Auto-approving review activities after x time

I recently needed to auto-approve a review activity if none of the assigned reviewers responded in a timely manner. As I was pressed for time I wanted something that I could implement fast and simple (like this blog-post).

The problem is then: A review activity has not been approved (status = completed) after x hours. When that time passes it should auto-approve (ie. set status to completed).

I cannot use a workflow because it is unable to detect this state. I also cannot use a monitor object activity in Orchestrator to detect this state. I was left with a scheduled PS-script, but then it occured to me: Subscription! The subscription is unable to apply a template and thereby set the status to completed, but I could send the email to Service Manager with the subject as [RA1234] (the ID of the review activity) and the body: Automatically approved by Service Manager [Approved].

The criteria in the subscription is:
when meets criteria:
status = in progress
created date is less than or equal to [now-1d]

Now I haven't actually gotten around testing this, and it may need a bit of tweaking to get exactly right, but I am pretty confident it will work. Since the sender is the workflow account which has admin rights it should be able to approve the RA without being reviewer. I will update here when I know more.

Read more on approving review activities via. email here.

I have two more blog posts lined up, one on speeding up development using the SCSM SDK, and one on mapping support groups intelligently (and automatically) to SCOM generated incidents using a fancy script and an excel sheet!
I just need some time to polish both posts. Hope to get them out soon.