Using Custom Auto Number for Case ID with Zap Helpdesk – Email to Case App for Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM

Out-of-box Case ID is automatically generated and is of format: CAS-00067-M7UGFD. This kind of Case ID is not meaningful for many users and there might be a need for a custom one.

Good news is that with CRM v9.0 there is a built-in capability of setting up Auto-Number for any CRM entity. Using this custom auto-numbering you can create your own Case ID formats like:

[#12345]

[SUP12345]

[OPS12345]

{{12345}}

[CAS1234]

Zap Helpdesk – Email to Case App for Dynamics 365 CRM provides enhanced helpdesk capabilities and is built on-top of CRM service module. The App also supports custom Case Auto-Numbering!!

Using out-of-box email-to-case, you would have come across many scenarios where new cases are getting created even when a customer is doing a follow-up for an existing case. This results in duplicate cases in CRM. (This happens because CRM uses Smart Matching technique which fails when email subject has been modified)

Zap Helpdesk – Email to Case App has a built-in advanced algorithm for preventing such duplications. The App extracts “Case ID” from email subject and then searches against existing open as well as closed cases. So when there is a follow-up email regarding an existing case …the app will extract the case ID and link the email to the case… this way there is no duplication of cases!

Below is a sample Email subject for a follow-up email from customer to support team:

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Subject: RE: laptop not starting up [#12345]
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Zap Helpdesk app extracts the case number “12345” and searches the case table for a match:

Case Table:

Here out-of-box “Case ID” column could be ignored and instead we could use the “Case Auto-Number” as the custom column for case numbering.

Conculsion of this post is that Zap Helpdesk – Email to Case App also supports using of a custom Case Auto-Number and is not hard-coded to use the out-of-box “Case-ID” field.