Workflow and ServiceDesk Community

Working on an workflow approval process where we don't want to depend on the approver to have access to the forms in the Process Manager portal. We would like to build an email with all the necessary info and two buttons: Approve and Deny. Not linking to a form in the Process Manager, but somehow sending an email to an specific mailbox that could be monitored and figure it out which process were approved or denied.

Any hints on if and how this could be accomplished?

We would like to give the option for the approvers to do this from wherever they happend to be, maybe using devices other then computers. Maybe from a cell phone with email be able to approve/deny sent the email and this would be it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Paulo Tebet

The closest thing I can think of that approximates this is an Approval Workflow component with a Default Task Source (handle all notifications via email). The ApprovalForm, however, is still hosted in ProcessManager if I remember correctly.

Approval WF components are stripped down Dialog WF components, and they basically only handle accept/deny responses.

You could try using a Quick Link Dialog Workflow component and you can put the approve/reject links right in the emails so that they can process the task without having to go into the form. It works similar to a Dialog Workflow component.

Has the Gain Approval Component been designed for such operations?

As alternative could be used components based on cyclic conditions checking like Wait On External Event or Check State Workflow.

The process we used was to send the email with incident ID (IID) and letting the SD.EmailMonitor workflow add it the history of the ticket. So the approver's response is added, whether approve or deny.

Of course we would like to improve this process one day to where we auto close the ticket upon deny. And route it to the next group upon approval.

is to have 2 Mailto components in the email, each with a different UID in the body of the message, one for approve and one for deny.

We are doing this now with some of our approval processes, we send the manager an email with the link to the form, and also 2 Mailto buttons - one Approve and one Deny. Each has a uniqie value embedded in the Body of the mail to. We provide a space for the manager to enter any comments, and tell them not to touch anything after the UID info.

For validation, we verify the email came from the right manager email address, then we check the UID and see if it is approve or deny.

"<a href="mailto:yourmonitoredmailbox@YourSite.com?cc=Onlyifyouwantto@YourSite.com&subject=Approval Message&body=Enter Comments here:%0A%0A Do not modify below this line:%0A%0AApproved:d982caa7-1142-488a-95ca-89a432b919b2">Approved</a>"

"<a href="mailto:yourmonitoredmailbox@YourSite.com?cc=Onlyifyouwantto@YourSite.com&subject=Denial Message&body=Enter Comments here:%0A%0A Do not modify below this line:%0A%0ADenied:e53962e1-69ae-4cf1-94a0-b595dc280c2b">Denied</a>"

 Of course you have to store the UID somewhere (I use a simple database table for this), along with the manager email you are expecting the answer from.

This all pre-supposes you are not talking about Service Desk, just a stand alone workflow.

Rob

Thanks everyone for the ideas. I will study them and give them a try.