Sending, receiving, and organizing email in Outlook.com
Dynamics 365 Customer Service can automate this scenario by using Automatic Record Creation and Update (ARC) rules together with Power Automate.
A high-level implementation looks like this:
- Configure email-to-queue in Dynamics 365
- Associate the shared support mailbox (for example, credit-related requests) with a queue in Customer Service.
- Configure the queue to convert incoming emails to activities so that each new email becomes an email activity and a queue item. This is the basis for email-to-case and other automation.
- Create an Automatic Record Creation and Update rule
- In the Copilot Service admin center app, go to Case Settings → Automatic record creation and update rules → Manage → New.
- On the Basic tab:
- Set Rule name (for example, “Credit Hold Email Rule”).
- Set Queue scope (single or multiple queues) and select the Queue to monitor that is tied to the mailbox.
- Set Activity type to monitor to Email.
- Save the rule.
- Add conditions to detect “Credit hold” / “Account hold”
- In Step two: conditions to evaluate and actions to take, select New to open the condition builder.
- Define a condition that checks the email fields (for example, subject and/or body) for the keywords “Credit hold” or “Account hold”.
- In Actions to take → Record to create, select Case (or another record type if needed). When the condition is met, a case (or other record) is created automatically from the email.
- Configure additional actions and notifications
- Still in the rule item, use Configure in Microsoft Power Automate → Save and open in Power Automate.
- In Power Automate, extend the flow to:
- Capture key details from the email (subject, sender, case number if present in the subject/body).
- Send an email report to the appropriate recipients containing those details each time a matching email is processed.
- Save and close the flow, then Save & Close the condition builder.
- Activate the rule
- Back in the rule form, configure any Advanced settings as needed (for example, how to behave when related cases already exist).
- Activate the rule so it starts processing incoming email activities from the monitored queue.
- Periodic scanning and reporting over a time range
- ARC rules work on incoming activities as they arrive. For historical or periodic scanning (for example, “all cases in the last 30 days containing ‘Credit hold’ or ‘Account hold’”), use Power Automate or another reporting mechanism:
- Build a scheduled flow in Power Automate that runs on a defined interval.
- Query case records (or email activities) created in the desired time window where the description/subject contains those keywords.
- Aggregate the results and send a summary report by email.
- ARC rules work on incoming activities as they arrive. For historical or periodic scanning (for example, “all cases in the last 30 days containing ‘Credit hold’ or ‘Account hold’”), use Power Automate or another reporting mechanism:
- Monitoring and troubleshooting
- Use the activity monitor for ARC rules to review and track rule health and resolve issues if emails are not being converted or processed as expected.
This approach gives:
- Real-time automation: new emails with the keywords automatically create cases/records and trigger a notification.
- Scheduled analytics: periodic scans over existing cases or emails to produce reports on “Credit hold” / “Account hold” activity.
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