Multiple contributers in a form before workflow approval

Hello. I am working on my first Workflow. I am trying to have one person complete one part of a form, and then trigger a second person to fill out either another part of the form (or a separate form?) and then have all that data go to a third party for approval. Can you please advise the best way to do that? I've tried the AI chat and searched tutorials, but I can't find a example of that scenario. The AI says it is possible, I just need an example of how to do it. Thank you.

Hi Meredith,

Thanks for reaching out to Jotform Support. Yes, it is possible by using the Get Page URL widget and by having an Edit Link. For this demo, the second form filler will be the employee. Let me show you how to set that up:

1. In Form Builder, select the field for employees and click the Gear Icon.

2. Under the Advanced Tab, toggle on the Hide Field Option.

3. Click on the Add Form Element menu on the left side of the page.

4. Under the Widgets tab, scroll down the list and choose the Get Page Form URL widget.

5. In the orange navigation bar at the top of the screen, click on Settings.

6. Click on Conditions on the left side of the screen and add a Show and Hide Field Condition

7. Add a condition to only show the employees field if it's being edited.

Next part is to create an Autoresponder Email so the Employees are notified and will receive the form they need to answer to. Let me walk you through it:

1. In the orange navigation bar at the top of the screen, click on Settings.

2. Click on Emails on the left side of the screen and add a new Autoresponder Email.

3. Under Email Tab, add the {edit_link} code in the email body.

4. Under the Recipients Tab, set the Recipient email to the Employee email field.

5. Click Save and you're done.

Then you can set up a basic Workflow to send the submission for approval. Take a look at the screenshot below to see my setup:

Reach out again if you have any other questions.

Thank you. I’m a little stuck with getting the second part to forward to the second person who needs to fill in the form. That would be one set person, and not someone who is indicated in the form. The Recipient email field doesn’t let me provide an email address manually.

Hi Meredith,

I checked your flow and see that the email elements have static email address as their recipients and not a dynamic form field from your form. Check out the screenshot below for your reference:

If that's not exactly what you mean, can you indicate which field you're trying to set so we can understand and help you better?

Once we hear back from you, we'll be able to help you with this.

Let me explain a little. And what I have built so far may not be correct.

This workflow is about requests for school district facilities projects. Here are the steps I'm trying to create.

1) Initial request can be submitted by a number of people.

2) Once the request is submitted, a specific staff member at the district gets that info and is asked to submit 3 estimates for the job.

3) When that happens, I'd like the person who submitted the request to get a flow report, and for it to move onto Approval stage. But in order for it to be approved, those people will need to see both the initial form and the estimates. So I don't know if it's really best as 1 form, or as 2 forms that are somehow linked?

Can you please advise?

Hi Meredith,

I understand what you’d like to do, but I’ll need a bit of time to work out a solution. I’ll get back to you shortly.

Thanks for your patience, we appreciate it.

Thank you!

Hi Meredith,

When I reviewed your form and its workflow, I noticed that the submission edit link isn’t being sent to the person responsible for adding the estimates. This link should be included right after the flow is triggered. Here's a revised flow where I've added an email element to send the edit link to the person adding the estimates. I've added step indicators, so I can explain it better:

Now, here's how it works:

1. On initial submission (A), it will check the value of the Get Form Page URL widget if it contains edit. Since it's an initial submission, the result is False, so it will send an email to the Estimator (B). The email contains a link to edit the submission. Here’s what the email looks like:

You can mask the edit link by using it as a hyperlink to any texts that you want to show in the email content. Here's an example:

2. Right after the Estimator filled out and re-submits the form, it should restart the flow. It'll check the Get Form Page URL widget again if it contains the word edit (A). And since it's an edit submission process, the result will be True.

Following the flow, a Flow Report email will be sent to the intended recipient (C). Along with that, the Approval Email will be sent to the approver (D).

