Approval - and Email Templates for application

[Lucky1]

Hello all,

I have designed a flow designer to trigger approvals when a business application's status is changed to Retired. The approval will be triggered to it's business owner.

It is working fine as expected. The approval record is also showing in the Approvals table.

But my query is, I want to send an email to the owner when the status is changed to Retired,

So, once the business owner receives the email, he should find options to Approve or Reject from the email itself. 

Which template should I use here?

Because I see this kind of templates are available for RITM and change requests. This is a business application.

Can someone guide me?

Regards,

Lucky

[nityabans27]

Hi,

Use Approval [sysapproval_approver] notification → clone or base it off OOB “Approval Request” template → filter it to Document table = business_application.

Or if you want to use OOB template only then do the following:

• The generic one you should use is:
  Approval Request (Notification template on Approval [sysapproval_approver] table).

This is not tied to RITM or Change — it works for any approval because it keys off the approval record itself, not the parent.
It already contains the ${mail_script:approval_link} and ${mail_script:reject_link} mail scripts, so your email will show Approve/Reject options.

If you found my answer useful please accept it as solution and mark it as helpful.

Thanks and regards

Nitya Bansal

[Lucky1]

Hello Nitya,

I cannot find the template "Approval Request". 

Secondly, if you ask me to create notification on sysapproval_approver table, then how come I get some fields on the body of the email?

Please help me in steps.

Regards,

Lucky

[AJ-TechTrek]

HI @Lucky1 ,

As per my understanding why you don’t see an OOB email template for Business Applications

* Out of the box, ServiceNow provides email notifications + actionable approval templates only for:
* RITMs (sc_req_item approvals)
* Change Requests (change_request approvals)
* These include the Approve / Reject links or buttons inside the email.
* Since your case is for cmdb_ci_business_app (or a related table), there is no OOB email template tied to this table’s approval records.

Best Practice as per my understanding -

You can still reuse the generic approval notification mechanism that ServiceNow provides for any approval record (sysapproval_approver).
Steps:
1. Check your Approval Table
* When your Flow Designer approval action runs, it creates a record in sysapproval_approver.
* This is the same table used by RITM, Change, etc. → so you can use the same approval notification mechanism.

2. Enable “Approval Request” Notification
* Go to System Notification → Email → Notifications.
* There is an OOB notification called “Approval Request” (sysapproval_approver).
* This is generic and can be triggered for any approval record.

3. Modify / Clone the Notification
* Condition: Table = sysapproval_approver and approval.source_table = cmdb_ci_business_app.
* Or, filter based on your business logic (e.g., approval.source = Business Application Retire Flow).
* This way, only approvals for Business Applications use this notification.

4. Use the OOB “Approval Summarizer” Template
* ServiceNow provides an Email Layout + Notification Template that embeds the Approve/Reject buttons/links.
* This is defined in System Notification → Email Layouts → Approval Summarizer.
* It works by generating one-click links back to ServiceNow that perform the Approve/Reject action.

Please appreciate the efforts of community contributors by marking appropriate response as Mark my Answer Helpful or Accept Solution this may help other community users to follow correct solution in future.
 

Thank You
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