Email Alert through Workflow does not create an Activity History

[DrawloopSupport]

Does anyone know why an email alert triggered from a workflow would not be creating the associated activity history? Emails sent through the interface, through Apex, and through the API are all logged in activity history (when the appropriate information is set). The email alert is set to be sent to the Contact Email (standard) field.

Thanks!

[jkucera]

For which object?  Campaign Member for example doesn't create activities as Tasks & Activities aren't available for the object

[DrawloopSupport]

The email alert is set to be sent to the Contact Email (standard) field. So it is running from the Contact object.

Message Edited by DrawloopSupport on 03-18-2010 10:58 AM

[jkucera]

I get the same behavior as you mentioned.  I'll ask the Workflow Product Manager.

[MktCnsl]

I have the same question.  Why wouldn't it create an activity?  This has caused some complication in tracking down what messages are sent and which didn't trigger.

[DrawloopSupport]

John,

Any updates?

Thanks! 

[jkucera]

Update - I was mistaken.  Workflow Email Alerts never create activites (confirmed from workflow PM). 

I believe I was confusing them with HTML Mass Emails, which are a different breed.

[DrawloopSupport]

John,

Any way we can get the ability to specify whether or not an Email Alert should create an activity added to Salesforce's road map? Why might someone not want an Email Alert to not create an activity? I will search the Idea Exchange for this suggestion.

Thanks! 

[DrawloopSupport]

If anyone wants this feature, promote this idea:

https://sites.secure.force.com/ideaexchange/ideaView?c=09a30000000D9xt&id=08730000000BroKAAS 

[SimonSmith · Accepted solution]

I promoted the idea (which I imagine has fallen off the radar because the original idea was posted in 2007) and also just came up with a workaround that might help some others. 

First some context. We have a client who wants to have an email automatically sent to leads when they're entered manually, rather than through the web.

To enable this and prevent the wrong leads from getting the introduction, we added a tickbox that users tick if they want leads they're entering to receive the email. 

We then created a workflow rule to send an email to the email address of the lead entered. Our expectation was that when this email was sent, the lead's Activity History would be updated.

As we know, this isn't the case. So here's the workaround:

1. Duplicate the email template that you're using for the outbound email
   For example, we created a template called "Leads: Auto-Introductory Email to Leads" and a second one called "Leads: Auto-Introductory Email to Leads FOR ACTIVITY HISTORY"
   
2. Somewhere in the duplicated template, "ref" the ID of the record for which you want to track the activity
   For example, in our duplicated template, we added ref: {!Lead.Id}
   
3. Duplicate the original email alert, make it send ONLY to the administrator's Email-to-Salesforce address, and use the duplicated email template with the "ref" in it

So basically, here's what happens.

Someone enters a record in Salesforce that triggers the workflow rule.

The workflow rule triggers and sends both email alerts. The first alert gets sent to the recipient, in this case a lead. The second alert gets sent directly into Salesforce using the Email-to-Salesforce address. Salesforce then reads the "ref:" tag and assigns the email to the correct record. 

Of course, there are some caveats here.

The biggest is that each user has a different Email-to-Salesforce address, so if you want an email sent from different users to be recorded, you might have problems. But if you only care about having the email itself recorded, or want the email to come from a single address anyway, this workaround works.

It's nowhere near as elegant as the functionality that should exist, but I hope it helps.