Creating An Approval System

Overview

Use custom form statuses to create an approval system for your forms. You'll be able to define specific stages and statuses for your forms, ensuring efficient data handling and streamlined workflow processes.

Here are some common use cases of an approval system using custom statuses:

• Purchase Orders: Various stakeholders (e.g., requesters, managers, finance personnel) review and approve purchase requests at various stages, such as Requested, Under Review, Approved, and Completed.
• Project Proposals: Team members submit proposals for review and approval to supervisors and executives. Custom statuses like Submitted, Under Review, Approved with Revisions, and Approved help track the progress of each proposal.
• Employee Leave Requests: Employees submit requests for managers to review and approve. HR then finalizes the approval. Custom statuses such as Submitted, Under Review, Approved, and Finalized help ensure accurate tracking and efficient handling of leave requests.

In this article, we'll show you how to set up and use custom statuses to create an approval workflow tailored to your organization's needs.

How to Create an Approval System

1. Create custom form statuses that align with your business needs.1.

• • For example, if you conduct inspections, your custom status list could include Requested, In Progress, Pending Review, Requires Repairs, and Approved.
  • These statuses will represent different stages of your approval process.

 

2. Assign your statuses to user groups.

• • Assign your different sets of statuses to the appropriate user groups. This will help ensure each stage of the workflow is handled by the appropriate party.
  • For example, you could create two user groups: Inspectors and Property Managers. Inspectors would have access to the In Progress, Requires Repairs, and Pending Review statuses, while property managers would have access to the Requested and Approved statuses. This ensures that each user group can only use the relevant statuses for their role in the approval process.

3. Integrate this approval system into your workflow.

• • Once you've defined your custom statuses and assigned them to the respective user groups, you can integrate this approval system into your workflow.
  • Track each stage of your forms on the Submissions page in the Portal under the Status column.
  • Use Global Workflow to create automated data delivery actions based on specific status changes. For example, you can trigger the delivery of a form or notifications when it transitions to an Approved status. This helps streamline your communication and ensures that all relevant stakeholders are notified of the approval outcome.