New Case Creation

A “New Case Creation” email rule allows General Users to submit cases into the Case IQ system by email, rather than using the in-application New Case form. System Administrators may be interested in establishing “New Case Creation” rules if their organization is more inclined to log cases by simply sending an email, instead of logging in to the Case IQ system and creating a case. 

When setting up a “New Case Creation” rule, System Administrators set (1) the individuals who can use the email rule and (2) the email address for the Case IQ inbox. Case IQ will populate the system-generated case fields, for example “Case ID” and “Created Date”, when a case is added via a "New Case Creation" rule, similar to cases added in-application and via an external portal. However, cases added by a “New Case Creation” rule will be entered with the “Record Source” field set as “Email” rather than “Web” or “External”, so you can tell which cases are created using the email rule.

Add a New Case Creation Email Rule

To create a "New Case Creation" rule, navigate to the New Email Rule form by clicking the Add Email Rule button on the Email Rules page in the System tab. See the following guidance on completing the New Email Rule form:

1. Rule Type: set to “New Case Creation”.
2. Sender Address(es): enter either an email domain or a specific email address to the allow list. The addresses that you enter in “Sender Address(es)” will be the only email addresses that have permissions to send an email to the system to create a case.
   1. You can add multiple specific email addresses in the “Sender Address(es)” field, for example:
   2. You can enter an email domain instead of a specific email address. For example, if you would like any email address with the “@caseiq.com” domain to be able to create a case via email, you can enter an asterisk before the email domain, i.e. "*@caseiq.com". The "*" character indicates that the email address can include any text in the beginning but must end with "@caseiq.com".
3. System Inbox Address: enter a single email address as the System Inbox to which users can send emails to create a case. The domain of the email address must match the domain of your Case IQ application. 
   1. You can determine your application’s domain by checking the URL in your browser window. In this example, the Case IQ application’s URL is “https://sample.caseiq.com”, so the System Inbox email address must end with “@sample.caseiq.com”.
4. Click the Save button to implement your email rule. After saving the rule, you can give the System Inbox Address to any individuals that you allowed in the “Sender Address(es)” field.

Add a New Case with a New Case Creation Rule

To further illustrate how “New Case Creation” rules work, this section shows an example of an email sent to the System Inbox set up in the previous steps and the resulting case in the application.

The following screenshot compares an email that an individual sent to the System Inbox and the New Case Creation email rule form. The sender’s email address (afiume@caseiq.com) contains the email domain specified in the email rule (@caseiq.com), labelled "1" in the email and New Case Creation rule form. The email was also sent to the System Inbox Address, caseiqinbox@sample.caseiq.com, labelled "2" in both screenshots.

A new case was automatically added into Case IQ when the above email was sent to the System Inbox, case 2023-011, shown in the screenshot below. You can confirm how a case was created by checking the Record Source field. In this example, the “Record Source” is “Email”, as the case was added because of the New Case Creation email rule.

The case record will be empty, as information from the email will not be populated in the case form. However, the email sent to the System Inbox Address to create the case will be added as an email of the case in Case IQ.

Case Inbox

Creating a “Case Inbox” rule allows General Users to send emails directly to a case, which are associated with the case in the system. For example, if a case involves an email exchange between two parties, the relevant emails could be sent and linked as child records to a Case IQ case if a “Case Inbox” rule is set up.

Add a Case Inbox Email Rule

To create a case inbox, navigate to the New Email Rule form by clicking the Add Email Rule button on the Email Rules page in the System tab. See the following guidance on completing the Case Inbox form:

1. Rule Type: set to “Case Inbox”.
2. Sender Address(es): enter either a specific email address or an email domain. The addresses that you enter in “Sender Address(es)” will be the only email addresses that have permissions to send an email to link to an existing case.
   1. You can add multiple specific email addresses in the “Sender Address(es)” field, for example:
   2. You can enter an email domain instead of a specific email address. For example, if you would like any email address with the “@caseiq.com” domain to be able to create a case via email, you can enter an asterisk before the email domain, i.e. "*@caseiq.com". The "*" character indicates that the email address can include any text in the beginning but must end with "caseiq.com".
3. System Inbox Address: enter a single email address as the System Inbox to which users will send emails to link to a case. The domain of the email address must match the domain of your Case IQ application. In this example, the Case IQ application’s URL is “https://sample.caseiq.com”, so the System Inbox email address must end with “@sample.caseiq.com”.
4. Click the Save button to implement your email rule. You can now give the System Inbox Address to individuals you allowed to use the inbox in the Sender Address field.

Sending Emails to Cases with a Case Inbox Rule

To link an email to a case, the email’s subject line must start with the number of an existing case in the system. The following screenshot compares an email sent to the case inbox and the Case Inbox email rule form. The sender’s email address (afiume@caseiq.com) contains the email domain specified in the email rule (@caseiq.com), labelled "1" in the email and Case Inbox rule form. The email was also sent to the System Inbox Address, caseinbox@sample.caseiq.com, labelled "2" in both screenshots.

