Activities

Approval

This activity will send Approval Notification Email to all the users set in the associated Approval Role.

Functionality

If this activity is included in a workflow, when it is executed, it will send an email to all the users set in the associated approval role. After the workflow is started, when the execution reaches this activity, the status of the execution changes from 'started' to 'persisted' in Flowster Administrator. For the user that started the workflow, it will be displayed as Running in Portal→Inbox page and for the approval users, it will be displayed as Pending For Approval in Portal→ Inbox page.

It will wait for an answer (approve or deny) for a given amount of time (days) and depending on the received answer and on the Deny Action, it will continue the execution of the workflow or it will stop it.

Activity Parameters 

The Approval activity parameters can be provided by manual inserted values or via IN arguments or variables:

Notify By Email:

• Approved Message (text box editor type) (type: string): specify the email notification text in HTML format in case of approval. The email will be sent after the request has been approved in addition to the default email sent in case of approval.
• Denied Message (text box editor type) (type: string): specify the email notification text in HTML format in case of denial. The email will be sent after the request has been approved in addition to the default email sent in case of denial.
• Expired Message (text box editor type) (type: string): specify the email notification text in HTML format in case of expired. The email will be sent after the request has been approved in addition to the default email sent in case of expired.
• Notify User (text box editor type) (type: string): Specify the approval users by domain and samaccount separated by semicolon ';'. E.g. 'DemoDomain\Demouser'. For users from Azure please use the following format: 'azure\demoUserEmail@azure.com', and for Google Auth users: 'google\demoUserEmail@google.com'. If empty the parameters under the "Notify by email" group will be ignored.
  

Parameters:

• Approval Role (combo box editor type) (type: string): the approval role meant to approve or deny the workflow. In the list should be displayed all the approval roles defined in Flowster Administrator (e.g. defaultRole).
• Days (text box editor type) (type: Integer): the number of days to wait for the approval. By default it will be set to 1, which means that if 1 day passes and no answer was given, the workflow will be marked as expired and its execution will be stopped.
• Deactivate Default Mails (combo box editor type) (type: string): Specify whether to deactivate the default approval mails. If set to 'True' no approval mails will be sent, excluding the mails set in 'Notify by email' category. The submitter will receive the emails as well.
• Deny Action (combo box editor type) (type: string): specify whether to stop or continue the workflow's execution in case of a Deny action.
• Exclude Requester User (combo box editor type) (type: string): specify whether to exclude the requester user from the approval process.
• Notification Text (text box editor type) (type: string): specifies a customized notification text.

The Read Only Output variable are the possible output values that the activity will provide:

• Output Approved (type: boolean): outputs True if the workflow was approved or False if the workflow was denied.
  
• Output Deny Comment (type: string): outputs the deny comment's value.

Approval With Values

This activity allows the configuration of the approval users and the parameters which will be displayed in the Approve window.

Functionality

If this activity is included in a workflow, when it is executed, it will send an email to all the users set in the Approval Users parameter. Users must be members of a Security Group in Flowster Studio. If approval users are members from a Users type group, the group should have permissions to access the Portal.

After the workflow is started, when the execution reaches this activity, the status of the execution is updated from Running to Waiting for approval. For the user that started the workflow, if he is excluded from the approval users list, the workflow will not have the Approve action in Inbox, only the possibility to Stop the workflow execution.

When approving the workflow, a list of selected parameters will be displayed with the initial values  for the user to input (or not) different values. If more than one activity is used in the same workflow with the same selected parameters, on the next approve action, the values of the parameters will be the previous ones, not the initial ones. 

The activity will wait for an answer (approve or deny) for a given amount of time (days) and depending on the received answer and on the Deny Action, it will continue the execution of the workflow or it will stop it.

