Workflow is the path that form, survey, or test data can take after the user has clicked Submit. It's an optional process, but can be very helpful to automate notifications or approvals. Learn more about forms in the Online Forms Overview article.
Create Workflows
On an existing form, survey, or test you're editing, click the Workflow tab.
Each path (workflow) can consist of one or more stops (workflow stages). Each stage may require approval by one or more designated approval managers. Alternatively, a stop may simply consist of an email notification that is sent out to one or more recipients.
To add a new workflow stage, simply edit an existing form, click the Workflow tab, and click the Add Stage button.
You're presented with two options. The Stage Type you choose will determine whether your workflow stage will require an approval action (Approval Stage) or simply be responsible for pushing out email notifications (Send Notifications).
If you're only adding email notifications after submission and no approval is required, under After Approval on the left, click Add Action, where you're only presented with a single option, to Send Notifications.
Create Approval Process
If you’re building a form that will need to go through an approval process, you’ll need to add an Approval Stage to your workflow. Each Approval Stage consists of one or many approval decisions. Decision Type options include:
- Single Decision - Form responses entering a Single Decision approval stage will need to be approved by one of the designated approval managers in order to move on to the next workflow stage.
- All Managers ANY ORDER - All of the approval managers for the approval stage will need to approve incoming forms but there's no particular order specified.
- All Managers IN ORDER - This option is strict and requires that all managers approve incoming forms in the order that the approval managers were listed. Form builders can use the packaged drag and drop capability to change the order of the approval managers.
After choosing a Decision Type, you can start adding approval managers for the approval stage by clicking add approval manager. Learn more about approval managers under Approval Manager and Notification Recipient Options later in this article.
Clicking the wrench icon will present additional security options for your Approval Stage. Workflow security options include:
- Approval managers can edit response - Gives approval managers permanent modification rights for form submissions that have entered their workflow stage.
- Approval managers can delete response - Provides approval managers with permanent delete rights for form submissions that have entered their workflow stage.
- Approval managers retain view rights permanently after the approval is complete - Even when removed from their workflow stage, approval managers will retain view rights over the form responses that they have approved.
The Trigger Options section allows form builders to conditionally trigger approval stages based on specific field values submitted by end-users, and is described under Configure Workflow Triggers later in this article.
Create Email Notifications
To trigger email notification after forms have been submitted, you’ll need to add a Send Notifications workflow stage to your form. Once added, you can begin adding email notification recipients by clicking the add notification recipient link. Recipient options are discussed in more detail below.
Each notification stage gives form builders full control over the content included in the outgoing email notifications. Learn more about customizing emails under Advanced Options later in this article.
The Trigger Options section allows form builders to conditionally trigger notification stages based on specific field values submitted by end-users, and is described under Configure Workflow Triggers later in this article.
Customize Notification Messages
'Send Notifications' can have customized messages to include specific data from form responses which allows you to tailor the message to your target audience (e.g. notifying external contacts without including sensitive information).
Before customizing the message, navigate to the Build tab of your form in the edit view, click into one of the desired fields, then click 'More Properties'. Here, you'll see a Name field that isn't editable with a value of 'fieldx' where 'x' refers to a numeric value (e.g. field521). This value will be used to populate the values entered into the targeted field when referenced in your Notification stage.
Note down all fieldx values for the various fields you'll populate your notification message with. Once done, navigate to your Workflow tab and edit or create a Send Notification stage. Edit the message and replace {formdata} with {fieldx} to display the value from the targeted field. If you'd like to label the information, include the name of the field manually (e.g. Name: {field521} which becomes Name: John Smith).
This method works great for regular section fields, however, spreadsheet sections shouldn't be included as the result may display in a weird format. We recommend testing this with multiple rows in a spreadsheet section by setting up the send notification stage to notify you as a test.
Approval Manager and Notification Recipient Options
Each workflow stage, depending on the Stage Type, can contain one or more approval managers or email notification recipients.
These are the available approval manager and notification recipient options:
- Submitting User - Adds the submitting user as an approval manager or email recipient for their own form response. This is helpful in approval scenarios where changes are regularly made to form responses by approval managers and final approval by a submitting user is required.
- User - Presents a dropdown that allows you to select and add users as approval managers or email recipients to your workflow stage.
- Group - Presents a dropdown that lets you select and add a group of users as approval managers or email recipients to your workflow stage. This approval manager Group option is deactivated when the decision type is set to All Managers IN ORDER.
- Supervisor - Adds the immediate supervisor of the submitting user to your workflow stage. If the user has no supervisor, this portion of the workflow will be skipped.
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User Choice - Presents form submitters with an additional dropdown at the bottom of your form. The dropdown will be populated with users that can be selected and included in the approval or notification stage. Form builders can populate the dropdown with specific users, groups of users or all users. There are also two additional options for Notification Stages:
- Email List - allows you to define a comma separated list of email addresses. Each email address will be presented as a dropdown option at the bottom of your form. Users can select an email address and forward an email notification to the selected email address after the form submission.
- Email Input - provides submitting users with an email text field at the bottom of your form. Form submissions will trigger a notification to the email address that was entered in to the field.
- External Emails - Notification Stages also provide an additional External Emails option. This option allows form builders to define a list of email addresses, separated by semicolons, which should receive an email notification once a form has been submitted. Note that this feature assumes the email notification is being sent to a user who doesn’t have access to the intranet; therefore the submitting user's email address will be used for the email's From: address to leave the recipient with a channel for back-and-forth communication.
Watch a video of the entire process of adding an approval stage.
Configure Workflow Triggers
Workflow triggers allow workflow managers to create conditional workflow stages that will trigger based on form field values that have been entered.
