Requesting approval by email and push notification

Provide greater flexibility and convenience for users of your application when they process a case, by enabling approval by email and push notification. Users can then accept, reject, or take other actions on a case without having to log in to the application.

Before you begin: Ensure that your case life cycle includes an approval step and that you have at least one email account in your application that can send and receive emails, by performing one or more of the following tasks, as necessary:

Add an approval step to your case life cycle. For more information, see Requesting approval from a user.
To send approval requests by email, create an email integration by enabling case creation by email. For more information, see Enabling creation by email of top-level cases. You can also manually create an email listener and Service Email rule. For more information, see Creating an email integration and Creating a Service Email rule.
To send approval requests by push notification, install your mobile app on a device, and then enable push notifications in the app. For more information, see Developing mobile apps, Engaging mobile users with push notifications, Generating native mobile apps and Configuring a mobile notification channel.

You can send personalized emails by including properties in messages. Your application then autopopulates the properties at run time with data corresponding to the relevant case. For example, you can include a property that corresponds with a case ID or a recipient name. After you create email content, you can save the message in a template library, so that you can reuse the message in the future. You can also include attachments to provide more information and context before a user accepts or rejects a case. To reach wider audiences and provide even more flexibility, you can also send approval requests to users of mobile apps by enabling push notifications in your app. The subject that you define for the email is also a push notification text.

In the navigation pane of App Studio, click Case types, and then click the case type that you want to open.
On the Workflow tab, click Life cycle.
Click the Approve/Reject step for which you want to add email or push notification approval requests.
In the Step properties pane, in the Enable approval from section, select how you want to send the approval message:
- To request approval by email, select the Email check box.
- To request approval by push notification, select the Mobile check box.
You can select both email and push notification forms.
In the Email subject / Push notification message field, enter text that you want to use as an email subject or a push notification message.
You can reference property names in the subject to make it more dynamic and meaningful.

For example: Enter Case .pyCaseID is waiting for your approval.

Result: At run time, the application autopopulates the properties with relevant data. For example, at run time the email subject is Case LoanRequest-123 is waiting for your approval.

If you request approval by email, define your message content:

Choices	Actions
Compose a message	In the Email content list, select Custom, and then click Compose email content. In the Compose message window, create your message by using the rich text editor. Optional: To add the email message to a template library to reuse in the future, click Actions > Add to approval template library. In the Template name field provide the template name, and then click Save. Click Done.
Reuse a template	In the Email content list, select Use existing. In the list of email templates, select a template that you want to use. You can select templates from your template library as well as from the default templates. Optional: To modify the message to meet your unique business needs, click Compose email content, modify the message by using a rich text editor, and then click Done.

Optional: To add attachments to the email, select the Include attachments check box, and then select the files that you want to upload:

Actions	Choices
Include all case attachments	Select All case attachments.
Include only specific case attachments	Select Choose attachments. Click Add attachment. In the drop-down list, select whether you want to include an attachment of a particular category, or add the content of a field in your case. In the field below, select an attachment category or a field that you want to include as an attachment. For example: If you select a category of scanned documents, your application attaches all scanned documents to the email. For example: If you select a field that stores the amount of the loan requested, your application creates an attachment that contains the amount. To add more attachments, repeat steps 7.b through 7.d.

Actions

Choices

Include all case attachments

Select All case attachments.

Include only specific case attachments

Select Choose attachments.
Click Add attachment.
In the drop-down list, select whether you want to include an attachment of a particular category, or add the content of a field in your case.
In the field below, select an attachment category or a field that you want to include as an attachment.
For example: If you select a category of scanned documents, your application attaches all scanned documents to the email.

For example: If you select a field that stores the amount of the loan requested, your application creates an attachment that contains the amount.
To add more attachments, repeat steps 7.b through 7.d.

Click Save.

Result: When the case life cycle reaches the approval step, your application sends an email or a push notification, based on the approval step configuration. A user who receives the approval request can take action on the case without logging to the application.