I’m not sure if what I want to do can be done, but I’m hoping that maybe one of you has already found a way to do it.
I have a complex workflow set up. During one portion of this workflow, I set up multiple form submission steps. I did it in separate steps because this assignment will be made to different groups of people and they all need to receive a slightly different email with different instructions, different fields’ merge tags, etc. But then I realized that this will probably mean that the first group would have to submit all their forms before the next group would even get assigned. I actually need all of these groups to be assigned simultaneously.
Ideally, I would like to only have one step where I can either send out multiple emails to the different groups from that step OR I can set merge tags or sections of the text within the email that will display depending on who received that email.
Is something like that even possible? If not, is there another way to make sure that these groups receive the assignment at the same time while still preserving the separate workflow steps?
The “similar yet different” approach for assignees is one that we get a variety of support requests about with Gravity Flow. Depending on the use case, there can be a few different ways to handle it. Hopefully some of the links below will help you find one that matches for yours.
Like notifications, the instructions setting on steps (on any User Input or Approval step as example) will process both shortcodes and merge tags. If there is a straight forward data relationship between field values that make assignees or info to present, you could use the conditional shortcode to show specific info to specific assignees.
Instead of using the Form Submission Step, did you look at using the Create an Entry step type and then the sub-form using a User Input step type? That would let all of the assignees do their separate tasks concurrently and likely keep your different instructions / merge tags / etc.
If you need the main form to “hold” until all of those now asynchronous assignments are completed, our Gravity Demo environment has an example related to building a Wedding Planning workflow that tackles a lot of that. After you submit the form go to /form-connector-wedding-planning/ in the demo site to learn more. An earlier iteration of that was also discussed in the Gravity Forms Summit that you can still stream the session of.
Thanks for your reply. I think the ‘New Entry’ step sounds like my best option. But I have a follow-up question: you mentioned a User Input sub-step. I want to make sure I understand. Are you saying that I set up the New Entry step on the main form and then a User Input Step on the other form where I want to collect the different users’ input?
If so, how do I handle the mapping in the New Entry step on the main form? Will the sub-form entries be “attached” to the main, parent form so that they are easily accessible or do I have to create fields on the main parent form to pull in their answers?
Also, how does the ‘New Entry’ step know who to send the sub-form to? I’m assuming that this will automatically trigger the workflow for the sub-form which sends out the user input steps. Is that correct?
2nd follow-up question: In the sub-form I need to assign the users who will complete it, right? Here’s the rub: those assignees are going to differ for every single parent form entry depending on several conditions so I can’t just enter the emails associated or even user roles to make those assignments. I need to assign them based off auto-population data in the parent form OR from a Google sheet where the conditional assignments live. I am already pulling in the assignments from that Google Form into the parent form. Here’s my issue: I don’t understand how to make conditional assignments in the sub-form based upon either that Google Sheet or the parent entry because as far as I can see, the sub-form doesn’t “see” the information or conditions from that parent entry.
There are a few different approaches depending on where/how the data needs to be accessed. I’ll follow-up the discussion into your support request, but a few links and notes for others that may be reading this after the fact…
The Create an Entry step does provide a way to map the generated ID into a field of the main form. If you need to store multiple entries, the gravityflowformconnector_post_new_entry action might be one to look at to store into a list field as example.
That is correct. The assignees could be identified by values mapped in the step settings of the Create New Entry step, via gravityflowformconnector-new-entry filter or others.
That sounds like a case where you would define the user field in the sub-form that the data/logic determines who it should be, and then the user input step is assigned to that user field. It could also be done without the user field via gravityflow_step_assignees on the user input step.