How to create an email with multiple to addresses in Dynamics Online using WebApi

Question

I had a hard time figuring out how to instantiate an email template and then create an email with multiple to addresses using WebApi.

I came across many posts some of them targeting older versions of CRM or they used C#. This q&a shows you the culimination of that journey to working code.

These are some of the posts that I referenced: Create an email activity using REST Endpoints in CRM2011-2013

Dynamics 365 Web API Email send (specifically this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/47455785/44815)

Answer 1

1. To use an email template to auto generate the email contents, you need to use the "InstantiateTemplate" action.

The action takes as input an object that looks like this:

var instantiateTemplateRequest = {
        TemplateId: templateId,
        ObjectType: objectType,
        ObjectId: objectId,

        getMetadata: function () {
            return {
                boundParameter: null,
                parameterTypes: {
                    "TemplateId": {
                        "typeName": "Edm.String",
                        "structuralProperty": 1
                    },
                    "ObjectType": {
                        "typeName": "Edm.String",
                        "structuralProperty": 1
                    },
                    "ObjectId": {
                        "typeName": "Edm.String",
                        "structuralProperty": 1
                    }
                },
                operationType: 0,
                operationName: "InstantiateTemplate"
            };
        }
    };

Which can then be passed to:

Xrm.WebApi.online.execute(instantiateTemplateRequest)

The returned object has 2 properties: subject and description.

2. To create an email from the template:

You need to create an email record using the CreateRecord method It takes as input an object of the following type:

var activityParties = [];
        activityParties.push({
            participationtypemask : participationTypeMasks.From,
            "partyid_queue@odata.bind" : "/queues("+ queueId+ ")"
        });
        //setup 2 send-to addresses
        activityParties.push({
            participationtypemask : participationTypeMasks.To,
            "partyid_account@odata.bind" : "/accounts(" + accountIdTo1 + ")"
        });
        activityParties.push({
            participationtypemask : participationTypeMasks.To,
            "partyid_account@odata.bind" : "/accounts(" + accountIdTo2 + ")"
        });

        //examples of using contacts        
        // activityParties.push({
        //     participationtypemask : participationTypeMasks.To,
        //      "partyid_contact@odata.bind" : "/contacts(00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000)"
        //  });

        //examples of using the current user as the from address
        //  var currentUserId = Xrm.Page.context.getUserId().replace("}", "").replace("{", "");
        //  activityParties.push({
        //     participationtypemask : participationTypeMasks.From,
        //      "partyid_systemuser@odata.bind" : "/systemusers("+currentUserId+")"
        //  });

        var email = {
            subject: emailTemplate.subject,
            description: emailTemplate.description,
            email_activity_parties: activityParties,
            "regardingobjectid_incident@odata.bind" : "/incidents(" + incidentId + ")"
        };

The return is just the entityId of the record that got created.

I have complete sample of the code available at: https://github.com/rajrao/CRM-Tools/tree/master/JavaScript/CreateEmail