topic Re: Using Workato for automating processes that require email approval in Workato Pros Discussion Board

Using Workato for automating processes that require email approval

jeffernst — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 03:06:37 GMT

I use Workato Embedded to build automated Customer Reference Request processes for my customers. Each process/recipe has a step that uses Gmail or Outlook to send an email to the requested customer asking if they'd be willing to take a reference call. I'd like to have it so the customer who receives the email can either approve or reject the request, and based on that response, execute the appropriate next steps in the workflow.

Is there a way to build this type of workflow in Workato, to listen for a reply to a previously sent email and take action on it? I imagine that the first email would have to be structured in some way so that we know what responses to listen for, like "Yes" or "No", or have buttons in the email with the response choices? Any advice on how others have handled this is appreciated.

Re: Using Workato for automating processes that require email approval

Prudvi — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 09:04:06 GMT

Hi Jeffer,

The response to an email can be unsure as when the user will perform an action to the email.
You can have to follow asynchronous approach.

1. 1st Recipe will send an email with option yes/no which could be a workato API[https://docs.workato.com/api-mgmt/api-endpoints.html#setting-up-and-managing-api-endpoints ] and should be able to capture somewhere in the DB that the email has been sent. Like emailaddress, mail sent, response received[Yes/No].
2. 2nd receipe would listen to the request and update the db with response.

Re: Using Workato for automating processes that require email approval

jeffernst — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 12:06:32 GMT

@Prudvi Thanks for your reply. Can you provide more details on what you mean by: "email with option yes/no which could be a workato API". I looked at the docs page you linked to but I don't understand how these APIs would be put to use in this use case. I have my own API that updates my objects and I have a Status field to track that the email has been sent, responded to, etc.

Re: Using Workato for automating processes that require email approval

Prudvi — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 12:26:18 GMT

Hi Jeffer,

Consider the following mail message :

"Hi Name,
Your specific message.
Would you like to refer : Yes or No.
If you hover over the link, you can insert your API."

Regards,
Prudvi

Re: Using Workato for automating processes that require email approval

jeffernst — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 12:47:32 GMT

@Prudvi This is exactly what I want to do. How do I set up the link so that hovering over it calls my api? I can't tell from that doc page where I would start.

Re: Using Workato for automating processes that require email approval

gary1 — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 17:32:52 GMT

You could also do this with a Webhook recipe. It's a bit easier to set up compared to the API platform.

Create a new recipe with a "Webhook" trigger
Name the event "get_user_response"
Adding an event name will generate a webhook URL, like https://webhooks.workato.com/webhooks/rest/big-long-uuid-here/get_user_response
Set the request type to "GET"
Set a query param for "user_response" -- this will represent the YES or NO from the email
Set another query param for "email_id" -- this is really important because when you receive their response, you need enough context to identify its origin. This means when you send them the email, you need to encode an ID in the link so the webhook can send it back to identify the origin of the response. Otherwise you'd get a bunch of "yes" and "no" responses without having the context of their origin. The ID doesn't need to be an ID in the traditional sense, but something that let's you differentiate one response from the next
Add a logger as step to and add the "user_response" data pill from the trigger
Add another logger with "email_id" data pill
Turn on the recipe or run a test
Open a web browser or terminal and call the webhook URL with the user_response and email_id params, like this: https://webhooks.workato.com/webhooks/rest/big-long-uuid-here/get_user_response?user_response=yes&email_id=12345
The recipe should trigger, parse the params, and step 2 logger should read "yes", and step 3 logger should read "12345". Your browser will show a simple JSON response from the webhook. This can't be controlled (to my knowledge)
Assuming this all worked, you can now update the links in the emails to the webhook URL with different user_response and email_id values. Build out the recipe to do what's needed based on their response.

It's also possible to do this via the API platform, and the benefit might be that you can control the response to the browser, but I'm honestly not sure about that. Hope this helps.

Re: Using Workato for automating processes that require email approval

Prudvi — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 17:42:06 GMT

Thanks @gary1 for clear explanation The only reason for API was for security.

Re: Using Workato for automating processes that require email approval

gary1 — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 18:35:45 GMT

Even if you used the API platform I think you'd need to encode the access token into the URL to call the endpoint, so security kinda goes out the window.

I can't think really think of a way to protect the endpoint, but you can at least verify the email_id against a list of known IDs to ensure the call is coming from an email recipient before routing to the next recipe/process.

I could be missing something so if you have ideas on how to secure the endpoint using the API platform, please share!

Re: Using Workato for automating processes that require email approval

jeffernst — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 12:51:46 GMT

@gary1 This is awesome. Do you happen to have a sample recipe you could share that has the webhook configured as you described?