog box, you can configure these fields:

• From
• To, CC<, BCC, subject, and body of the email
• Attachments list

Irrespective of whether you send emails as a user or an admin, make sure to test out your emails before using them for an actual process.

You can make use of the following methods to verify if an email is configured properly:

• Try sending the email using a local mail client
• Send emails using the SMTP server and check its validity

How can an administrator activate Dynamics 365 workflow email notification?

Here are the steps to activating the Dynamics 365 workflow email notifications. There are three ways you can configure email notifications.

There is a lot you can do with email notifications and the configuration of emails for your workflows. Dynamics 365 allows you to create custom email templates and set all the triggers and events to kickstart your workflow process automatically.

If you need help, contact our experts for a pay per session workshop. Our team will help and guide you to make the best use of Dynamics 365 workflows and optimize all your business processes.