Direct Approval not working if form is opened first

asked on April 14, 2020

We are using Direct Approval for several user tasks in our process. We have found that if a user opens the form prior to responding to the email with APPROVE or REJECT, the email approval will fail. (Second issue) once we encounter a failure, there is no reference to the Instance that failed.

Has anyone else encountered similar issues? We are on Forms 10.3.0.975

[Additional Info]:

Failure mode 1: Opening the form in the system then trying to approve via email
If the approver uses the link on the Email, accesses the form, touches the form and then tries to use the Email approval, the Email approval will fail. Logically this could occur naturally, someone opens the form, needs questions answered, closes the form, asks the questions and assumes they can still use the Email for approval

Failure Mode 2 - Error messaging – no reference to the Instance:
Executives work on multiple forms at a time. If the process does not work, the Email which comes back does not reference which instance failed.

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replied on April 14, 2020

For failure mode 1, we are not able to reproduce it with following steps:

1. approver receives email notification

2. approver clicks task link and sign in Forms and check the task details

3. approver replys the email with "Approve"

4. The user task becomes completed

If you can reproduce it stabily, please provide detail steps.

For failure mode 2, there is a known issue(Bug 230024), and this will be improved in next release of Forms. You will get response email as following content after the fix.

The email approval (action Approve) failed. Either the task has already been performed or you cannot perform approval actions.

Process: "email approval"

Task: "Approval"

Instance: "email approgve 4713: forms"

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View 2 previous replies

replied on April 15, 2020

The general flow that causes the error is:

1. approver receives email notification

2. approver clicks task link and sign in Forms and check the task details

3. USER TOUCHES THE FORM (clicks in comments section, checks a checkbox, etc.)

4. approver replys the email with "Approve"

5. The user task becomes completed

When we try to approve via email, we get the error message email (Failure Mode #2 above). Is there any way to get more detail as to what's actually happening when the email approval fails?

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replied on April 16, 2020

For step 5, do you mean the user task is still in progress? If the user task is completed, that means the email approval succeeded.

We are not able to reproduce the issue following the steps you provided, if user just open the form and click on the form without clicking the apporve/reject buttons, the task can still be approved by replying the email.

The replied email in (Failure Mode #2 above) include the reason why it fails such as "The action provided in your email approval is invalid" or "Either the task has already been performed or you cannot perform approval actions."

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replied on April 16, 2020

Here's what actually happens...I was using the list you sent:

1. approver receives email notification

2. approver clicks task link and sign in Forms and check the task details

3. USER TOUCHES THE FORM (clicks in comments section, checks a checkbox, etc.)

4. approver replys the email with "Approve"

5. Error message is received with no information regarding which instance failed

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replied on April 22, 2020

Just touch the form won't do anything to user task. If you can reproduce it, can you please record a video and open a support case with your VAR?

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replied on April 22, 2020

We discovered on this one that the Sandbox Forms environment was also polling the Inbox. So if Sandbox grabbed the email first the user would receive an email that the approval was invalid because the task was not found in the Sandbox instance.

So the issue was hard to troubleshoot, but that was the issue. I set Polling to 0 in Sandbox to prevent Sandbox from grabbing any new responses.

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Direct Approval not working if form is opened first

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