Did anyone find a way to build the single click approval function in email?

[Hector13]

Hi team,

We are currently using the OOTB approval email system where the user will need an additional step to send an email after clicking the customized 'Approve' or 'Reject' button which impacts the user experience.

In the SN community I found there have been many people asking the possible to implement single click approval function in email withough sending email and what I have learnt from the answers is that this is not possible for security reasons as 'it implies that there is no user validation done to ensure the person hitting that URL is the same as the one on the approval'.

(answers from several years back, e.g. https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_question&sys_id=a2c28b61dbd8dbc01dcaf3231f961925&anchor=answer_4667bf61db1c1fc01dcaf3231f961985&view_source=searchResult)

We have also been promoting the approval function in NowMobile app where users are notified whenever an approval request is raised and they can approve/reject in the app with a single click, but the challenge is the users still rely on email notifications instead of app which highlight the needs of improvement. 

Questions

How does everyone customize the approval email nowadays? Are there any recent progress to improve the approval experience, especially in the OOTB approval email system?

It would be really helpful if you can share suggestions / workarounds to improve approval experience 🙂 Thank you.

[Allen Andreas · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Approval via email remains the same way as it has been. The main idea is to always try and use ServiceNow, specifically. The email is the "backup" way to do things. With that said, there really isn't much else anyone can do with email approval other than:

1. The user click "approve" which auto-open a reply email and they simply click send and the system takes it from there
2. The user clicks a link and navigate to the approval record itself, reviews the details, and clicks approve, if applicable

There isn't a 1 click in email solution as it would need validation from the individual and an execution of script. Without getting into too complex things here, that's the basic idea.

Can you give us a bit more details as to the inconvenience caused by the user clicking approve and then clicking send (so staying with the email side of things) -- that would justify needing to consider a more complex solution?

Just curious in that regard 🙂

Please mark reply as Helpful/Correct, if applicable. Thanks!

[Hector13]

Thank you Allen for the explaination. You are right, the 'single click approval' is not an actual signle click if we considering the additonal login steps come along.