HowTo:Send Messages to Multiple Recipients

For:   Designers Level: Beginner Time:  5 minutes See more:     ◾ HowTo Guides

There are many ways to send a single message to multiple recipients. This writeup summarizes the possibilities, so you can choose the mechanism that is most appropriate for your application.

User-Controlled

When sending an email from a Case or from any other record in the system, a user can add as many recipients as they like.

Advantage: Infinite flexibility

Disadvantage: Requires manual effort that becomes excessive when duplicated my different users and/or repeated by the same user.

Learn more: Respond to a Case or Add a Note

Template-Controlled Addresses

When creating an Email Template, a comma-separated list of recipients can be specified.

There are multiple ways to do it:

• Individual recipient addresses can be hard-coded into the To, Cc, or Bcc fields.
• Template Variables can reference Lookup fields in the record to include email addresses from related Contacts and Users.

Advantage: Addresses can be taken from related Contacts and User records

Disadvantage: Each value is a single address, which is fine unless you need to send to a list or recipients.

List of Addresses in a Record

An Email Address field can be added to the object. For a given record, that field can contain a single email address or a comma-separated list of addresses. That email field can then used as a template variable in one of the template lists.

Advantage: Every record can have it's own unique set of addresses

Disadvantage: Address values have to be added to every record.

Using an External "Alias"

One or more of the addresses contained in an email field could also be an email alias--a list of email addresses maintained on a separate server.

Advantage: Every record can have it's own unique

Disadvantage: xx

List of Addresses in a "Configuration Object"

• An Email Address field can be added to a configuration object. That field can contain a single email address or a comma-separated list of addresses.
• That Email Field could also contain the

Advantage: xx

Disadvantage: xx

Mechanism

Description.

Advantage: xx

Disadvantage: xx

Wrap Up

At this point, you've seen a number of ways to send a message to a list of users, along with the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. You should now be able to pick the approach that will work best for your application.