E-mail approval of an operation???

Hi,

I am working on a project that has many users having different roles (manager, employees etc.) and for ex. when an employee needs to make a change on the data, program should automatically send an e-mail to the manager for the approval of the operation. If the manager approves the operation then the employee will be able to make the change, otherwise he/she won't. I am not using SharePoint or something like that to manage workflow, so i am thinking about using a web service to manage this task. In other words, program will send an e-mail to the manager and when the manager approves or denies the operation it will invoke a web service and then user will be able to make change on data. But i don't know how to invoke a web service over an e-mail, or if there is another way to manage this task.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hmm, that could get fairly in depth as far as an "override" feature involving disperate communications. My first two thoughts reading your query:

First, was to simply provide a place in the application where the manager could make the change needed to allow an operation by the requester.

Second, perhaps look into sending a link in the email to a web application that would allow the manager to enter credentials to "ok" the action using an action id of some sort in the link?

Good luck... wish I had the time to consider everything further. :)

fcronin, thanks for the reply.

Well, the manager will not be using the program, so he/she is supposed to be sending the response remotely.

For instance, when an e-mail is sent to the manager, he/she will click the Approve/Reject link, it will invoke a web service and web service will communicate with the application.

Is there a way to create a scenario like that?

Well, I don't know for sure, but I am fairly confident that trying to insert executable code or script within the body of an email as a link is either not possible, or at least not going to be the 'best' way to go about it (just from end-user security stand-point).

I see one of two methods, the second being the method I would prefer:

1. Installing something on the client (end-user) side that gets executed when the email is received (via a 'rule' if using outlook...). This program would consume your web service to take whatever action is needed.

2. Create a web page that when hit consumes the web service to take whatever action is needed based on what is passed in the html request. I would picture putting a link in the email, when the user clicks it, they end up on this page that requires them to enter at least a password (or some other way of authenticating the request...). Once they do that, the web service is called on from that page to do whatever needs to be done, then you can simply update the page to tell the user it was done, send another email to indicate success, etc...

Hope that helps... those are the only two ways I can think of at this point.