Sending Emails from workflows

Hello, I am recently new to workflows and I am having trouble trying to get an email sent from the workflow. I currently have some job posting workflows in production and working properly. The group that does the deployments would like to have an email sent to them simply stating that there is content to deploy. The following is the last part of my workflow:


<submittask name="Submit"
owner="__TAG__('iw_areaowner');"
unlock="t"
description='DCR Content Approval'>

<areavpath v="__INSERT__($areavpath);"/>
<successorset>
<succ v="Email_Graphics"/>
</successorset>
</submittask>


<externaltask name="Email_Graphics"
owner="__TAG__('iw_user');"
description="Please deploy Internet">

<areavpath v="__INSERT__($areavpath);"/>
<successors>
<successorset>
<succ v="end"/>
</successorset>
</successors>
__INSERT__(get_mail_cmd("$iwhome", "xxxxxxx"));
</externaltask>



<endtask name="end">
</endtask>

</workflow>

In my deployment notification section, I have substituted the xxxxx with the email address of the user who deploys the content. Would anyone have any suggestions on how to just send an email? I don't need it do anything special, just send an email. I am using TS 552 on Solaris 2.8. Thanks

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Comments

Adam Stoller

You indicated what you want to happen - and how you are trying to impelement it - you haven't indicated what *is* happening (or not happening as the case may be) - I don't tend to use the get_mail_cmd() call too much these days - I usually just specify in my wft that I'm going to call iwsend_mail.ipl (with appropriate path and perl engine prefix if on Windows) and proceed from there. If/when I get more time to play around with the solutions mail program there's a good chance I may start using that in its place.

One of the things you need to make sure of though, is that the iw.cfg file correctly specifies the maildomain (@a.b.c) and mailserver (your SMTP server name) - without those settings, it is unlikely that your attempt to send email with any of the scripts provided will work.

--fish
(Interwoven Senior Technical Consultant)

ttriemst

I recently checked the iwtrace.log and found this entry:

iwconfig: variable not found var: debug_output section: iwsend_mail

There is no email being sent at all. The email in general is working for my workflows. I do have some other workflows that are sending emails, but it has a variable name that it is using (to determine who to send the email to). I just want to send an email to a specific user when the workflow is finishing.

Adam Stoller

iwconfig: variable not found var: debug_output section: iwsend_mail

That message can be ignored - all it means is that you do not have an optional setting in your iw.cfg enabled for saving debugging information from iwsend_mail.ipl. Not a big deal.

If other mail is able to be sent - then I will have to assume that the maildomain and mailserver settings in iw.cfg are present and correct. - which leaves us with addressing issues - and perhaps takes us back around to the above warning message. You might want to actually enable the debug_output option under the [iwsend_mail] section of your iw.cfg file so that you can look at the information that the script is trying to tell you.

Alternatively, if the externaltask is followed by a non-automatic task (somewhere) before the workflow ends - you can look at the comments associated with the exteranltask's transition to see if there were any issues sending the email (I believe the debugging information gets encoded, at least in part, into the task transition comment).

Perhaps it's just a matter of what you are supplying as the second argument to get_mail_cmd() - the "xxxxxx" part - can you be more specific about what that is - or at least a bit more descriptive about what it looks like and what it represents?

--fish
(Interwoven Senior Technical Consultant)

Migrateduser

You know it seems like what should be a relatively simple thing to do - notify someone via an email - causes so much pain when done in a workflow. You would think that Interwoven would have created a better means to do this. Sure they have provided canned scripts and all that you need to do it, but being able to do it seamlessly and without pain is still a ways away. Even the latest attempt to make it easier, Template Based Email, is not easy to do. I use it almost exclusively and I like how the emails look, but I still had to do a lot of customization to get it to do everything I needed for all my notifications. For instance, if you want to send multiple emails to people that say different things, you have to call the Template Email script multiple times. Therefore you have to wrap perl around it and be a little creative beyond that as well. It just seems like there should be an easy way to create a notification built into the workflow tools. Maybe a perl module. Maybe something else. I don't really know - it just shouldn't be this hard for people to perform this task.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Migrateduser

Most of Interwoven's current revenue comes from services, not licenses. If they made things like this thing easy (which they seem to be when I do them myself) they would have less revenue from consulting.

Anyway I think a custom solution is always better. Most corporations have standards for sending email (such as EAI services) which don't involve SMTP, Perl scripts, etc.

I agree with you though that there are so many things that all of us are trying to do with the product that seem so much more difficult than they should be. I feel that the product does almost nothing "out of the box", that it is a (somewhat rickety) platform (not a product) and I have to write applications on top of it. Every developer that works with TeamSite for long seems to come away thinking they could build a better CMS (of course it would be more specific to their requirements and technology). The logic seems to follow something like, "if I have to build all these applications anyway, why not just build a custom CMS".

ttriemst

I will try to turn on the debug to see if it provides any more information (can not play with it until most people go home today). As for the second argument, I am testing it out by putting my work email address in there...so xxxxxx is ttriemst@gfs.com. I have also tried defining a variable at the begining of the file and then calling that variable, but it still does the same thing. You are correct in assuming that the maildomain and mailserver settings in iw.cfg are present and correct. If I get a chance, I will try turning the debug feature on when no one is looking (and hopefully not get caught). Thanks

Adam Stoller

If you have the ability to do so - transition your workflow upto, but not including the externaltask which is going to send email. Then change the iw.cfg to enable debugging, then transition your task, and when it transitions out the other side of the externaltask, change the iw.cfg to disable debugging (no iwreset's or server restarts required)

--fish
(Interwoven Senior Technical Consultant)