Workflows aren’t the easiest thing to manage unless you have powerful software tools.
Jotform and ProcessMaker noticed this pain point among organizations and decided to create a new integration to help teams develop seamless approval workflows and get more done in less time.
Now we’re joining forces to bring you, Think Beyond Your Workflow with Jotform + ProcessMaker, a webinar on how to use the integration to your advantage. It highlights the benefits of both apps and demos how to setup and execute approval workflows, such as content approval and IT ticketing.
Jotform + ProcessMaker
Jotform is a powerful data collection tool that helps organizations collect, manage, and distribute important information. ProcessMaker is a workflow software solution used to design, automate, and deploy business processes of any kind. Together, these technologies allow any size organization to get business-critical tasks done quickly and efficiently.
Here is the full transcript for the webinar.
INTRODUCTION
[00:00:00.88]
Andrew Skinner: Hello, and thank you for joining our webinar. I’m Andrew Skinner, the integrations manager here at Process Maker. Matt is joining us from the Process Maker side. And Titus is joining us with JotForm. We’re excited to show you the integration we’ve been working on with JotForm. And to that effect want to thank everyone on both teams for the work that got this integration to where it is today. Our goal is to help Jotform users get more done with less using this integration that we’ve built.
Titus Ndoka: Hello everyone.
Titus here from JotForm. Jotform is an easy-to-use online form builder that assists organizations with their data collection needs such as collecting payments, generating leads, gathering registration information, and more. We’re excited about the integration with Process Maker because the Jotform community has been asking for it for quite some time now.
Better yet, the integration is free, although you can upgrade based on your workflow needs.
Andrew: Process Maker is an easy to use BPM and workflow software solution. It is used to design, automate, and deploy business processes of any kind. Process Maker also builds custom workflow solutions for ISV and SaaS vendors like JotForm. We are part of the team that has put together this integration together over the past three months.
Titus: Jotform users have been asking for approval workflow functionality to help them work better as a team on the work they accomplish through a JotForm.
We believe that forms can be more than a data collection tool and can be the beginning of a broader set of activities to be accomplished. This is the way many Jotform users are using the product to coordinate the data they’re collecting and make important and continuous business decisions with that data.
WORKFLOW WITH JOTFORM FEATURES
[00:02:08.96]
Andrew: Our purpose is to empower Jotform users to coordinate these decisions so their team can make them better, more easily, from anywhere and with more accountability for all parties. That’s why we’re offering this approval workflow integration with JotForm. Workflow for Jotform is a lean approval workflow solution that allows any Jotform user to wrap approvals around form submissions. All workflows are triggered by a Jotform submissions and executed by the end user entirely from email and slack channels. Since your team is already communicating together through these channels, their workflow will always be accessible, and there’s no need for your team to log into additional software.
This also means that your team can engage with your workflows from their mobile devices when they’re on the fly. They can review and then approve, reject, or reassign. These fields are completely customizable. So instead of “approve,” “reject,” “reassign,” your fields could be “validate,” “deny,” “share,” or anything you wish. The reassign option is a unique feature because it allows your team members to add in additional approval levels as needed. If we click that reassign button, we’ll reach the screen where the workflow history is available in one place so your team can make well-informed decisions.
You can also link together actions to form multilevel workflows. Workflow for Jotform is unique because rather than using a workflow designer like most workflow products, you can set up multilevel approvals with the click of a button. You can also use this simple approach to create workflows with as many layers as you wish or that branch into different approval actions based on whether a request was approved or denied. You can use Workflow for Jotform to tackle the approval processes that move your business. Many of you have joined this webinar today with a particular approval process in mind that you would like to set up, and I’d like to encourage you to also think of other work and decisions that your team handles that could be coordinated with Workflow for JotForm. Workflow for Jotform is also a great compliment to the newly released Jotform Enterprise.
The combined functionality of Jotform’s features and approval workflows opens up a great many possibilities. As just a couple of examples, your team could use file uploads for your content approvals and include e-signatures in your contract workflows. As an administrator, the history log of your workflows is always available to you. You can download a CSB to perform analytics on your workflow data. With these tools at your disposal, you can also gain insight into how your team works and identify opportunities for improvement. Now we’re gonna give a quick demo of Workflow for Jotform in action.
WORKFLOW FOR JOTFORM DEMO
[00:05:18.88]
Andrew: First we’ll show you the workflow in action and then we’ll show you how easy it is to set up.
Amanda submits a case study to be approved for publication using her company’s JotForm. She fills in the required form fields and submits the request. Once her Jotform is submitted, the workflow begins and triggers an email in Andrew’s inbox. He sees the requests and reviews the case study. In this case, he decides he wants a second pair of eyes before publishing so he reassigned the request to Jennifer.