The following steps will help you configure a trigger on an existing workflow stage:
- Edit the form and click the Workflow tab.
- Add a new or click an existing workflow stage.
- Click the wrench icon in the upper right corner of the workflow stage,
- Locate Trigger Options area. Use the Only If dropdown to select the field which the workflow stage will be depending on. Triggers can be dependent on text, dropdown, radio button, checkbox, date, link, email, location, formula, SQL query, number and mileage field values. If the trigger is dependent on a field that accepts text values, you can only use equals =. Triggers dependent on number fields can use the =, >, >=, <=, <.
Upon implementing the trigger, your workflow stage should only run when the specified condition has been met.
Watch a video of the process of adding workflow triggers:
Advanced Options
Clicking the Advanced Options tab within Workflow reveals additional options you might want to include in your form, as described in the sections below.
Approval Options
Several approval options are provided, which can finesse your form submission.
- Admin Approval Override - selecting this box allows administrators to approve on behalf of another approval manager (this is only possible for Super Admins by default).
- Automatic Approval - streamlines the approval process for single stage workflows by automatically approving the submission when the person submitting is also the approval manager.
- Restart Entire Workflow on Decline - selecting this box means that when a response is declined by an Approval Manager, returned to the submitting user and resubmitted, it's sent to the start of the workflow process (used when conditional workflow stages are used in the form, as the changes may trigger additional workflow criteria) rather than the default setting of the same position in the workflow.
Site Alerts
In addition to the email alerts, turning on this feature will result in a site alert appearing in the my profile area for form responses requiring approval.
Additional Approval Managers That Can Be Added to a Stage
These options further refine the approval process.
- Submitting User’s Supervisor - Allows approval managers to, optionally, pull the submitting user’s immediate supervisor directly in to their workflow stage. After being added, the submitting user’s supervisor will be required to approve the submitted form response regardless of the approval stage Decision Type.
- Approval Managers from Other Stages in the Same Workflow - Allows approval managers to, optionally, pull approval managers from other workflow stages. Once pulled in, the additional approval manager will need to approve the submitted form response in order for it to move on to the next workflow stage.
- Approval Manager’s Supervisor - Allows an approval manager to escalate the approval for a form to their own immediate supervisor. Once added, the supervisor can escalate the form approval to their immediate supervisor and simply approve the form.
- Specific Users/Groups - Allows form creators to add specific users or groups of users as additional approval manager options to their workflow stage. Approval managers can, optionally, pull any of the optional users in to their workflow stage.
Workflow Emails
The form builder application allows form creators to customize the content in the many types of outgoing email notifications. Click the desired notification type to begin modifying the email content.
- After clicking on Workflow Emails to reveal all the email types, on the right you'll see a link for how to reference form fields, which gives more information on the types of fields you can include in emails.
- If you want to include the full form in email notifications, use the reference tag {FormData}.
- Alternatively, you can target specific fields using the following steps:
- Edit the form and go to the Build tab.
- Click on one of the fields you want to populate within the email.
- Click 'More properties' on the Build Tool box.
- Look for the Name for this field (e.g. field488).
- Back on the Workflow tab, in your email add the Name of the field in squiggly brackets (e.g. {field488} ).
- Repeat for each field you want to add to your email notification.
Learn more about customizing workflow emails in this video.
Approval Process
When a submission is made which has an Approval Stage, it's automatically entered into an approval process, where Approval Managers (either a user or group) must take action to advance the submission. The Approval Managers receive an alert in their Dashboard that a submission was made, with a link to the submission, which shows a This Item is Pending Your Approval box.
When that box is expanded, the status of the submission is shown. Clicking on approval history (1) shows all current and future approval stages. Options for current actions (2) are shown on the right side of the box, and are described below.
The Approval Stage options are:
Approve
Used when the submitted response is completed as needed. If changes need to be made to the submission, the Approval Manager can revise, click Save Changes, then click Approve to finalize the submitted response. Approval Managers have the option to add an approval message prior to completing the approval process.
Decline
Used when the submitted response doesn't meet certain criteria and requires the submitting user to make further changes before approval. Approval Managers have the option to add a decline reason after selecting this option. There are two types of decline processes available:
- when declined, the response is sent back to the submitting user and upon resubmission continues from the same stage in the workflow; this is the default setting
- when declined, the response is sent back to the submitting user and upon resubmission sends it to the start of the workflow process (used when conditional workflow stages are used in the form, as the changes may trigger additional workflow criteria); this setting must be selected under Advanced Options, as described earlier in this article
Reject
Used when the submitted response either was done in error, or wouldn't be approved regardless of any changes made. Approval Managers have the option to add a reject reason after selecting this option.
Reset Pending Workflows
If workflows change for any reason, you can click the button Reset Pending Workflows, located at both the top and bottom of the Workflow tab.
Note that workflows are attached when users click Submit. When you Reset Pending Workflows, the user will receive an email notification that they need to resubmit, and their submission will appear as pending until they resubmit the form and the new workflow is attached.
Delete Workflow or Approval Manager
Of course, sometimes you'll need to delete a Workflow or Approval Manager, which can be done very simply.
To delete a Workflow, near the top of the Edit Workflow screen click Delete Workflow. Choose your option in the message box and click Yes to confirm.
To delete an Approval Manager, mouse over the name, and on the right side of your page click the small red icon to remove the Approval Manager. Note that if this was your only Approval Manager, you'll also need to delete the associated workflow (i.e. without an Approval Manager there can be no workflow).
After making any changes in Edit Workflow, be sure to click Save at the bottom of the page before leaving.
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