Sending Direct Email and Automated Email to records in a custom entity in Dynamics CRM

Prior to Dynamics CRM 2013, you could not send direct email to records in a custom entity as you could for the standard entities such as Account, Contact, Lead and User.

With the introduction of the following option on the entity configuration when you create a custom entity, you can now enable the entity for sending Direct Email.

Selecting this option (as in the above screenshot), adds the Send Direct Email button to the main ribbon tab for the entity.

For example, I have a custom entity named Workorder with the “Sending email” option checked. When I select the records in the Workorders view, I see the “SEND DIRECT EMAIL” button on the ribbon which enables me to send direct email for the selected records. Using this feature, a user can send direct email to the email address on the selected records.

If you do not have an existing email address field in the entity, CRM creates one as seen in the screenshot below.

Note that after you enable this option, it cannot be disabled.

Another not so obvious and undocumented feature that becomes available when you select this option is an ability to send email to the email address on the record using a Workflow.

Prior to CRM 2013, in order to send email to the Email address on the custom entity records, you had to select the “Allow messages with unresolved email recipients to be sent” option in System Settings (shown below). You could then populate the “To” field in the email with the Email address on the custom entity record in a custom workflow activity which requires custom development.

With the “Sending email” option, you can do this without enabling the above system setting. This can now be accomplished using a standard Workflow as illustrated in the screenshot below.