Send Custom Mail Notifications to Author/Creator when workflow ends

Question

Hello All,
I am working on workflows and I want to send a mail notification to the "Author/Creator" when the workflow finishes.
Currently, UCM workflows do not provide this functionality Out-Of-The-Box.
For this I implemented a filter and hooked it to the event +"advanceDocumentStateMarkWorkflowFinished"+ event.
Now I am able to send mail using the following code:
InternetFunctions.sendMailTo(email, "DynamicPrefixTemplate","Workflow Notifications", cxt);
However, I am not able to retrieve the author name to whom I have to send the notification. I found that "databinder" object (passed as param) in method signature below doesn't contain the author name attribute.
public int doFilter(Workspace ws, DataBinder binder, ExecutionContext cxt)
I can see other attributes such as dId, dName etc. but not the "dAuthor". Can someone please suggest how can I retrieve the author name for the document for which workflow has just finished and notify the author..
I know there are services like getDocumentByName, but I do not know can I call these services from my filter code in Java. Please guide me.
Thanks in Advance,
Aakash

Answer 1

Hi,
If what you need is to send a notification to the original author, you do not need to write custom code, you can follow these steps:
1) on the first step, assign the dDocAuthor to a workflow variable. As an example, on the Entry event if the first step add this code:
<$wfSet("originalAuthor",dDocAuthor)$>
Note that you need the previous step only if you allow revisions during your workflow. If you don't, then dDocAuthor would not change and you can skip that step
2) on the last step, send a notification using the variable we saved on the first step as the addresee. As an example, on the on Exit event add this code:
<$wfNotify(originalAuthor,"user")$>
(if you do not allow revisions, substitute originalAuthor by dDocAuthor)
Another thing, a lot of people run into the need to override the standard email templates when they start sending custom notifications. The workflow administration guide has a very nice and detailed section that explains how to do this. Also, the idocscript reference guide is always a good point to check the correct syntax for idocscript functions. There is a section of workflow related functions/variables in that guide that always comes in handy.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Jorge