Activity Parameters 

The Approval With Values activity parameters can be provided by manual inserted values or via IN arguments or variables:

Escalation Parameters:

• Approval Escalation (text box editor type) (type: string): Specify the approval users by domain and samaccount separated by semicolon ';' that will get notification by email only after the approval expired and no approval user voted, in order to vote. E.g. 'DemoDomain\Demouser'. For Azure users use the format: 'azure\demoUserEmail@azure.com', for Google Auth users: 'google\demoUserEmail@google.com' and for custom users: 'customuser' (the identifier from Security Groups in Administrator).
• Escalation Days (text box editor type) (type: Integer): the number of days to wait for the approval from the escalation users. The value must be greater than or equal to 1.
• Escalation Message (text box editor type) (type: string): specify the email notification text in HTML format in case of approval escalation.

Notify By Email:

• Approved Message (text box editor type) (type: string): specify the email notification text in HTML format in case of approval. The email will be sent after the request has been approved in addition to the default email sent in case of approval.
• Approved Subject (text box editor type) (type: string): specify the email subject for the email notification in case of approval. 
• Denied Message (text box editor type) (type: string): specify the email notification text in HTML format in case of denial. The email will be sent after the request has been approved in addition to the default email sent in case of denial.
• Denied Subject (text box editor type) (type: string): specify the email subject for the email notification in case of denial.
• Expired Message (text box editor type) (type: string): specify the email notification text in HTML format in case of expired. The email will be sent after the request has been approved in addition to the default email sent in case of expired.
• Expired Subject (text box editor type) (type: string): specify the email subject for the email notification in case of expired.
• Notify User (text box editor type) (type: string): Specify the users to be notified after the approval completion by domain and samaccount separated by semicolon ';'. E.g. 'DemoDomain\Demouser'. For Azure users use the format: 'azure\demoUserEmail@azure.com', for Google Auth users: 'google\demoUserEmail@google.com' and for custom users: 'customuser' (the identifier from Security Groups in Administrator). The submitter user will be added by default to the list of users to get notified. If empty the parameters under the "Notify by email" group will be ignored
  

Parameters:

• Approval Behavior (combo box editor type) (type: string): select the approval process type: at least one (if one of the given approval users will approve the workflow, the execution will continue), approve by all (all the given approval users should Approve the workflow for the execution to continue) or sequential approval (when a workflow is submitted for an approval, only the first user will see the workflow as pending in Inbox and will also receive an e-mail. The rest of the users should see nothing in Inbox. If the first user does not approve the workflow in the given amount of days (the delay value), then the approval step will pass to the second user. The first user will not be allowed to vote anymore. When one of the users approves the workflow, the workflow will step into the Running state and will be executed. If none of the users are voting, the workflow will step into the Expired state.).
• Approval Users (text box editor type) (type: string): Specify the approval users by domain and samaccount separated by semicolon ';' that will get notification by email only after the approval expired and no approval user voted, in order to vote. E.g. 'DemoDomain\Demouser'. For Azure users use the format: 'azure\demoUserEmail@azure.com', for Google Auth users: 'google\demoUserEmail@google.com' and for custom users: 'customuser' (the identifier from Security Groups in Administrator).
  
• Days (text box editor type) (type: Integer): the number of days to wait for the approval. If set to 1, it means that if 1 day passes and no answer was given, the workflow will be marked as expired.
• Deactivate Default Mails (combo box editor type) (type: string): specify whether to deactivate the default approval mails. If set to 'True' no approval mails will be sent, excluding the mails set in 'Notify by email' category. The submitter will receive the emails as well.
• Delay (text box editor type) (type: Integer): if Sequential approval behavior was selected in the Approval Behavior parameter, insert the number of days until the next user can vote.
• Deny Action (combo box editor type) (type: string): specify whether to stop or continue the workflow's execution in case of a Deny action.
• Exclude Requester User (combo box editor type) (type: string): specify whether to exclude the requester user from the approval process.
• Notification Mail (text box editor type) (type: string): specify a customized email notification text in HTML format.
• Notification Mail Subject (text box editor type) (type: string): specify the subject of the notification mail.
• Notification Text (text box editor type) (type: string): specify a customized notification text in HTML format.
• Parameter Group (text box editor type) (type: string): specify the Parameter Group containing the parameters that need new input values.
• Request User Authentication (combo box editor type) (type: string): Specify whether to request the user to be authenticated when approving from email. This feature adds safety to the approval process via email (e.g in case that other persons might have access to the emails).
• Selected Parameters (text box collection editor type) (type: string): select the parameters which will be displayed in the Approve window, by also selecting if the parameters will be visible or not (the Visibility option will override the Parameters Visibility set in the Edit Parameters window):
  
