Service and Support Applications

When an Email-to-Case routing address is deactivated in Salesforce, incoming emails sent to that routing address are rejected and bounce back to the sender with an error message.

This is the expected behavior because deactivating a routing address essentially tells Salesforce to stop processing emails from that address. The email service will reject the incoming message since there is no active configuration to handle it, resulting in a bounce-back notification to the original sender.

The other options are incorrect:

• Emails are not queued for later processing. Salesforce does not have a mechanism to hold emails in a queue waiting for a routing address to be reactivated. Once deactivated, the routing address simply stops functioning.

• Emails are not automatically converted to tasks. Email-to-Case is specifically designed to create cases, and there is no automatic fallback mechanism that converts emails to tasks when a routing address is deactivated.

• Emails are not stored with a pending status. Salesforce does not create cases with a pending status flag when a routing address is deactivated. The deactivation means the entire email-to-case process for that address is stopped, not paused or modified.

This is why it's important for administrators to carefully plan before deactivating Email-to-Case routing addresses, as it will immediately impact customers trying to contact support through that email channel.

The Automated Case User setting in Support Settings is the correct answer. This setting specifies which user context Salesforce uses when performing automated case operations, including sending system-generated email notifications related to cases. When Web-to-Case creates a case and sends an auto-response email, the system uses the Automated Case User to determine the sender identity displayed in those communications.

The Automated Case User is particularly important for:
- Auto-response emails sent when cases are created via Web-to-Case
- System-generated case notifications
- Automated case escalation communications

Let's examine why the other options are incorrect:

The Default Case Owner setting determines who owns cases when no assignment rule applies or when assignment rules don't match. It doesn't control the sender identity for automated emails - it simply assigns case ownership.

Case Auto-Response Rules define the criteria for when auto-response emails are sent and which email template to use, but they don't determine the user identity that appears as the sender. The rules specify conditions and templates, not the sender context.

Email-to-Case routing addresses are used for inbound email processing - they define email addresses that convert incoming emails into cases. These settings are for receiving emails, not for controlling outbound automated case response sender identity.

To resolve the scenario described, the administrator should configure the Automated Case User to a user that represents the support team identity customers will recognize.

The Case Owner field on an Email-to-Case routing address configuration is the correct answer. When configuring Email-to-Case routing addresses in Salesforce, you must specify a Case Owner field that determines which queue or user will be assigned ownership of cases created from emails sent to that routing address. This is a direct setting on each routing address configuration.

The other options are incorrect for the following reasons:

• The Default Case Owner in Organization-Wide Defaults is a separate setting that serves as a fallback when no other assignment is made, but it does not specifically control Email-to-Case routing address assignments.

• There is no 'Assignment Rule Owner' field in Email-to-Case routing configurations. While assignment rules can be used in conjunction with Email-to-Case, they are a separate feature and not a field within the routing address configuration itself.

• Case Queue Membership based on email sender domain matching is not how Email-to-Case determines ownership. The ownership is explicitly set in the routing address configuration through the Case Owner field, not through domain matching logic.