3. If the approver approved the submission, step E will be triggered, then a Task will be sent to the intended recipient (F). I’m not sure if you want this to be recorded as a submission on the form, because when I checked, there’s no Resource Allocation and Scheduling section in the form. If you can share more details about it, we’d be happy to help update the flow accordingly.

4. Lastly, a flow report will be sent again to the intended recipient (G). But if it's denied, step H will be triggered instead.

Also, there are a couple of tweaks you’ll need to make to your form for this to work seamlessly. First, you need to exclude the Submit button from the condition:

Finally, enable Restart Workflow on Submission Edit in the Workflow Builder.

And there you go. I know the steps are quite lengthy, so here's a cloned form for you to also clone and test first. And if it works for you, then go ahead and apply the same to your form.

Give it a try and let us know if you need any more help.

Wow! Thank you for this thorough update! I will take some time to go through all this over the next day or so, and will let you know if I have questions.

OK. I've tried adding a third portion - scheduling of the gig - as a third step. But now I have to control two sets of hidden fields so the right fields go to the right person.

Also, is there a way for the second and third users to SEE what has been filled out prior to them, but just not be able to edit it?

Also, I need a step between the email going to the estimator, the estimator completing the form - and THEN it goes to the stakeholders for approval. Right now it's going immediately.

I'm sorry for needing all this help. I'm certain that once I get through this form, I'll understand how the tools work and be able to create my own other forms with less challenge.

Are there any more thorough guides on the website? Is there an explanation of how to use each of the elements? For example, how to use split or merge?

Hi Meredith,

If you need to ensure that a certain user can't edit the data of the fields filled out by other users, we can add parameters to the edit submission link. Then, we'll use conditions to disable (set as read-only) certain fields based on the value of the Get Form Page URL widget. Here's an example edit submission link that you can add in the workflow emails:

https://www.jotform.com/edit/{id}?estimator

Here's a screencast for your reference:

As for the condition, here's an example that you can use to disable a field based on the value of the form URL:

Regarding the split and merge elements, here are the following guides on how to split or merge workflow elements:

• How to Split Branches in Jotform Workflows
• How to Merge Branches in Jotform Workflows

Let us know if there’s anything else we can help you with.

Hello again. So this has started to get a bit out of control for me, and I have a meeting this afternoon where I'm supposed to demonstrate that this workflow concept works. I've created a new workflow called TEST Approval Workflow Template that takes the hiding and showing of parts of the form out of the mix, and just turns the additional steps into separate tasks, for now.

But for some reason, the first task won't initiate after the approval process. Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong here? I am using three different test email address for the 2 different parties. The form is submitting and the request for approval is going through. But approval is not triggering the Estimate Task.

Hi Meredith,

I understand the issue, but I’ll need a bit of time to check on this. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Thanks for your patience, we appreciate it.

Thanks. My meeting is in an hour, so if there is anything you can do quickly, I'd really appreciate it.

Hi Meredith,

When I cloned and tested your TEST Facilities Workflow FORM, the same thing happened for me. At first, I also encountered the issue where the Estimates task wouldn’t trigger after approval. However, once I changed the second step from Approve & Sign to Approval element, the task began working properly.

Based on this, since the Approve & Sign element is legally binding, it may have stricter conditions than the regular Approval element, which could be why the task isn't proceeding. I'm still checking with our team to confirm if this behavior is expected. In the meantime, could you let us know if switching from Approve & Sign to Approval would work for your needs?

I noticed that other parts of your workflow are already using the Approval element, so if consistency is important, switching to it might be a simpler solution. Once we hear back from you, we can continue testing or suggest further adjustments to help you move forward smoothly.

Thanks for your patience and understanding, we appreciate it.

Thanks! I swapped that out and it did trigger the Estimates Task. So that's progress! But the Estimates Task is asking the user to log in to see the task, not showing the form that I created for that task. This needs to be for a user who does not log in, which I have correctly toggled on the form.

Hi Meredith_Friedman,

I understand the issue, but I’ll need a bit of time to work out a solution. I’ll get back to you shortly.

Thanks for your patience.