Jennifer receives the request by email, reviews the content, and reassigns the request back to Andrew with her approval. Andrew again receives the request in his email, sees Jennifer’s comment, and issues his final approval. Amanda receives an email that her content has been approved. Now we’ll show you how you can set up the workflow you just saw in a matter of minutes.
First create a new action and choose email as your channel of communication. Now link your Jotform, select your form and the information you would like to include from it in your workflow. Enter in the approval email and customize your message using Jotform variables. You can also customize messages that will be sent to the requester and the events of an approval, denial, or reassignment.
Click “Create” to finish setting up your action.
Finally, copy the webhook from your action into the Jotform’s webhook integration under “Settings.” Now your workflow is set up. Anytime this form is submitted, it will trigger a workflow where you and your team can review content right from your email.
HOW THE TICKETING SYSTEM WORKS
[00:07:14.28]
Andrew: In this video, we’ll show you how to create a ticketing system using Workflow for JotForm. Stephanie Katz submits an IT request using her company’s Jotform and fills in the form fields before submitting her request. There is a performance issue relating to her Mac OS X with the severity of 3 for the product she is using. She uploads a screenshot to show the IT department the exact issue she is having. Once her Jotform is submitted, the workflow begins and triggers a notification and Slack to the entire IT department.
The head of IT assigns the issue to Matt, who manages the support team and asks him to review the request. Matt gets the request details via email and decides to assign this particular issue to his performance specialist, Karen. He includes a note that the issue has been assigned to her. Karen receives the issue in her email. She resolves it and updates the workflow by reassigning the request back to the IT department’s Slack channel. She comments that the issue has been resolved. The IT department can now mark the issue “resolved,” completing the workflow on their end. Stephanie receives an email that her IT request has been resolved, along with an entire history of the workflow. With that, we’d like to turn it over to JotForm.
Titus: Thanks, Matt and Andrew. As you can see, our integration with Process Maker is extremely helpful for government agencies, banking organizations, medical companies, academic institutions, small businesses, and more.
Like we mentioned earlier, you have full range to customize your forms and workflows. So it’s great for all types of organizations to get more done with less.
Q&A SESSION
[00:09:19.49]
Andrew: That’s the end of our planned presentation. Now we’re going to go over some of our most frequently asked questions. If you have any other questions, you can reach us at support@workflowforjotform.com. “What is the difference between a simple approval and a multilevel?”
Matt McClintock: Multilevel approval is a series of simple approval actions that get chained together. By chaining simple approval actions together, the results of one approval can trigger the start of another approval. You can design multilevel approvals so that if a user clicks “approve” on one action…
…it will trigger another approval. If the user clicks on “reject” in the approval action, it might start a totally different action. “What if I want to change my buttons so they say ‘validate’ instead of ‘approve’ ”?
Andrew: All buttons can be renamed so they can say anything you want them to say. You might want a button to say “escalate” instead of “reassign,” for example.
“Can I use my Jotform fields in the subject line of my email alerts?”
Matt: Yes, you can use your Jotform field values both in the subject line of the email messages and in the body of messages and select messages that get triggered.
“When I make a reject decision, I want to be able to add comments so the user knows why their request was rejected. Can I do this?”
Andrew: Yes. After you click “approve” or “reject,” you will always be directed to a page where you can add comments.
If you want to add a comment before the decision gets routed to the next user. “Can I use Workflow for Jotform on my mobile device?”
Matt: Yes, Workflow for Jotform is natively ready for mobile use. All activities happen in your email or your Slack app. So they are completely mobile ready.
Andrew: “How can I see a history log of who approved what and when they approved it?” A full audit log is created that records every action. The audit log is shown in Slack messages and email messages so that a user can see who made the decision before it gets routed to that user. System administrators can also download the audit history to excel.
Matt: “Can I create management-level reports and dashboards for my approvals so that I can see trends and totals?” The system admin has the ability to download reports to Excel. In Excel or another reporting tool, these reports and dashboards can easily be configured.
“How do I upgrade to a paid plan in Workflow for Jotform?”
Andrew: Just click the upgrade button under the pricing section and fill out the form on the web page. Our team will then contact you for payment and then we’ll upgrade you to the plan of your choice.
“Is Workflow for a Jotform part of my Jotform subscription?”
Matt: No, it is not. Workflow for Jotform is a separate service that was created on Process Maker’s workflow technology. Process Maker builds workflow solutions for a world of industries including software.
Andrew: “Can I make Slack approval actions and email approval actions in the same multi-approval sequence?” Yes, you can start with an email approval that then triggers a Slack approval or vice versa. “Does workflow for Jotform connect to active directory to obtain user hierarchies for managing approvals?” Not yet, but let us know this is important for your organization and we will add it.
On behalf of the Process Maker and Jotform teams, We would like to thank you so much for attending our webinar. You can get started right now at workflowforjotform.com. Please reach out to us anytime with any questions. You’ll reach Matt and I directly at support@workflowforjotform.com.
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