Choose email recipients, Reply address, and reply mode for a case activity

The right case does not automatically mean the right email audience. B2B conversations often involve an operational contact, a technical specialist, an account owner and a third-party supplier. Use the recipient controls deliberately so each message reaches the intended people. The case’s Company/Contact, the email recipients and the activity’s visibility inside Supportbench are separate decisions.

Choose and verify recipients  ·  Understand To, Cc, Bcc and Reply address  ·  Find the right person when the first search is incomplete  ·  Review how Reply, Reply All and Forward start  ·  Keep activity visibility separate from email delivery  ·  Example: involve a supplier without confusing the customer thread  ·  Use a final pre-send check  ·  Troubleshoot recipient and sender issues

Choose and verify recipients

1. Open the intended outbound activity and confirm the case/customer context and activity type. Review any recipients already supplied by the reply mode or defaults.
2. Select To, Cc or Bcc to open the corresponding recipient dialog. In New Case, its title is To recipients, Cc recipients or Bcc recipients.
3. Use Name or email to find the intended person. Check the email and company context of each match before selecting it; similar names can belong to different customers.
4. If the recipient is not a directory record and your workflow permits it, enter a valid explicit email address. Several addresses can be separated by commas or semicolons. Review the resulting selected tokens.
5. Choose Done to apply the staged selection. Cancel or Escape closes without committing the staged choices.
6. Review all three buckets again in the composer, then check Reply address, subject, content and attachments.
7. Use the intended activity action. A new draft is not a sent message. After a send, inspect the activity/send outcome before assuming the customer received it.

Entering an external address does not create a Contact record. If the person should become part of the maintained customer directory, use the authorized Contact workflow separately. Changing an email recipient also does not automatically change the case’s primary Contact.

Understand To, Cc, Bcc and Reply address

The shared picker normalizes and deduplicates addresses across the recipient buckets. Moving an address to another bucket removes it from its previous bucket. Inspect the final result rather than assuming the same person remains in both To and Cc.

An outbound commit requires at least one valid recipient across To/Cc/Bcc and an allowed Reply address. Server validation still applies after the picker accepts input. An Internal Note or saved draft follows a different validation and communication path.

Find the right person when the first search is incomplete

In New Case, the picker initially offers the current Company’s Contacts and can show search groups such as This company and Other contacts. The directory search can match Contact name, email or Company name. Its result set is bounded, so a broad single letter is not a complete address book.

• Search with enough identifying detail, such as a surname and the actual email or customer organization.
• Check the displayed email, not only the name. A person may have several addresses or a similarly named colleague.
• If a broad search does not show the expected Contact, narrow it. The lookup returns up to 25 matches and this control does not offer paged browsing of every match.
• Use a valid explicit address only when you have confirmed it is the intended recipient. Do not guess a customer address from a naming pattern.
• If a maintained Contact should be available but is not, review the Contact’s identity/active/authorized context through the customer record workflow rather than immediately creating a duplicate.

The available lookup types differ by surface and intent. New Case directory search is Contact-focused. Regular Case View typed lookup can also return agent users and email groups; Forward lookup returns users and Contacts rather than groups. All of these are authorized agent tools, not a promise that customers can browse the same directory.

Review how Reply, Reply All and Forward start

On New Case, selecting a Contact starts To with that Contact; it does not automatically add secondary Contacts to Cc. Existing manually entered copied recipients can be preserved according to the current selection flow, so inspect them after changing customer context.

Reply address can be selected from the account’s configured sender addresses. For replies, Core can match the source message’s recipient against an available system sender or fall back to the configured default. The chosen sender is validated again at commit, so do not assume every address visible in old correspondence is available for a new send.

Keep activity visibility separate from email delivery

Before forwarding a customer case to a supplier, inspect the quoted conversation and attachments for private internal investigation, unrelated customer information or credentials. Select only the material that the intended recipient is authorized to receive. Do not rely on the word Internal as an email protection control.

The Activity type, policy and portal rules determine visibility in Supportbench. The selected outbound recipients determine who receives that email. An Internal Note is a different workflow from an outbound forward whose Supportbench activity remains internal.

Example: involve a supplier without confusing the customer thread

A customer’s technical administrator has supplied a log, while their operations manager needs status updates. For the customer update, use the appropriate Reply/Reply All context and confirm the two customer recipients. Keep private supplier diagnosis in the authorized internal case workflow.

If an approved supplier needs a specific log excerpt, start the appropriate forward, add the confirmed supplier address and inspect the forwarded body and files. Remove unrelated/private material through the supported editor before sending. Verify the warning about internal Supportbench visibility versus actual email delivery. A separate customer update can summarize the verified next step without forwarding the entire supplier conversation.

After either send, inspect the saved activity and send status. Keep ownership and the next customer commitment explicit. Adding the supplier as an email recipient is not proof that the case was reassigned or that the supplier accepted responsibility.

Use a final pre-send check

• Correct case and actual customer context.
• Correct Activity type and Reply/Reply All/Forward intent.
• Every To/Cc/Bcc address checked, including defaults and manually pasted addresses.
• Appropriate configured Reply address.
• Subject and body accurately state the next step and avoid unsupported promises.
• Quoted text and attachments reviewed for this exact audience.
• Any future Send at value reviewed; a scheduled message is not delivered immediately.
• After commit, the actual activity and pending/sent/failure status inspected.

Troubleshoot recipient and sender issues

Continue learning

• Work with case activities and customer communication
• Schedule and withdraw a future case email
• Maintain accurate Company and Contact records
• Choose the right kind of internal note