Create a Phone Messages Alert Workflow

A SharePoint Workflows tutorial by Peter Kalmström

Use SharePoint to automate the distribution of phone messages within an organization. In the demo below Peter Kalmstrom, CEO and Systems Designer of kalmstrom.com Business Solutions, creates a workflow for a simple SharePoint list app for phone messages.

The workflow Peter creates sends an e-mail message to the person who has been called. The message contains info about who called and who received the call. It also has the telephone number, so if you receive the message in a mobile you can just click to call back.

Peter uses the default SharePoint 2013 workflow in the demo, but you can use a SharePoint 2010 workflow also. The steps are a bit different, but the most important difference is that you have to end the SharePoint 2013 workflow. The other actions are similar.

List Workflow for phone messages

Open the site in SharePoint Designer 2013.
Go into Lists and Libraries and click on the Phone Messages list to open its summary page. Click on the 'New' button at Workflows.
Give the workflow a name.
At Transition to stage, type go and press Enter. Click on the stage and select End of Workflow.
Go back to the workflow settings and set the workflow to start automatically when an item is created. You can also set it to be possible to start manually.
Edit the workflow again and select the Action 'Send an Email'.
Click on 'these users' and select a Workflow Lookup for a User .
Select the 'Called' field from source and the Return field 'Email Address'.
Enter a subject and a body text for the e-mail. Peter adds a Lookup for Name in the subject. In the body he adds lookups for the Phone number, the created time and the e-mail address of the person who received the call.
Publish the workflow.

You can also add a link to the current list item in edit mode to the e-mail sent out by the workflow. With such a link the person who gets the e-mail message can open the list item directly from the e-mail and mark the call as returned.

To learn how Peter created the Phone Messages list, refer to the SharePoint Online from Scratch articles on Phone Messages.