Approval Workflow Questions

I have a quick question about these new workflow features. I set up an approval workflow for a form hoping to have a manager from another company click "approve" or "deny" in their email - but when they try to click approve/deny it forwards them to "Sign Up For JotForm" rather than recording their approve / deny response. If send this same e-mail to me, it logs me into the JotForm admin panel to approve or deny.

Am I misunderstanding the functionality of workflows? Are they ONLY for internal employees vs. gather external feedback? Or can they include input from others outside of my company?

In this time sheet scenario, a temporary employee fills out his/her time sheet for the week, that sheet then gets emailed to their manager & us, the manager approves or denies it, and then that approval comes back to us, the staffing agency. Hope that makes sense? Please take a look at the workflow I have setup and let me know if this feature is ONLY possible for others with a JotForm account / user on our account? Is there a way to make that response feature public via the email sent? Thanks.

Hello there,

Thank you for contacting JotForm Support! I just cloned your form into my account to test this out, and I am seeing that your approval emails do not include the "Edit Link" variable, which is necessary for this approval workflow. Please see below for a screenshot of this email after I added the Edit Link variable.

Once I added this variable, I entered my personal email as the "Manager Email" and was able to edit submissions without being prompted to log in beforehand.

Can you please ensure that you have added these Edit Links to your Notification emails, and let me know if your managers are still unable to edit your submissions?

Thank you!

I tried adding (1) Edit Link as you have suggested. No luck. Does this "Edit Link" need to be included on ALL e-mail notifications? Thanks. -E

Hello there,

Can you provide me with the URL of the Form that you added the Edit Link to? While the edit link will not be needed on every email notification, it is a necessary part of the approval process to include this link in any email that will be used to approve or reject this form.

Please reference this User Guide to build out your approval flow- https://www.jotform.com/help/432-a-general-approach-on-building-an-approval-process-workflow

The cornerstone of this process is adding a dropdown to your form where your managers can either select "Approve" or "Reject", and making this field conditionally visible based on the URL that is used to access the form.

This would allow the employees to fill this sheet out, but not be able to see the "Approve/ Reject" dropdown, and use conditions to only have this field appear if the URL includes the word "edit"

This will cause the Approval dropdown to populate ONLY when this form is accessed via the edit link that is included in the notification emails sent to management.

Can you please provide some additional context as to what is actually occurring on your end, rather than the expected behavior described above?

Thank you in advance, and apologies for the back and forth.

This is the form I was working on: https://form.jotform.com/210896493360159

So to clarify, the built-in workflow system & interface is REALLY only for internal approvals? This other article link you are showing me is a workflow "workaround" for external approvals and doesn't use the same built in system - rather other features? Is that an accurate understanding?

Thanks.

-E

Hello there,

I am having a hard time understanding your most recent question. There are no limitations as to whether this workflow can be used internally or externally, as you can include anybody in the process by triggering a notification email to be sent to them with this edit link.

In your use case, you could have the initial form submission trigger an email to be sent to the manager, and includes the edit link, which will allow them to set the "Approve/ Reject" box.

You could then set up a second conditional email that will be sent to the staffing agency once the Approve/Reject dropdown is filled in.

We also offer similar approval flows through integrations with third party applications such as Workflow- https://www.jotform.com/integrations/workflow-for-jotform

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

Let me try clarify, although it might be easier to record a video and share it...

The reason I am confused and referring to "internal" and "external" use has to do with the default generated Approve / Deny email which is automatically created once enabling the workflow feature.

When this email is triggered, it is sent out to the manager, and they click one of these buttons - green or red - it then asks them to sign up for JotForm. This makes me deem this particular workflow functionality "internal" or ONLY accessible by a user logged into the JotForm account.

If I click on the approve / deny, it brings me to the JotForm interface, because I am the admin / account holder.

You are suggesting I edit the actual form first. I'm not sure I totally understand why there needs to be a drop-down on the form for them to select when they are ONLY on the triggered email result? They are NOT the ones filling out the form, just reviewing it's contents via e-mail.

You said "In your use case, you could have the initial form submission trigger an email to be sent to the manager, and includes the edit link, which will allow them to set the "Approve/ Reject" box."

I have done this ^ but NOT added the "approve/reject box" as there are already the approve / deny buttons. What use would the Approve / Deny buttons have in the default e-mail then?

Maybe my real question is "what's the point of approve / deny buttons in the default workflow e-mail if ONLY JotForm users can use them?"

Hope this helps clarify? If not I will record a video. Thanks! -Ed

Hey Ed,

Thank you for clarifying, and apologies for the back and forth here! You are correct that the Approval Settings which are available through your form settings will only work for other JotForm Users.

The use cases for this tool is typically limited to larger organizations with multiple users accessing JotForm from the same account. For your use case, I would suggest using this process- https://www.jotform.com/help/432-a-general-approach-on-building-an-approval-process-workflow, which will allow you to implement multiple levels of approval both within, and outside of your organization.

I just cloned your form and inputted the first few pieces of conditional logic here to get this approval process flowing. When an employee fills out the form, it will trigger an email to be sent to myself, which will include the "Edit Submission" link.

Since we have conditional logic in place to show the "Approve/ Reject" field when the URL has the word "edit" in it, I will be able to edit the submission, and set this dropdown to either "Approve" or "Reject"

At this point we can set up additional conditions to send out emails as needed according to whether this request was approved or rejected.

Feel free to clone this form and look over the extra fields I added, as well as the email settings and conditional logic- https://www.jotform.com/210907067983968

Please reach back out with any additional questions.

Thank you!