Sending Approval Steps via Outlook

[Munday,Sherie J.]

Hello Experienced Workflow Developers,
 
Our company recently upgraded to ECC 5.0.  We have several custom
workflows including HR functions that make use of the MSS portal and our
managers use the Universal Worklist on the portal for very limited
functions.  Our workflows also send emails to employee's outlook
inboxes, and currently all return emails are routed to the WF-Batch
Outlook email inbox.
 
We are now investigating the options around sending approvals to
managers without having them use the Business Workplace, and with the
least amount of custom abap programming possible.  Would those of you
with experience in this area, please give me your comments and
suggestions?  I would be most grateful!
 
After reading appendix A.2.4 (Offline Work Item Execution Via E-Mail) of
Practical Workflow for SAP and OSS Note 455140 (Configuration E-mail),
it seems we have these two "simple" options..one requires the approver
to be online, one in which the approval could be processed offline:

1.	Send the email with a hyperlink in the text which takes the
manager directly to their Universal Worklist Inbox on the portal.  The
manager would then open and process the work item (a normal approval
decision step).  
2.	Send the email with two different hyperlinks in the text... one
for the approve and one for the reject.  With this scenario, we would
have to create an SAP user such as WFDecision, have the hyperlink do a
send mail back to that userid in SAP with a given subject text such as
Decision, create an abap program to check the validity of the sender's
email address and complete the work item with the appropriate response,
insert that program into the Settings->Inbound Porcessing in transaction
SCOT, and have our messaging team set the mail server with a routing
rule to send any mail to WFDecision to the SAP port.... Wow ... does
anyone actually do that?  Are there any "standard" SAP workflows and/or
programs that have this functionality?...or does this have to be purely
custom?

Have I missed any other obvious solutions that would require minimal
programming?
Thanks again in advance!!
Sherie
 
Sherie Munday
Workflow Developer/ Anlayst
Air Products & Chemicals, Inc.
 
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