Schedule a case email, change its send time, or return it to a draft

Scheduled email lets you prepare an approved customer message now and hold it for a future send time. It can help with a planned maintenance notice, an agreed follow-up window or a handoff across time zones. The activity is committed to the case when you schedule it; the email is queued for later. Treat that distinction carefully: a visible activity is not proof the customer has received the message, and scheduling does not move the case’s SLA deadline.

Schedule an email from an existing case  ·  Understand what scheduling does and does not do  ·  Edit a pending scheduled email  ·  Withdraw a future send by returning it to a draft  ·  Example: a maintenance-window notice  ·  Resolve scheduling problems

Schedule an email from an existing case

1. Open the intended case and read the latest customer activity. Confirm the Company, Contact, owner and current commitment before preparing a future message.
2. Open the outbound activity composer for an email, reply or forward. Review the activity type, subject, body, attachments, To, CC, BCC and available Reply Address. At least one valid recipient and an authorized reply address are required.
3. Open Advanced options. In Send at (optional), choose a genuinely future date and time. Confirm the local date/time context before translating an agreed customer time into this field.
4. Read the message again as the future recipient. Remove assumptions that might become stale before it sends, or arrange a review before the scheduled time.
5. Choose the composer’s outbound action: Send email, or Forward activity for a forward. This commits the scheduled activity and queues its message; it is different from Save draft.
6. Find the activity in the timeline and verify its Send [date] status. Compare the displayed date with the time you intended.
7. Check the case’s SLA and other promised updates separately. If the email would go after a response deadline, address the commitment through your team’s approved process rather than assuming the schedule moves it.

This procedure uses Case View on an existing case. Do not assume the New Case form offers the same Send at control for its initial activity. The control belongs to outbound email/reply/forward composition, not an Internal Note or Task.

Understand what scheduling does and does not do

Core converts the entered local date/time to its stored UTC value. Verify the displayed result, especially around a customer’s time zone or a daylight-saving transition. A typed date without confirming its time-zone meaning can produce a correctly saved but incorrectly timed message.

Edit a pending scheduled email

1. Open the case timeline and locate the correct activity by subject, recipient context and pending Send [date] status.
2. Use Edit activity / attachments to open Edit activity. Confirm the message is still pending before changing it.
3. Correct the body, recipients, attachments or Send at (optional) value as needed. Recheck the selected reply identity and the new future time.
4. Complete the appropriate save/outbound action in the editor and inspect its result. Editing a pending message updates the existing queue identity; do not create another activity merely to change its schedule.
5. Reopen the timeline entry and verify the saved content and intended pending send time. If sending began while you were editing, inspect the actual result and coordinate any necessary correction.

Withdraw a future send by returning it to a draft

1. Locate the pending scheduled activity and choose Edit activity / attachments.
2. Review that this is the message you intend to withhold and that it has not already been sent.
3. Choose Save draft while editing. For a pending scheduled message, this returns it to an unsent draft and cancels its future queue entry.
4. Verify the draft state and absence of the prior pending-send status. If the action reports an error or the send outcome is uncertain, inspect the activity before retrying or assuming it was withdrawn.
5. Assign responsibility for revising or discarding the draft. A withdrawn message does not itself communicate a changed plan to the customer.

The timeline’s Cancel send control is for the short automatic undo delay on an ordinary near-immediate send. Do not rely on that control as the general way to cancel a manually scheduled future email. Neither workflow recalls an email that has already been sent.

Example: a maintenance-window notice

If the maintenance window moves, edit the existing pending message or return it to a draft. Check whether the customer already received an earlier message and whether a separate correction is needed. Keep the case’s response deadline and task ownership accurate; the queued notice does not replace those operational decisions.

Resolve scheduling problems

Continue learning

• Work a case and manage its activities
• Adjust a response SLA target deliberately
• Use response templates consistently