Sharepoint 2007 approval email.

Question

Hi Guys,

in our Company we have a Sharepoint 2007 Server which we are using to keep track of our cars. What I try to achieve is to have a aspx page where you can select a car of the cars list and then click "request". If you did that the page must switch to another text saying something like "car request in progress" (and of course hide this car in the cars list if the next person enters this page) and send an email to someone which contains two buttons: "accept" "decline". If he clicks "decline" the cars status has to be set to available again so someone else can do a request for this car again. if he clicks "accept" another person gets an email telling him that person1 requested this car and this has been approved by person2. this emails are easy to create using workflows which are waiting for the status to change but how can i create a link which changes a cars statusfield in the cars list and what code do i need in the aspx request page?

Thanks in advance! MemphiZ

Answer 1

Make a link that, when clicked, will run the appropriate action on the users behalf. If you are using workflows, this is as "simple" as changing the items property and letting the item-change event be handled. Make sure to avoid cyclic changes.

This can be done trivially by encoding the items GUID (and perhaps list and action and whatever else you want) in the URL; the GUID can be used with the SharePoint Object Model for the lookup.

Perhaps the above can be done using SPD without a separate/"code" ASPX, but I don't touch that pile of "fun".

Edit for comment:

In my scenario we just encoded the link as http://foo.com/whatever.aspx?id={THEGUID}. The aspx handler just read the query parameters. Item editing ability used standard SharePoint list permissions. Double-submissions were rejected because after the link is handled the item modified to be in a new state which does not accept said link-action (thus clicking the link again simply resulted in no-operations). Working out a total state-diagram before starting work can save lots of time.