Reading, and keeping the last few release notes readily accessible is a good habit I have gotten into at Salesforce.com. It is a great way to find those features which may not have highlighted as part of the release. One such feature is the ability to set a trigger based on Email Message received. (You can also now set a trigger on Case Comments as well — but that's a topic for another blog)

Take a really silly example (but probably quite useful!) where Account Executives want to be notified via a Task in the app whenever an email is received from a CEO of a company that is on their watchlist. We could leverage the new EmailMessage trigger functionality to automate this:

trigger alertAEonCEOEmails on EmailMessage (after insert) {

for(EmailMessage message : trigger.new)

{

//blogware – if this was real, we wouldn't hardcode the email here

if(message.FromAddress == 'ceo@mybigdealthisquarter.com')

{

    Account theAccountSO = getAccountByCEOEmail(message.FromAddress);

    Task callTheCEO = new Task();

    callTheCEO.OwnerId = theAccountSO.OwnerId;

            callTheCEO.Subject = 'CEO Emailed';

    callTheCEO.Description = 'You Better call him back;

    callTheCEO.ReminderDateTime = System.now();

    callTheCEO.AccountId = theAccountSO.id;

}

}

}

The ability of set triggers on Email Messages opens up many possibilities. My simple example is only one; what are yours?