Sending Email to External Email Inbox for Prompts

If a user is set up in the Users form to allow the system to send external prompts, then a prompt action sends the message both to the application's Inbox form and to the recipient’s Inbox in an external email client such as Microsoft Outlook. The message that is sent to the external email system is an HTML-formatted email that consists of these parts:

• Original subject in Subject line
• Category
• List of internal recipients
• List of internal Cc recipients
• Original Message (either in plain text or HTML format)
• Original Question
• Choices, as individual hyperlinks to a .NET active server page (ASP) that records the vote
• Payload, which is the contents of the Variables grid from the Inbox

Text in the Subject, Category, Message, Question, Choices, and payload captions can be translated and formatted based on the default language specified for the recipient user in the Users form.

When the recipients vote by clicking the link in the email, their Windows-default web browser opens or opens a new tab, as applicable, and sends the information from the link they clicked to the ASP URL that is included (and hidden) in the email. This URL is built by the system based on the web server list.

The ASP then registers the vote programmatically, as if the recipient had logged into the system, displayed the same message in the Inbox, and selected the corresponding Choice button on the Response tab.

The web page then displays a success or failure message.