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Introduction

The Inbound Emails and the Temporary Task Users

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allow designers to open up their workflows to external contractors while increasing the number of possible new use cases.

The Temporary Task Users

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are an essential part of defining a workflow that is accessible for users outside of the TIM BPM Suite environment. Click here
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to learn more!

Start your workflow by sending an email!

It is now possible to start an instance of your workflow by simply sending an email to the designated email address linked to it. This feature can be customised so that it fits your specific use case. Click here

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to learn more.

Complete a task by answering an email!

Configuring tasks to be completed by email reply is now simpler. This feature was previously available via the SignalByMailReply Timer which is now obsolete. This improved feature is now better customisable and enables the implementation of more complex use cases. Click here

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to learn more.

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Prerequisites

Some initial prerequisites are necessary to implement the feature into your workflow. To activate this feature your process model must have at least one of the following:

  1. image-20240507-122051.png Email Start Event:
    A transition needs to be drawn from the additional start event to an activity or gateway.

Info

The process model must still contain the normal start event for the manual start of the workflow.

  1. image-20240507-121107.png Task Boundary Event:
    A transition needs to be drawn from the boundary event to the target activity or gateway.
    Additionally, it is required to draw another transition from the activity where the boundary event is attached to another or the same target activity or gateway. See example below:

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As seen in the thumbnails above 2 variants of the start and boundary events are supported (Signal and Message according to the BPMN Standard).

Configuration

To configure the Inbound Email feature, some initial configuration and a per workflow configuration are required.

Set up IMAP Host

For the TIM BPM Suite to receive inbound emails an IMAP Host needs to be configured. This is done outside the TIM BPMN BPM Suite environment (e.g. Microsoft, Google, etc.).

Note

POP3 is not supported.

Mailbox Connector

After completing the setup of the IMAP Host, you need to connect it to your TIM BPM environment. This is done via a new connector type the Mailbox Connector.

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Reference

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Mailbox configuration

These are the required fields to create a connection between the IMAP mail server and the TIM BPM Suite:

  1. Email address: Here the receiving email address needs to be specified

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This address is freely selectable.

  1. IMAP Host: Here the host URL of the IMAP mail server needs to be specified.

  2. IMAP Port: Here the corresponding port of the IMAP mail server needs to be specified.

Info

The typical IMAP port number is 143, for IMAP over SSL/TLS (IMAPS) the port number 993 is assigned.

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Authentication

There are 2 authentication Methods available:

  1. Basic Authentication

  2. OAuth (Open Authorization)

Depending on the selection new required fields need to be filled. Optionally No Authentication can be selected.

Workflow Design

The configuration regarding the Inbound Emails is done on the workflow level.

Connecting the workflow to a mailbox

If the prerequisites regarding the process model are met a new tab is shown in the workflow properties.

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Reference

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Mailbox Connector

Here the Mailbox Connector that is linked to the workflow must be selected. This step is mandatory and cannot be skipped for the feature to work!

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Only one Mailbox Connector can be linked to a workflow at a time.

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Other Configuration

These additional options allow the workflow designer to decide what should happen with the initialising email and its attachments.

  1. Add attachments of incoming mail to instance:
    Adds all attachments that were sent together with the initialising email to the started or running instance.

  2. Attach incoming mail to instance as note?:
    Adds the text of the initialising email in the form of a note to the started or running instance.

  3. Attach incoming mail to instance as EML?:
    Adds the initialising email in the form of an EML to the documents of the started or running instance.

Tip

Once the IMAP host setup is complete and the mailbox connector is in place, the feature will be ready for use. But there are some more optional configurations available, which we will take a look at in the next section.

Who is allowed to start and/or complete a task?

Here the same rules apply to the rest of the workflow. The expressions chosen for the Starter, Owner and Workflow-Designer rights also apply to the inbound emails.

Only users with a group membership to one of the starter groups are allowed to start an instance of the workflow by inbound email.

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Additionally, as mentioned in the Workflow Design documentation a new expression world() is introduced together with this feature.

The expression world() can be set to the Starter right and allows everyone to start an instance of the workflow by sending an email to the connected mailbox (The user must not be part of the TIM environment).

Configuration of process variables

For both the email start and the task completion by mail reply we do have 2 available options to transfer the mail text to process variables.

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Save mail-text to process variable

This option allows the designer to save the mail text to a specified process variable.

Note

Keep in mind that process variables are limited to 4000 characters.

To extract the required information from the mail text the ReturnRegexHandler can be used.

Use process variable mapping

This option offers a more sophisticated approach by providing a mapping which can be copied to the mail text of the inbound email, to set up some variables before starting the instance.

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Info

The configuration of the email start and mail reply is identical. The configuration of the process variables on the mail reply the configuration is done by clicking the boundary event.

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This can then be provided to the user sending the email to start an instance of the workflow via email template or in case of completing a task integrated into the task mail text of the given task.

Administration

Click here

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to see Here you can find what's new in the administration regarding the for administrators in regards to inbound emails.

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