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The MIE sends an email using the specified template to solicit an approval.  Approval can be solicited from an individual, a Group, or the voting members of a CAB.

When sending the approval email, the MIE appends an encrypted control block to the end of the email template.  The control block is used to identify the request to which the email belongs.  The control block must be returned unaltered in the reply email.  It is a good idea to send the original email in HTML form, and to set the font color to white (to match the background) at the end of the template.  This causes the control block to be displayed as white text on a white background, making it invisible.

In addition, one or more questions are embedded in the template.  The approver will reply to the questions, and the MIE will check the reply to see if the request was approved or denied.

If no questions are contained in the approval template, the MIE treats the approval request as a simply "reply requested" - a way of pausing the workflow until the target approver(s) reply.  See Email Templates - Questions for more.

Response to an approval email is done by simply replying to the email.  There is no system to login to, nor are there any screens to navigate.  The approver simply types the answers to the questions in the space provided in the body of the original email in his or her reply.

The MIE checks its inbox every minute or so.  Any emails are checked for the presence of a control block in the body.  If a control block exists, the email is submitted to the workflow engine for processing.  The workflow engine reads the control block and uses the information contained in that control block to process the reply.

Answers to the questions are located using the delimiters specified in the question template.  Once the answers are located, they are compared to the list of acceptable answers (also specified in the question template).  A match indicates a positive answer to the question.  All questions presented must have positive answers for the response to be considered an approval.  For any question that does not contain a matching positive answer, the denial reason will be retrieved from the question template and made available as variable V8, which can then be referenced and included in any notification email that will be sent back to the requester.