Hi Courtney,
Thanks for the reply. I get what you're saying, but disappointed that there isn't some way to leverage this information without using an email send. This precludes us from using workflow to automatically send email updates based on claim changes, unless we have a complementary workflow that takes those changes and updates the contact record placeholder fields.
In an ideal world, that would be a solid workaround. But for this client (and another who needs data from case records merged into emails), we can't depend on a single set of fields to be accurate. In the case of the client with the claims management, it is typical for the claimant to submit multiple claim records at the same time. The claims admin may decide to approve all of them at the same time. As they are on CRM 2011, we're stuck with async workflows and the potential for email catastrophe.
I'll check with my development team to get their feedback on a plugin option. If you know of anyone currently employing custom code for this type of automated email sending, please feel free to forward my info to them.
Thanks again,
Rick