How can I build human review into an email dispatching process?

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a process which will:

(1) Extract data from Excel
(2) Use the data to create a PDF report
(3) Email the PDF report to relevant people

The client would like all generated emails to be reviewed by humans before they are sent. As this is an unattended robot, I’m not sure what the most elegant solution is.

Has anyone got any suggestions on how to approach this?

Thanks,
James

Hi James,

I believe the best way would be to use Action Center to create a Human in the loop process.
In this scenario, your bot would generate a Task on Action Center right after creating the PDF. After that, it would be awaiting for the user to log into Action Center and approve or reject the action. The bot remain as Pending on orchestrator and the Robot is free to run other automation.
Once it’s approved, the bot begins again and send the email.

I’d counsel you to study Action Center, maybe take an Academy class. It’s an awesome tool!
There’s an official template for Orchestration Processes too, it should show up in your Studio.
Here is some documentation:

Hi

An option which may lack some elegance but may still be fine for your/client needs is you could have the email ‘drafted with attachments’ in a folder called: “For Review”.

The things you/client have to consider are:

  • The draft will only generate in the default drafts folder. You can’t change this (as far as I know). To handle this, you then have to get emails again and move the draft to the review folder. Use the subject or add something custom as a filter expression.
  • The draft can take 1-10 seconds to generate (performance dependant) for it to be collected/found so you need to consider this in your process design (small 3 second delay and retry scope will have it covered).
  • The drafts folders should be kept as empty as possible to maximise robot finding email efficiency.
  • You could even add a “full auto” setting which could be enabled for when the client and process is mature or another condition is met.

Atleast it’s another option :blush:

Hi,

Another easier option is to generate excel report with all data and pass it to client for verification.
You can divide process in to 2 sub parts.

1)Data Generator
2)Report Dispatcher

The first will generate the PDF files and then places these reports in a shared drive/uploads to storage application. At the end you can make robot to update the excel file with columns: To Address, CC, BCC, Mail Subject, Body, Attachment Path, Verify Status, Dispatch Status and send file to approver.

The later process, checks mail for updated Master report file from approver, Reads all records having Approved Verify Status and sends mail accordingly.

Note: Here approver has the full control to edit the email body/address/attachment so on the mail content.