SharePoint 2010: Send E-Mail URL Back to the List Item

A common task most users try to do is have a SharePoint Designer workflow send out an e-mail that contains a URL directed back to the item which triggered the workflow. Most users would naturally insert the “Send an Email” function and include a lookup to the item within the E-mail message as shown below. However, thanks to the genuises at Microsoft, this only returns the relative path to the URL. Meaning if the correct URL of the item is http://mydomain/sites/library/item1, then it will only return /library/item1 in the e-mail message which will return an error when you try to click on it in the e-mail message. Solution The correct way to do this which will send out the full URL is to click the “Edit Hyperlink” button in the upper right corner of the message. In the window that pops up, click on the fx button corresponding to the address field. In the next window, for Data Source, select “Workflow Context”. For Field from source, click on  “Current Item URL”. Afterwards, save your workflow and publish it and it should work.