E-mail and read receipt

[Mike Pokraka]

Hi Zsolt,
I'm glad you asked the question as 'theoretical', of course it's
possible. One would have to think on whether that is really desirable.
Read receipts are not a guarantee that a message has been read. A
confirmation link or something might be better.

Back to the theoretical answer. As of 6.30 or 6.40 it asks for receipts.
If not, you have to insert the read request into the SMTP header yourself.
I couldn't find any obvious enhancements but have a look around
SapConnect.

Alternatively the easiest depends on your infrastructure. If your mailer
is UNIX/LINUX/AIX based, it's a simple scripting matter to inject a
Disposition-Notification-To header. If you're talking to Exchange on NT it
will be a little nastier, but can also be done.

Once there, the next challenge will depend on your mail client (Notes,
Outlook, Thunderbird, Evolution... ). Here things vary widely, Thunderbird
includes proper references in its headers. Alas, Microsoft does not - at
least when I last used Lookout. Evolution doesn't bother sending receipts
fullstop. Squirrelmail buries the reference in an attachment. It's quite
obvious there is no standard format for receipts, so you'll have to devise
a clever little mechanism to be able to match receipts to the sending
message, and a method of identifying such in SAP. Again, this can be
within SAP or at your mail subsystem... If your mails are for customers,
I'd cautiosly recommend to forget it. Oh, and also remember that one can
disable sending of read receipts.

You will then have to develop all the necessary bits in SAP to receive the
mail, decode the key you designed above and do the matching/triggering
events and so forth, but that's pretty trivial once you've come this far.

Cheers
Mike


Márton Zsolt wrote:
> 	Hi workflow experts!
>
> 	We are in 4.6C.
>
> 	I have to send some information to person responsible via e-mail.
>
> 	My question is theoretical: is this possible to send the message with
> read receipt, and continue my workflow after the confirmation?
>
> 	Thanks
>
> 	Zsolt
>
> _______________________________________________
> SAP-WUG mailing list
> SAP-WUG at mit.edu
> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/sap-wug
>


Mike Pokraka
Senior Consultant
Workflow Conenctions Ltd.
Mobile: +44 (0)7786 910 855