E-mail Responses

The E-mail Responses page enables you to configure response options for a notification. Response options can appear as links or buttons in a notification message, which enable the recipient to transition an item without requiring him or her to log in.

For example, you can create a notification that contains "Approve" or "Reject" links that a manager can use to quickly approve or reject a vacation request while it is in the Pending Approval state. The manager does not need to provide any login credentials to invoke these transitions. The manager simply approves or rejects the request directly from the notification message by clicking one of the response options. This launches a new browser window, and a confirmation message appears if the transition succeeds. If the item is no longer in an applicable state, a failure message appears.

Note the following important information:

The E-mail Responses tab only appears in the Notifications view if the notification's action is set to Send E-mail User Channel.
When the notification rule becomes true, the message is sent to the subscribed user. The recipient must have a valid e-mail address and privilege to transition the item.
The response options invoke one or more available quick transitions in the item's workflow that are valid for the item's current state. The transitions that you use for responses must be quick transitions.
The recipient is not required to log in to transition the item; instead, the responses each contain a unique expiring token that is embedded in the URL, which grants the recipient the ability to execute the quick transition. Because the user does not have to log in, no license is used. This token cannot be reused in any way, and only grants the recipient the ability to perform the associated quick transition. If the recipient attempts to respond after the designated expiration time has passed, he or she must enter login credentials to access the item and perform the transition.
On-premise customers can configure the expiration time for the token in the Mail Servers tab in SBM Configurator. For details, refer to the SBM Installation and Configuration Guide. On-demand customers can configure this setting in the Notification System Settings tab in the Notifications view in Application Administrator.

To add a new response:

Select the E-mail Responses tab.
Click Add new response.
Enter a Name for the response. This name acts as an alias for the transition that will be executed. Take note of the name you provide; you will need to use it with the $EMAILRESPONSE() tag that you add to the Notification e-mail template.
Select the Initial State. This is the item's state from which the quick transitions are available.
Select a Transition to Execute for this response. This is the quick transition that maps to the response that you create. Only quick transitions that are applicable to the Initial State appear in the drop-down list.
Tip: Click Show Workflow to view an image of the workflow. This is helpful if you want to view the state and its available transitions.
Click Save to save your changes.
Click Add new response to add another response option, if necessary.
After you define the responses, you must add the $EMAILRESPONSE() tag and the response options that you create to a new or existing Notification e-mail template, and select that template in the notification. For details, refer to Notification Tags.

Tip: You can customize the success or failure message template that appears in the browser. On the Application Engine server, navigate to installationDirectory\Serena\SBM\Application Engine\templates, edit the emailapproval template as necessary, and save your changes. Open SBM System Administrator and perform a Put Files in Database operation to save the modified template in the database. For more information on customizing templates, see the SBM System Administrator Guide.