How to highlight tasks with unread customer updates

[f_iwanowski]

Dear members,

every now and then a customer sends us an update via email, with i.e. additional or missing information.

This happens especially when working on requests, that were postponed - the users send missing information and the request is ready to be assigned, worked on and closed - but the fulfillment users don't see the customer updates directly.

1. solution: Walk through every request and task and look for customer updates

(since inbound mails won't update the task status / "updated") - bad solution, costs a lot of time

2. solution: Sending notifications on customer updates via mail - not preferred solution, since I don't want to use mails and inform i.e. all fulfillers in an assignment group, if a customer made an update via mail

For now, I am not happy with my ideas. Especially I don't want to use notifications.

Is there a flag or column on the updated records, that can be used for my purpose?

Am I missing some kind of platform funcionality?

Any help or hint is highly appreciated.

[Tony Chatfield1]

Hi, I have worked on a number of solutions where a custom 'last updated by' field has been added to task table, either as a boolean true/false or as a choice list with a before insert\update BR setting the value of this field based on the type of user making the task update. 
Depending on how granular you need to be, the solution may populate a true/false value into the field based on role, or may use other data to set a choice list, IE external user, Service Desk, Someone Else.

You can then simply filter/report/show on dashboard the records that were last updated by a 'customer'.

[f_iwanowski]

Hi Tony! The concept you proposed seems like a solid working solution for me.

Thanks for the solution!