---
title: Display Number of Emails Received
description: Create a workflow to automatically count and display the number of emails received from each contact.
---
import { VimeoEmbed } from '/snippets/vimeo-embed.mdx';

<img src="/images/user-guide/workflows/workflow-number-of-emails-received.png" style={{width:'100%'}}/>

## Overview

This workflow triggers every time a new email is received and updates a custom field on the Person record with the total count of emails from that sender.

## Prerequisites

Before setting up this workflow, create a custom field on the **People** object:
1. Go to **Settings → Data Model → People**
2. Add a new **Number** field
3. Name it something like "Number of emails received from this person"

## Step-by-Step Setup

<VimeoEmbed videoId="1148700336" title="Video demonstration" />

### Step 1: Configure the Trigger

1. Go to **Workflows** and create a new workflow
2. Select **Record is Created** as the trigger
3. Choose **Message Participants** (available under Advanced objects)

<Note>
A Message Participant is a combination of a message ID and a person ID, creating one unique record per message. This is easier to track than Messages directly because we can access the `handle` field, which contains the sender's (or recipient's) email address.
</Note>

### Step 2: Filter on Role

1. Add a **Filter** action
2. Set the condition: **Role** equals **FROM**

This ensures you only count messages sent by this person, not messages sent to them.

### Step 3: Search All Message Participants with Same Handle

1. Add a **Search Records** action
2. Select **Message Participants** as the object
3. Add filters: **Handle** equals the handle from the trigger (the sender's email address) and **Role** equals **FROM**
4. Increase the **Limit** from 1 to **200** (the maximum)

This finds all messages from this email address to get the total count.

<Note>
The Search Records action is limited to returning 200 records maximum. However, since you're only using the `totalCount` value (not the individual records), this step will return the total number of emails sent by this person.
</Note>

### Step 4: Update the Person Record with a Create or Update Record action

1. Add a **Create or Update Record** action
2. Select **People** as the object
3. Find the person by matching their email to the `handle` from the Message Participant
4. Set your custom "Number of emails received" field to `{{searchRecords.totalCount}}`

The `totalCount` value from the Search Records action represents the total number of emails received from this person.




## Related

- [Workflow Actions](/user-guide/workflows/capabilities/workflow-actions)
- [Create Custom Fields](/user-guide/data-model/how-tos/customize-your-data-model)
- [Search Records Action](/user-guide/workflows/capabilities/workflow-actions#search-records)