How to update Case Status Based on Email Messages on Cases

Create a flow to handle this automatically. 

The below instructions will fit the needs of common Salesforce orgs, you may need to add some case statuses or deviate from the exact instructions to accommodate your organization’s needs. Additional case status updates can be made and additional case status decision outcomes can be added to fit your needs. Remember to always build and test in a sandbox before moving the flow into a production org. 


Create a record-triggered flow on the EmailMessage object.

Condition Logic

Note : For outgoing emails, the entry condition "Status = 3" may not work as expected. The flow does not trigger automatically for outgoing EmailMessage records that meet this condition. However, when the same record is debugged manually, the flow executes correctly. 

(1 AND 4) OR (2 AND 3 AND 4)

Create a decision element named Email Direction

Note : (Please ensure that the "Incoming" label used in the Email Direction decision element is correctly referencing the EmailMessage (record that triggered the flow) instead of the Email_Direction resource. Using Email_Direction.Incoming may cause the flow to behave incorrectly, as it should be referencing EmailMessage.Incoming for accurate evaluation.)
Incoming



Create a decision element on the Incoming side called Current Case Status

Case is New


Case is Closed



Update closed cases to reopened

Update cases with other statuses to Email Reply Received

Create a decision element on the outgoing side called is the Case Closed or New?

Update cases that are not Closed or New to  Pending Customer Reply

Note: As with flow, there are many correct ways to accomplish things that all get to the same outcome. This was written following best practices using the functionality available in flow at the time of writing, as more features come out in flow there may be UI changes causing the images to not match exactly. 

Note: At the time of writing, debugging the flow for email messages does not work. More info is available here.

See also :
Build a Flow
Add and Edit Elements in Auto-Layout

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Written By: Andrew Russo | Salesforce Answers Leader
Andrew Russo is an Archa-Admin-Eloper-Analyst at BACA Systems. He has been in the Salesforce ecosystem since 2017 and has immense platform knowledge. He empowers Trailblazers to become more proficient in their use of Salesforce.

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