The system will read all characters before a space in the email subject line as the case number. The email subject line in the example is “2023-002 Harassment Allegation”, which means that the application will search for an existing case with the case ID 2023-002. If the system is not able to parse the case number of an email sent to the System Inbox Address, the email will be displayed on the Unassigned Incoming Mail page where System Administrators can manually tag it (see the "Unassigned Incoming Mail" tab of this article for details).

After sending the email, it will be added as a child record of case 2023-002, which you can see in-application under the Emails sub-tab on the case’s page. You can reply or forward the email like any other Case IQ email.

Incoming Email Filter

An "Incoming Email Filter" rule will limit who can send emails to Case IQ. Only email addresses on the allow list in the Incoming Email Filter rule can send emails sent to the application. In the example for the following section, the only person who can send emails to Case IQ is the organization’s investigations manager, with the email “investigationmanager@caseiq.com”. An Incoming Email Filter will override all other email rules, meaning that emails sent from any other email address will not be received, even if it is included in the "Sender Address(es)" of other email rules.

Add an Incoming Email Filter Rule

To create an Incoming Email Filter, navigate to the New Email Rule form by clicking the Add Email Rule button on the Email Rules page. See the following guidance on completing the Incoming Email Filter form:

1. Rule Type: set to “Incoming Email Filter”.
2. Recipient Address(es): enter either a specific email address to allow list or an email domain by typing an asterisk before the email domain text. The addresses that you enter in “Recipient Address(es)” will be the only email addresses from which Case IQ can accept emails.
   1. You can add multiple specific email addresses in the “Recipient Address(es)” field, for example:
   2. You can enter an email domain instead of a specific email address. For example, if you would like any email address with the “@caseiq.com” domain to be able to send emails to Case IQ, you can enter an asterisk before the email domain, i.e. "*@caseiq.com". The "*" character indicates that the email address can include any text in the beginning but must end with "@caseiq.com".

      

3. Click the Save button to implement your email rule.

Outgoing Email Filter

An “Outgoing Email Filter” rule will limit who will receive emails from Case IQ. Only email addresses that are on the allow list in the Outgoing Email Filter rule can receive emails sent from the application. In the example for the following section, the only people who can receive Case IQ emails are the organization’s HR manager and advisor, whose emails are “hrmanager@caseiq.com” and "hradvisor@caseiq.com" respectively. An Outgoing Email filter will override system notification configurations, meaning that no other users will receive Case IQ emails, including account management emails and password expiry emails for their profile.

Add an Outgoing Email Filter Rule

To create an Outgoing Email Filter, navigate to the New Email Rule form by clicking the Add Email Rule button on the Email Rules page. See the following guidance on completing the Outgoing Email Filter form:

1. Rule Type: set to “Outgoing Email Filter”.
2. Recipient Address(es): enter either a specific email address to allow list or an email domain by typing an asterisk before the email domain text. The addresses that you enter in “Recipient Address(es)” will be the only email addresses to which Case IQ can send emails.
   1. You can add multiple specific email addresses in the “Recipient Address(es)” field, for example:
   2. You can enter an email domain instead of a specific email address. For example, if you would like any email address with the “@caseiq.com” domain to receive Case IQ emails, you can enter an asterisk before the email domain, i.e. "*@caseiq.com". The "*" character indicates that the email address can include any text in the beginning but must end with "@caseiq.com".
3. Click the Save button to implement your email rule.

Unassigned Incoming Mail

The Unassigned Incoming Mail page displays emails for which the Case IQ system could not find a matching case. Generally, Case IQ cannot find a matching case because an individual attempted to:

1. Send the email to a Case Inbox, but the system was not able to parse the email subject line (see the "Sending Emails to Cases with a Case Inbox Rule" section in the "Case Inbox" tab for details).
2. Reply to an email sent from Case IQ, but slightly changed the recipient email address (see more in the "Case IQ Email Keys" tab).

System Administrators can review emails in the Unassigned Incoming Mail grid and manually link them to a case. Access the Unassigned Incoming Mail page by selecting “Unassigned Incoming Mail” on the System tab. To link an email to the case that the sender intended, click a row in the grid to load the full details of the email. 

The email details page includes the subject and body text, where the sender may have included the relevant case number. You can select a case number in the “Case #” field and click Save to properly link the email to the case.

Case IQ Email Keys

When a user sends an email from the Case IQ application, the system generates an “email key” to act as the user’s email address. The email key is a random string of characters which the system uses to connect the email thread and the case. Case IQ links emails to cases with email keys so that users can change any other email field as needed. For example, users can change the subject line and the email thread will remain associated with the appropriate case.

Users can reply or Carbon Copy (CC) an email to or from Case IQ and the email will remain linked to the case. However, if the user changes the recipient email address when sending an email to Case IQ, the system will not be able to find the email’s case. In the example below, a user incorrectly pasted the email key into the “To:” field.

The user’s email was sent to the Unassigned Incoming Mail grid instead:

As shown in the "Unassigned Incoming Mail" tab of this article, the System Administrator can click the email row and select the correct case for the email in the “Case #” field.

The email record will then be linked with the case and can be accessed in the Email’s sub-tab as normal.