AutoEmail to Authoriser once selected via 'Wait for List of Request Authorisers'

[SJEaton]

Hi

Our authorisers don't have collaboration role therefore I'm looking at alternatives for getting authorisations in my requests.  I have set up a 'Wait for List of Request Authorisers' node but then want the system to send an AutoEmail to the Authoriser once selected.  How do I configure this automated task?  I was thinking of selecting external email address as the task and then somehow entering the flowcode for the authorisers email address but can't find a relevant flowcode?  Is this possible?

Thanks

Sam

[Steven Boardman]

Hi @SJEaton

Thanks for the post. 

Just to confirm, a user who does not have the collaboration Role will not be able to be assigned approval or other tasks.  This is true of the Authorisation and the Suspend Wait for List of Request Authorisers. 

If your users have this role / subscription then you could use either of the above authorisation nodes (Authorisation or Suspend Wait for List of Request Authorisers) along with the system setting to enable an Auto-Email to be sent to them which they could respond to via voting buttons to make their authorisation decision, but without this role / subscription this will not be possible, and the business process engine approval node can't be automatically proceeded.

One option is to have a human task in your process, which asks the request owner to send a Manual email to whoever is required to approve the request.  This email would simply be sent using the Email action item on the request form.  When the recipient receives the email and replies, the request owner can manually complete the human task to say if the request has been approved or rejected based on the email received back.

This manual approach would give you:

* A mechanism for requesting approval 

* An audit trail for the request and decision (based on the email communication being written to the request timeline).

Of Course this would rely on the owner of the request knowing who they need to ask for approval of the requestors request. 

With Hornbill, the collaboration role / subscription is designed to facilitate authorisations (and much more), hence why the automation is available around users with this role, alternatively you really are looking at manual options to manage authorisations and their progression.

Other customers have adopted different approaches if they can't take advantage of the automation via the collaboration route and this includes, the above example of the request owner sending and receiving approval via email , or the example below:

One example i recall was asking the customer (requestor) to enter the email address of the person who needs to approve their request via the portal in the progressive capture questions.   This email address (custom progressive capture question) is written to a request custom field, and you can then use the Email External Email Address node, and but the variable of the request custom field in the external email address field.

* With this approach you can send a configurable email template to that email address

* You would still need a human task, after this node in your business process, which the owner of the request would need to complete once they had manually received an email response from the specified approver 

* It does require the requestor to know who needs to approve their request (which may not work for a number of reasons)

Perhaps other customers can also post with what they have done or suggestions they may have. 

Ideally those who need to approve would be collaborator users and the full platform features can be used.

Thanks

Steve

 

 

 

[SJEaton]

Thanks Steve

Thanks for confirming that in order to use Suspend Wait for List of Request Authorisers the authoriser still needs to have collaboration role.  What I was hoping was that this wasn't the case and that I could just follow this with the generation of an auto-email template (without the Approve/Reject buttons) but it looks like this isn't possible.   

I will revert back to what I have already which is one of your examples above ie. asking for an email address in the ProCap and then generating an auto-email to an external email and using this email address, and then having a human task where the request owner confirms when approval is received.

Thanks

Sam