Task Transition through Email Notification

Hi All,
I am using URL task to send email notification to the successor User Task for review purpose.
My requirement is to show Approve link/button on the review notification email and on click of the button next task which is transitioned by the Approve link in WFM should get invoked without taking the flow through Teamsite UI (where user needs to select approve/review option).

I remember I have achieved this through Mail Template design by using ccmail_header.tpl. But currently I am using ReviewNotification.xsl to frame Emails body. I have tried editing it and given link (href="http://[TS-Server]/iw-cc/transitiontask?taskid={//Task[Name=$reviewTaskName]/@Id}") on the label of User task's transition label (Approve). But it takes the flow to the Teamsite UI where user need to select either Approve/Reject radio button.

Please tell me how can we invoke the next task through email directly.

Thanks,
Retesh
TS 6.7.1 SP1 |WFM 1.0.0.1|LS 3.0.2

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Comments

neil_a

Hi retash,

It sounds like you are on the right track.

I haven't used/seen ReviewNotification.xsl, but how I would approach the problem, would be to look at the URL of the link that gets sent through in the email, then compare it to the URL that is used in the TeamSite UI to transition the task.

The answer should be in their differences between the URLs. Then just update how the URL is formed in the xsl.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

retesh

Hi retash,

It sounds like you are on the right track.

I haven't used/seen ReviewNotification.xsl, but how I would approach the problem, would be to look at the URL of the link that gets sent through in the email, then compare it to the URL that is used in the TeamSite UI to transition the task.

The answer should be in their differences between the URLs. Then just update how the URL is formed in the xsl.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

Hi neil_a,
I have already played with several Teamsite URLs but none worked Smiley Sad

Thanks,
Retesh

Adam Stoller

Hi neil_a,
I have already played with several Teamsite URLs but none worked

Thanks,
Retesh

I don't believe any URL will work the way you want - because your email is not authenticated to TeamSite.

I believe a long time ago (not sure if the thread is still find-able here) Smitty went through this issue (when he was with Nike) and came up with a solution that involved a special mailbox to which such transition requests would be sent when you clicked on the button in the email. The mailbox was processed by a script (running, presumably on the TS server), that was owned by a TS master, and upon receiving the email, parsed it to find the job/task id's and transition selection, and then used CLTs (or CSSDK) to perform the actual transition.

I'm not sure - but I think that might be the only way (or general process) to actually achieve what you are looking for (avoidance of having to login to TS GUI when responding to emails sent from TS workflow)

Migrateduser

I don't believe any URL will work the way you want - because your email is not authenticated to TeamSite.

I believe a long time ago (not sure if the thread is still find-able here) Smitty went through this issue (when he was with Nike) and came up with a solution that involved a special mailbox to which such transition requests would be sent when you clicked on the button in the email. The mailbox was processed by a script (running, presumably on the TS server), that was owned by a TS master, and upon receiving the email, parsed it to find the job/task id's and transition selection, and then used CLTs (or CSSDK) to perform the actual transition.

I'm not sure - but I think that might be the only way (or general process) to actually achieve what you are looking for (avoidance of having to login to TS GUI when responding to emails sent from TS workflow)

Wow - good memory. I looked up in my old code what I did to accomplish this, but I only retained the snippet of code I inserted into the ****_iwmailbody.tpl file. I was using the iw_solution_email.ipl method of sending emails. I unfortunately do not have the configuation of the special teamsite.approval email box, nor do I have the script that was called to actually perform the task transition, but that's the easy part. I recall our Unix admin set up the special email box - there's a way you can configure the email address so that it executes a script upon receipt of an email and the subject gets passed in to the script automatically. The body is irrelevant. I'm sure this is a standard email configuration and can be Googled as to how to set it up.

Here's the snippet of code in the ****_iwmailbody.tpl that creates the button in the email to kick off the process, for what it's worth:

[HTML]
my @obj = `/interwoven/teamsite/bin/iwgetwfobj $id`;
foreach (@obj) {
next unless (/<successorset/);
/<successorset\s*description="([^"]*)"/;
push @succ,$1;
print DEBUG "found: $1\n";
$vote .= "<INPUT TYPE=\"button\" VALUE=\"$1\" onClick=\"parent.location='mailto:teamsite.approval\@nike.com?subject=$1:$taskid:$wfid:$owner&body=This task has been approved.'\">\n ";
}

[/HTML]

Migrateduser

After a quick Google search, it looks like you'd need to modify your /etc/aliases file and add a line like this:

teamsite.approval: "|/path/to/myscript.pl"

which will cause any email sent to teamsite.approval@yourdomain.com to execute that script. You'll have to play around as to how to capture the parameters in the subject of the email.

retesh

Wow - good memory. I looked up in my old code what I did to accomplish this, but I only retained the snippet of code I inserted into the ****_iwmailbody.tpl file. I was using the iw_solution_email.ipl method of sending emails. I unfortunately do not have the configuation of the special teamsite.approval email box, nor do I have the script that was called to actually perform the task transition, but that's the easy part. I recall our Unix admin set up the special email box - there's a way you can configure the email address so that it executes a script upon receipt of an email and the subject gets passed in to the script automatically. The body is irrelevant. I'm sure this is a standard email configuration and can be Googled as to how to set it up.

Here's the snippet of code in the ****_iwmailbody.tpl that creates the button in the email to kick off the process, for what it's worth:

[HTML]
my @obj = `/interwoven/teamsite/bin/iwgetwfobj $id`;
foreach (@obj) {
next unless (/<successorset/);
/<successorset\s*description="([^"]*)"/;
push @succ,$1;
print DEBUG "found: $1\n";
$vote .= "<INPUT TYPE=\"button\" VALUE=\"$1\" onClick=\"parent.location='mailto:teamsite.approval\@nike.com?subject=$1:$taskid:$wfid:$owner&body=This task has been approved.'\">\n ";
}

[/HTML]

Thanks Smitty for taking such keen interest. I am wondering if similar objective could be achieved thru URL task using ReviewNotification.xsl

Adam Stoller

Thanks Smitty for taking such keen interest. I am wondering if similar objective could be achieved thru URL task using ReviewNotification.xsl

It's not the template that sends the email, it's the template that formats the link in the email so that it sends another email when the button / link is clicked on - so yes, I think this could be achieved using and XSL-PT as easily as was done using a Perl-PT.

The tricky part is getting the [second] email automatically processed, on the TS server (either directly or with a client-server process listening on the TS server) via a TS master (or impersonating the actual wf user?) user account to perform the action on behalf of the original email recipient.

retesh

Hi Guys,
I have resolved this issue. I invested lot of time to implement this in my XSL thru javascript. But I found that javascript doesn't work in Outlook for me.

So I am making use of the url below in href on Approve button in email and its working fine:

http://TS-server/iw-cc/command/iw.ccpro.transition_task?taskid=608745&transition=Approve+Changes&do_transition=true&done_page=/ccpro/workflow/refresh_and_close.html

Thanks,
Retesh