Approve/Reject Workflow with email

[Logiest, Thierry T SI-SPOS-SPOS]

Dear all,

I have been reading the archives and consulting SAP documentation ( as well as a few workflow consultants familiar with this list ) in regards to the approval of workflow items via email, my conclusions up to now are the following :

1. According to Jocelyn and Alan and there wonderful book it is possible to execute workitems since REL 3.0 of EBP. ( Although a an email from Alan, dated May 2000, describes the functionality as possible since R/3 rel 3.1.)

2. Object WI_MAILREC.RECEIVE (synchronous reception) or report RBBP_OFFLINE_EVAL (asynchronous reception) can be used to process the incoming mails in R/3 and start/execute the relevant workflows/workitems.

3. Transaction SO28 is used to set up the link between WI_MAILREC.RECEIVE ( or a subtype or another object implementing IFRECEIVE or IFFIND ).

What is less clear to me is the following :

1. Do we need EBP to make this work, object WI_MAILREC is available in our standard R/3 release 4.6C but report RBBP_OFFLINE_EVAL is not.

2. The Workflow bible makes reference to an HTML-based hyperlink for the approve and reject path which is encrypted together with the workitem id and mail text, how is that email generated and encrypted ? Is this done through a standard task, function, method ? 

3. Jocelyn ( February 2002 ) states that we do not need an attachment to the mail ( I presume encrypted WID and HTML Hyperlink ) and that we can search the text for keywords, has anybody tried this in practice ? and was this a successful approach ? 

Any comments on already running implementations of this functionality would be extemely welcome and re-assuring.


Thank you all.

Kind Regards,

Thierry Logiest

Workflow-HR-ABAP SAP Certified Senior Consultant


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