Form Settings: Approvals & Notifications

Franklin Alves

July 17, 2023 19:23

Set up a workflow to review and approve form submissions.

Let's begin by creating a new form or by editing an existing form. Once the form is open, click on the Settings button, found in the upper right corner:

The Settings button will open up a menu of options:

Click the title to expand and collapse additional options for each section. Below is a deeper dive into the Approvals & Notifications section!

Building An Approval Workflow

Ordered vs. Unordered

You have the ability to either order your approvals or leave them unordered. If you order your approvals, “Person A" will have to approve the response before “Person B” gets notified that they have a form to approve. The form response is fully approved when the last approver on the list approves the response.

If you choose unordered approvals, all approvers in the workflow will receive a notification at the same time. The entire form response will be approved when all designated approvers have completed their step. Unordered approvals don't have to happen in a sequenced manner.

Adding Stages

When you click on “add stage” a box appears with a list of actions that will allow you to build an approval workflow. Click on “What” to start creating an approval stage.

You can delete any approval stage by clicking on the "X" next to that approval stage. You can reorder approvals by clicking on the up and down arrow and dragging the box to your new desired location.

Selecting An Approver

Now it's time to choose who will be notified or asked to approve! You can choose from several options:

User: allows you to choose a specific administrative user to be notified or serve as an approver for the form. If you do not see the person you need listed in the dropdown, it's possible you do not have access to see that person or they may not be an administrator yet.
Role: Choose a specific role - Campus Admin, Campus View, Category Admin, or Organization Admin - to approve responses to your form.
Field: The Field option will appear if an Email field or the Organization Widget has been utilized in the body of the form.
- Email Field: The responder will provide an email address in this field as part of their submission. An approval request will be sent to the email address provided.
- Organization Widget: If your approval stage is based on the Organization Widget, you can choose to request approval from an officer of the organization chosen in the response. For example, you can have the Treasurer of the selected organization be an approver in the workflow.
Email: A notification or request for approval will be sent to the email address you provide in the approval workflow. This is ideal for departments or people who are not users in Presence. Just know this person will only be able to approve from their email inbox. Please note: If the email address you are using is attached to an active user in Presence, use the "User" based stage instead!
Officers: You will be able to set the officer type (President, Advisor, Treasurer, etc.) as well as the organization you want to be part of the workflow. Need all your funding requests to go to your Student Government Treasurer? This is how to do that!
Responder: You can send messages to the person who filled out the form! If login is required on your form, all responders are notified when their submission is approved or denied, This is great for relaying additional information as part of the approval process or keeping the responder up-to-date on the status of their response. Responders can only be notified; they cannot be asked to approve their own submission. You must require login in the form settings in order for this option to appear.

Approve vs Notify: The final part of the workflow is determining what the user will need to do. “Approve” asks the user you have selected to approve incoming submissions. “Notify” means the user you selected will simply be notified via email that a submission has been received.

Advanced Approval Workflow Options

You can further customize the workflow using the options below. Check out our support article on Advanced Approvals & Notifications for more information about:

Messages: Create a custom message for those who are part of the workflow.
Conditional Logic: Logic allows you to create approval workflows when specific conditions are in effect.
Editing Ability For Approvers: Allows approvers to make changes to the submission as part of their approval stage