Chatter Answers is a self-service and support community where users can post questions, receive answers and comments from other users or your support agents. Chatter Answers bring together Cases, Questions, Answers, and Knowledge article in a unified experience. In this article I will discuss various ways to setup email notifications for Chatter Answers. I am also going to discuss few business use cases and their solution.
1) Chatter Answers email notification Settings
Salesforce.com provides out of the box feature to setup email notifications for Chatter Answers, So System administrator can choose email notification options for their organization by following the path Name | Setup | App Setup | Customize | Chatter Answers | Email Notification Settings and possible options are
1) Replies to a question they own
2) Replies to a question they follow
3) Selects a best answer on a question they follow
4) Sends a private reply to their question (Customer Support)
Chatter Answers Email Notification Settings
But there are many business scenarios those are not falling under above category, I will discuss few here.
2) Question belongs to specific zones
Business Use case : – Universal Container is using Chatter Answer for their Internal support. They want to send an email alert to Public group (Product Experts) for all questions created in Zone = “Internal Issues“.
Solution of above business requirement
To solve the above business requirement I will use Workflow Rule (on Question object) to send an Email alert. To create a workflow on the Question object follow the below instructions
a) Click on Name | Setup | App Setup | Create | Workflows & Approvals | New Rule
b) Select an object Question from the drop-down
c) Enter Name, for Evaluate criteria select Created, In Rule Criteria select Question Body != Null and Zone = Internal Issues as shown in the following screenshot
Question belongs to Zone Internal Issues
d) Add one Immediate Workflow Actions i.e. New Email alert as shown in the following screenshot
Email Alert to Product Experts
e) Save the workflow and activate it.
Note :- If you want to send email alert for every Chatter question then include all Zones in workflow rule entry criteria like Zone != Null.
3) Question with no reply within time limit
Business Use case : – Universal Container has their internal team of experts to reply customer questions. They want to send an email alert to Public group (Product Manager) for question doesn’t have any reply after 5days of its creation.
Solution of above business requirement
The reply is basically the response to a question in an answers community. To solve the above business requirement I will use Time Based Workflow Rule (on Question object) to send an Email alert. To create a workflow on the Question object follow the below instructions
a) Click on Name | Setup | App Setup | Create | Workflows & Approvals | New Rule
b) Select an object Question from the drop-down
c) Enter Name, for Evaluate criteria select Created, and any time it’s edited to subsequently meet criteria ( To create a time dependent workflow), In Rule Criteria select Number of Replies <= 0 as shown in the following screenshot
Question with no reply
e) Click on Add Time Trigger button and Set the length after how many days/hours workflow will fire i.e. in hours and days, In this case select 5hr after the Question: Created Date. Now add one Email alert action for the time-dependent workflow to send email notification to Public group (Product Manager). You can take help from the following screenshot
Time based email alert
e) Save the workflow and activate it.
4) Question Report Abuses above limit
Business Use case : – Universal Container wants to send an email alert to their System administrator (i.e. Rakesh Gupta) for questions which has more than 10 report abuse.
Solution of above business requirement
Any users from the community can flag a question as Spam, Inappropriate or Hateful, as shown in the below screenshot
Flag question as Spam
To solve the above business requirement I will use Workflow Rule (on Question object) to send an Email alert. To create a workflow on the Question object follow the below instructions
a) Click on Name | Setup | App Setup | Create | Workflows & Approvals | New Rule
b) Select an object Question from the drop-down
c) Enter Name, for Evaluate criteria select Created, For Rule Criteria select Number of Report Abuses >= 10 as shown in the following screenshot
Question with more then 10 report abuses
d) Add one Immediate Workflow Actions i.e. New Email alert as shown in the following screenshot
Email Alert to System Administrator
e) Save the workflow and activate it.
5) Reply Report Abuses above limit
Business Use case : – Universal Container product team closely watching customer activity on Chatter Answers. They wants to send an email alert to the System administrator (i.e Rakesh Gupta) for all replies which has more than 5 report abuse.
Solution of above business requirement
To solve the above business requirement I will use Workflow Rule (on Reply object) to send an Email alert. To create a workflow on the Reply object follow the below instructions
a) Click on Name | Setup | App Setup | Create | Workflows & Approvals | New Rule
b) Select object Reply from the drop-down
c) Enter Name, for Evaluate criteria select Created, For Rule Criteria select Number of Report Abuses >= 5 as shown in the following screenshot
Reply with more then 10 report abuses
d) Add one Immediate Workflow Actions i.e. New Email alert as shown in the following screenshot
Email Alert to System Administrator
Note:- I will suggest you tov Implement this first on your developer org test it and then move it to Production. Let me know if you have any difficulty to Implement it.
