Using Value Types to e-mail attachments

You can specify a Value Type for Attachment fields on Reminders in Process Designer, which enables you to e-mail attachments automatically as part of a process.

An Add Reminder automatic action is often added after a manual action such as Add Note in a process design, as a method for automatically sending e-mails as part of the process. (For example, see the Rich Incident process supplied in the default database, and Sending notifications.)

The procedure below describes how to extend a process such as the supplied Rich Incident process to enable the automatic e-mailing of attachments that are added to a note.

To extend the Rich Incident process to handle the automatic e-mailing of attachments:

1. Using Object Designer, add a new attribute with the Data Type set to Attachment and the Attachment Type set to Multiple Attachments to both the Note and the Reminder objects under Incident Management.
2. Using Window Manager, add the new Attachments attribute to both the Note and Reminder windows.
3. In Process Designer, open the required process – in this example, open the Incident Management\Rich Incident process.
4. Double-click the Add Reminder automatic action that follows one of the Add Note actions.
   The Add Reminder window appears.
5. Right-click the Attachments control, then click Value Type on the shortcut menu.
   The Control Value Selection dialog appears. This dialog enables you to specify a value to populate this field with that is determined at runtime. In this instance, we want to populate the field with the contents of the Attachments attribute that were specified on the Note window.
6. Select the Specify a runtime value for control option button.
   The tree at the bottom of the dialog becomes available. We want to use the value of the Attachments field on the Notes collection for the Incident.
7. In the tree at the bottom of the dialog, expand the Incident branch, then the Notes[] branch, and select the check box alongside Attachments, then click OK.
   {Incident/Notes/_Attachments} appears in the Attachments field.

Now when a Note is added to the Incident, a Reminder is automatically created that includes the value of the Attachments attribute from the Note in the Attachments attribute on the Reminder.