Approval Workflow: Possibility to see the approval step in the approval status column in Tables

I tried responding to your answer on the initial support form, but it kept giving me an error, so I will follow up here. Directly below is a screenshot to the answer I got.

I understand that the approval flow will restart after an edit, but that is not the problem I am trying to fix. You can see in the image above that after the edit I then selected "Quote emailed" as the next step in the approval flow, but the status still shows as "In progress", not "Quote emailed" as I was hoping it would. It seems that the status in the table only changes from "In progress" once the final step of the approval flow has been reached, and does not update to reflect the other steps in the flow, which means I cannot tell what step I am up to in the approval process when looking at the table.

The following is my initial question -

Good Afternoon:

I have a multi-step approval flow for my form and would like to see the approval status in the table that I am currently up to, but it seems that on all but the last step of each branch of the flow the approval status reads "in progress". This is the same as if I haven't done any part of the approval flow, and therefore becomes confusing and not a true representation of where I am up to. Am I doing something wrong?

For the second entry I have approved the order, but not yet sent the invoice. I would think that the Approval Status should say "Approved"

Hi Kerry,

Thanks for reaching out to Jotform Support. I’ll need a bit of time to look into this. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Thanks for understanding. We appreciate it.

Thanks - looking forward to hearing from you regarding this problem :-)

Hi Kerry,

Thanks for waiting. We're sorry for the delayed response. I cloned and tested your approval. For your second submission, there is no approved outcome from this flow. Could you please add the outcome for this flow?

About your first question, I was able to replicate the issue that the flow does not get completed even after completing the flow. With that, I cleared your form cache. Could you also please remove the end flow and add it back? Please make sure that the End Option is set to End Branch.

Give it a try and let us know how it goes.

Hi Marina:

I am still not getting the results that I would like. I'm not sure you understand what I am wanting to happen. The approval flow is set up how I want it to be, but in the table I thought that each step of the flow would be represented in the Approval Status column. So, when I have sent the quote it should change to the purple "Quote emailed" box in the Approval Status column, but instead it stays as "In progress". Nothing that you have suggested addresses this issue.

You can see in the image below that 2 steps have been completed in the Approval flow, but the Approval Status just remains as "In Progress"

Hi Kerry!

Thanks for getting back to us with more details. Please allow time for us to check on this and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

We appreciate your patience.

Thanks Kerry!

Hi Kerry!

As per checking, the status will only appear if a branch already ended or "terminated". If it's ongoing, then it will remain as "in-progress".

If you want to show this specific step the next step on the flow should be "terminated"

See revised version below on a cloned form:

It is not clear what the next step would be if the user chooses "Request More Info" or "Quote Emailed" so we have set it to "Terminate" on the example above because the only way to show these status on the Tables page is if the next step is "terminate" or "end flow". The flow will retain the "In progress" status until the flow is ended. If the flow doesn't end with "Quote emailed" or "Request more info", may we ask what the next step would be?

We also recommend adding the "Edit link" for your "Request more info" step, because the user wont be able to edit the requested information on the submission without the edit link.

You can use the "Restart Approval Flow on Submission Edit" so that once the user edits the submission, the flow will be restarted.

You can put the edit link on the Approval emails. You can include this text {edit_link} in the email to let approvers edit your submission.

Lastly, it seems that the way your approval flow is set up, if the approver clicked approved the status will still remain as "in-progress" since technically, the next step is still "Approval" and there will be another email that needs to be approved:

Thanks Kerry!

The next step in the flow after "quote emailed" or "more info requested" would either be "order cancelled" or "approved". The last step would be "invoice sent".

I have made some changes to the flow to have separate branches and an end or termination point for each branch. This still does not show me on the Approval status column of my table what part of the process I am up to until it reaches a termination. For any of the branches that has "end" the approval status still shows as "in process", not as the outcome linked to the branch.

Hi Kerry,

I made some tests, and it is not possible to show the status of complete steps in the Approval Status column in Jotform Tables until the last approval step is completed. It will always show In progress until all steps are completed. If you want to see which steps are completed, you will need to view each submission separately in the Jotform Tables or Inbox.

Let us know if you have any other questions.

Thanks for your reply. It would be very helpful to easily see what point you are up to in the approval flow (otherwise this feature is quite limited in it's effectiveness) Is this a feature that I can request? If so how do I go about putting in a request?

Hi Kerry,

I've gone ahead and escalated your request to our Developer Team. When or if it's developed depends on their workload, how viable it is, and how many other users request it. If there are any updates, we’ll circle back to this thread and let you know. 

Thanks - I really appreciate it!