Practical Uses - Send Email Component
This component sends an email. You can set the from address, to address, subject line, and content of the email.
Examples
- Vacation approval
An employee submits a vacation request to a manager for approval. Later, the Send Email component sends an email to notify the employee of the manager's decision.
- Server monitoring notification
When a server's memory gets too low, the Send Email component sends an email to the server administrator.
- Presenting a Dialog Workflow dialog to a user
The Send Email component sends an email that includes a link to the dialog contained in a Dialog Workflow component.
Vacation Approval
Scenario: An employee submits a vacation request. The request is presented to a manager in a Web dialog. After clicking "approve" or "reject" in the webform, the process sends an email to the employee with the results of the manager's decision.
Process: This process is created as a Workflow project type. Here's what it looks like:
If the manager rejects the request, the "rejected" path sends a rejection email, and then ends the process. If the manager approves the request, the "approved" path sends an approval email, and then the process ends.
The Send Email component knows where to send the email based on how it is configured.
Here's what the editor looks like:
For more information on configuring the Send Email component, see the Workflow Solution User's Guide.
Other components in this example
- Dialog Workflow
Server Monitoring Notification
Scenario: A monitoring process monitors the amount of free disk space on a server. If the amount of disk space is between 15 and 200 gigabytes, no action is taken. If the amount of disk space is between five and 15 gigabytes, an email is sent to the server administrator with a low disk space warning. If the disk space is between zero and five gigabytes, an email is sent to the server administrator with an urgent low disk space warning.
Process: This process is created as a Monitoring-type project. Here's what it looks like:
The GetComputerInfo component retrieves data from the server and delivers it to a Number Range Rule component. The Number Range Rule component looks specifically at the hard drive space variable, and evaluates its value.
Based on the amount of space found, the process either sends an email or takes no action. Notice that different emails are sent based on the urgency of the situation.
Other components in this example
- GetComputerInfo
- Number Range Rule
Presenting a Dialog Workflow Dialog to a User with an Email
Dialog Workflow components stop a process to present a Web dialog to a user to obtain necessary information.
With a Dialog Workflow component, before the user can input the necessary information in the Web dialog, the user must first access the dialog. Dialog Workflow components contain a start process for the purpose of presenting the user with the Web dialog. One common way of doing this is sending the user an email with a link to the Web dialog. The Send Email component sends the email.
To present a dialog to a user with the Send Email component
- In your process, double click the Dialog Workflow component to open its editor.
- Click the Event Configuration tab.
- Click the Start Process [...] button.
This opens the Start Process editor, which by default contains only a start and end component.
- Add a Send Email component and connect all three components.
- Configure the Send Email component.
- Set the From Address, To Address, and Subject.
- Click on the HTML content [...] button.
- From the left panel, drag ResponsePageLink onto the email workspace.
This adds a link in the email to the dialog contained in the Dialog Workflow component.
- Click OK to exit the content editor.
- Click OK to exit the email editor.
- Click OK to exit the start process editor.




Stuper, another great
Stuper, another great article. It's nice to see this type of information available to beginner users. Let's not forget that the email component can also be used to keep the user informed during an approval process or any other project where numerous steps must be achieved before the end result. Say for example, a user submits a request for a particular item. When the request is approved, the user can be sent an email along with the other tasks that are performed. The body of the email can contain variables from your project and can be formatted with any number of html tags to make the data pleasing to the eye. In this day and age, the email component is probably one of the most valuable.
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