How to send the email between an Editor and an Approver in Sitecore Workflow?

As default, to keep the Editors and Approvers to be notified about the changes in content, Sitecore provides us the “Email action” under “/sitecore/templates/System/Workflow” to support to send the email to recipients.

However, in some cases, we want Editors to have the ability to select specific Approver to review/approve their content instead of sending email to all pre-configured Approvers and allow Approver to send the approval result back to the Editor who submits previously. This will have some benefit:

Avoid sending a lot of emails to Approvers in Sitecore or outside of Sitecore
The interaction between Editors and Approvers will be easier
Content is managed more effectively by grouping and assigning Approvers to groups

In this blog, I will share an approach to accomplish this, the idea is:

Create a custom “Droplist” to display all Approvers for Editors to select in the “Comment Template”
Create a “Comment Template” inherits from “/sitecore/templates/System/Workflow/Standard Comment Template” to add the Approvers field from #1
Create a custom action to read the information in the “Common Template” to send the email
Leverage “Sitecore WorkflowProvider” to get the Editor who submits the request and send an email back to Editor when Approver approves or rejects.

Step 1. Go to “Core” database and under “/sitecore/system/Field types/List Types” create a “Publisher Droplist” and update the value of “Control” field to “customcontrol:PublisherDroplist”

Create the Sitecore Patch for this custom field as below. For the simple code behind, you can download here (you can download and edit for your own 😊)

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/" xmlns:set="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/set/">
  <sitecore>
    <controlSources>
      <source mode="on" namespace="DemoSite.Foundation.SitecoreExtensions.Controls" assembly="DemoSite.Foundation.SitecoreExtensions" prefix="customcontrol"  />
    </controlSources>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

Step 2. Create custom “Comment Template” inherits “/sitecore/templates/System/Workflow/Standard Comment Template” and add the field “Publisher” with the field type “Publisher Droplist”

In the “Submit” command under “Draft” stage, select the custom “Comment Template” above for the field “Comment Template”

Step 3. Create custom actions to send the email to Approver from Editor and vice versa.

public class SubmitAction
{
	public void Process(WorkflowPipelineArgs args)
	{
		Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
		ProcessorItem processorItem = args.ProcessorItem;
		if (processorItem == null)
		{
			return;
		}
		// Stage Item
		Item innerItem = processorItem.InnerItem;
		// Workflow Item (Content Item)
		Item workflowItem = args.DataItem;
		// args.CommentFields: this is a "StringDictionary" we can get values of fields "Comments" and "Publisher"
		// args.CommentFields["Comments"]
		// args.CommentFields["Publisher"]
		if (new WorkflowHelper().SendEmail(innerItem, workflowItem, args.CommentFields, "Submit"))
		{
			SheerResponse.Alert("The notification has been sent.", Array.Empty<string>());
		}
		else
		{
			SheerResponse.Alert("The notification could not be sent.", Array.Empty<string>());
		}
	}
}

public class ApproveAction
{
	public void Process(WorkflowPipelineArgs args)
	{
		Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
		ProcessorItem processorItem = args.ProcessorItem;
		if (processorItem == null)
		{
			return;
		}
		// Stage Item
		Item innerItem = processorItem.InnerItem;
		// Workflow Item (Content Item)
		Item workflowItem = args.DataItem;
		// args.CommentFields: this is a "StringDictionary" we can get the value of field "Comments"
		// args.CommentFields["Comments"]
		if (new WorkflowHelper().SendEmail(innerItem, workflowItem, args.CommentFields, "Approve"))
		{
			SheerResponse.Alert("The notification has been sent.", Array.Empty<string>());
		}
		else
		{
			SheerResponse.Alert("The notification could not be sent.", Array.Empty<string>());
		}
	}
}

Update to the Email Action for “Draft” and “Awaiting Approval” stages:

Step 4. To get the exact Editor who submits the request previously, we use “WorkflowProvider” to get the latest historical change of the item:

public string GetSubmittingUserEmail(Item workflowItem)
{
	string submittingUserEmail = string.Empty;
	try
	{
		var contentWorkflow = workflowItem.Database.WorkflowProvider.GetWorkflow(workflowItem);
		// Get historical data for the workflow item
		var contentHistory = contentWorkflow.GetHistory(workflowItem);
		if(contentHistory != null && contentHistory.Any())
		{
			// Get the latest change from the Editor
			var submittingHistory = contentHistory.OrderByDescending(o => o.Date).FirstOrDefault(o => o.NewState.ToString() == "[The ID of your 'Awaiting Approval' stage item]");
			if(submittingHistory != null)
			{
				string lastUser = submittingHistory.User;
				// Get Editor user
				User submittingUser = GetUserByUserName(lastUser);
				submittingUserEmail = submittingUser.Profile?.Email ?? string.Empty;
			}
		}
	}
	catch (Exception ex)
	{
		Log.Error($"[WORKFLOW] - GetSubmittingUserEmail ERROR: {ex.Message}", ex, this);
	}            
	return submittingUserEmail;
}
public User GetUserByUserName(string userName)
{
	if (User.Exists(userName))
		return User.FromName(userName, false);
	return null;
}

Deploy the code base and let’s try it.