get email addresses from a multiselect

Question

Hi. I need to send emails to groups of people (not necessarily Sugar users) based on a multiselect. E.g. 
 Group 1 = A, B Group 2 = C, D, E Group 3 = F, G 
 Multiselect = "Group 2, Group 3" and get email addresses of C, D, E, F, G 
 
 I tried to set up a Business Rule to return the email addresses but putting the multiselect as the condition gives "unsupported data type". 
 The alternative seems to be a Process Definition but I imagine that will become quite elaborate as there's a lot of groups/emails but, would that be the suggested way to go? Is there a more efficient way? 
 Is there a way to lookup the email addresses (maybe from a separate 'groups and emails' type of module) and populate based on the selections? 
 
 Thanks in advance. 
 James

James Kinnersley · Answer

As far I know by extending SugarBPM you should be able to make it understand how to fetch emails from multienum field accordingly. 
 This is not an easy task and it will need appropriate SugarCRM development skills.

James Kinnersley · Answer

Perhaps, the question is not about the development of anything , but rather about the options of using OOTB Sugar. If the question is whether SugarBPM could help with your mailing, then I would suggest looking at the non-functional requirements of a max number of emails to be sent per minute and define whether your case is about mass mailing or not. 
 For mass mailings, there are email automation tools. 
 If amounts are reasonable, it can make sense to try using SugarBPM for that - if Contact's multiselect field express Groups the Contact belongs to. 
 Now, the question is whether you are going to send trigger-based emails or perform bulk email merges? 
 E.g. for trigger-based emails, you may set up a kind of Process to be assigned to Contact immediately on Contact goes to Group - it might be possible for the latest versions to set up the criterion for Process Definition run on Contact gets one of the specified Groups in its multiselect field. 
 For sending a bulk campaign with SugarBPM (again, if the size of the target list, which is the number of Contacts, is reasonable) each bulk campaign might have a name 
 1. Add to Contacts drop-down field GoMailing via Studio and add the name of the bulk campaign into the drop-down 
 2. Design Process Definition for Contact module for the campaignname1 - specify: 
 - use Message - to set the email to send 
 - use the Change field to clear out GoMailing drop-down field 
 3. Set Process Definition run on updates and set criterion for it to e.g. GoMailing = campaignname1 
 To assign the process to contacts: 
 1.use Contact filter in list view to select contacts that belong to e.g. Group1 or Group1, Group2 (if I remember correctly, "or" is used in filtering - result will include Contacts that belong to any of Groups specified in filtering criterion ) 
 2. Perform Mass update to set GoMailing = campaignname1 for contacts to initiate Process Definition to very contact updated and, hence, send emails with SugarBPM 
 There is also an option is to use the old Campaigns module and Target Lists module for bulk email campaigns