  
  

The Read Only Output variable are the possible output values that the activity will provide:

• Output Approved (type: Boolean): outputs True if the workflow was approved or False if the workflow was denied.
  
• Output CSV Approved (type: string): outputs the CSV containing the users who have approved.
• Output CSV Denied (type: string): outputs the CSV containing the users who have denied.
• Output Deny Comment (type: string): outputs the deny comment's value.
• Output Parameters (type: List<KeyValuePair<String,Object>>): outputs a list of KeyValuePairs containing the changed parameters' names and the new values.

IMPORTANT:

Approval emails depend on the user setup language selected in Portal. If user selected german as language, the emails will be sent in german and the response link to approve/deny the request will also open in the setup language.

Notification

By default, this activity is configured to send the workflow Approval Notifications to the selected users in the deprecated approval process, but it can be used for sending other messages too. The difference between the Notification activity and other Mail activities is that the Notification one is connecting to Active Directory in order to retrieve e-mail addresses for the users.

Activity Parameters 

The Notification activity parameters can be provided by manual inserted values or via IN arguments or variables:

This activity has 3 categories of parameters: Email details, Email server and Parameters.

The activity comes with predefined values for the Email Message Template and the Email Subject parameters, but they can be modified according to the desired specifications.

All of the parameters are optional (the activity will be executed and finalized without build warnings), but erroneous messages will be received in case of missing values.

Email details:

• Email Message Template (text box editor type): the content of the email that will be sent via the Notification activity. The default value ("Dear %user%, a workflow requests your approval. <br/><br/>Please visit %link% for more details.") can be replaced with a different message.
• Email Subject (text box editor type): the subject of the email that will be sent. The default value ("workflow Approval Request") can be replaced with a different subject.
• From Address (text box editor type): the email address from which the email will be sent.
• Send Notifications (combo box control): by selecting YES, the activity will send a notification (email) to all specified users.

Email server:

• Email system (text box editor type): the email server's type should be inserted (e.g. Exchange).
• Password (password editor type): the password for the user which will connect to the Email Server (in this case Exchange).
• Password binding (text box editor type): its value must be given encrypted when run outside the Designer (for example Portal).
• Port (text box editor type): email server port. The default port for Exchange is 25 (as seen in the above screenshot).
• Server (text box editor type): email server (name or IP).
• SSL (text box editor type): specify whether the email server security is enabled. 'True' for enabled, otherwise 'False'.
• Username (text box editor type): the username that will be used by the activity to connect to the email server.

Parameters:

• AD host (text box editor type): the Active Directory host, used by the activity to search for the given users. The AD host should be inserted by following the "LDAP://Domain" format, like "LDAP://FMRP.trust".
• Portal URL (text box editor type): the Flowster Portal website URL should be provided. This value can be taken from IIS (where the Portal is hosted) or from Flowster Administrator → Integrator Page (select the Portal client and take the URL from the Configuration tab).
• Users (text box editor type): the users from the Active Directory (inserted by their sAMAccountName) that will receive the email notification. If multiple users are desired to be provided, they will be separated by ';'.

The Read Only Output variable are the possible output values that the activity will provide:

• Output collection count: outputs a integer value equal to the Output Collection count.
• Output email status: outputs a collection of string representing the sent email statuses (true/false), in the format "status: address".
• Output SQL connection: outputs the SQL connection string.
• Output users and emails: outputs a collection of string representing the users and their email addresses, in the format "user;email".
  
  

Execution Result: