A process is the set of stages a form’s entries move through after they arrive, such as New, Waiting for approval and Done. Each entry is in one stage at a time, with an owner, a due time and the actions your team uses to move it on. You set it up on the form’s Process page in the builder. Forms without a process work as before.
What a process gives each entry
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| Stages | Each stage is Open (the team is working on it), Waiting (for an approval or someone outside the team) or Closed (finished). |
| Owners | A stage can give its entries an owner: a person, a group, the person in a team member field, or whoever owned the entry before. A group’s entries stay unassigned within the group until someone takes them. |
| Due times | A stage can set a due time in hours, days or weeks. Entries still in the stage after that are overdue and stand out in red. |
| Actions | Buttons such as Approve or Send for approval that move the entry to another stage. Each action can ask for a comment or a confirmation, and can be limited to the owner, a group or account admins. |
Start from scratch, or from a process template: Review and approve, Triage and resolve, or Apply, interview, decide. If you already track progress with a Dropdown team field such as Status, the Process page can turn its options into stages.
Approvals, including people without an account
A waiting stage can need approval. When an entry arrives, each approver gets an email with Approve and Reject buttons, so they don’t need a FormWork account. People in your account can also decide from the entry or from My work.
- Approvers can be a person, a group, the person in a team member field, a fixed email address, or an email address given in the form.
- Approvals needed can be any one approver, everyone, or at least a set number.
- Once the decision is made, the entry moves to the stage you chose for approved or rejected.
- Approvers see only the answers you choose to show them.
- Each link is for one person and one entry, works once, and expires after the number of days you set on the stage.
Rejecting always needs a comment, and every request and decision stays in the entry’s history. See approvals for the details and how the links are kept safe.
Work the queue
My work lists the entries that need you across every form in the account: approvals waiting for you, overdue entries, entries you own, and unassigned entries in your groups. Each row has one button, such as Approve or the stage’s first action, so routine work can be done from the list.
On a form’s entries table, stage filters and quick filters such as Assigned to me, Overdue and Waiting for my approval narrow the list, and can be saved in a view. You can move up to 1,000 selected entries at once. See My work and stages.
Let respondents follow progress
Respondent status is off by default. When you turn it on, the person who submitted an entry gets a private link to a read-only page showing a label you choose for each stage, such as “Being reviewed”. They never see your stage names, owners, comments or answers. The link can go in the confirmation email, the success message or an automation’s email. See respondent status.
Stages and automations together
Automations can react to the process and change it:
- Triggers: Stage changes, Approval is decided and In a stage too long.
- Steps: Move to stage, Assign (to a person, or to the next person in a group in turn), Request approval and Remind approvers.
Use them for reminders, escalation, routing by amount, or sending an entry to another system once it is approved.
Know the boundaries
- FormWork doesn’t email owners when an entry is assigned to them or becomes overdue. Use an automation with the Stage changes or In a stage too long trigger for that.
- Only forms have a process. Data tables don’t.
- The process is part of the form’s draft and goes live when you publish. Every entry follows the latest published process, and the publish review asks what to do with entries in a stage you remove. See drafts and versions.
- Groups decide who owns and approves work, not who can see it. Everyone in an account can open every entry. See security and access.
- A forwarded approval email forwards its link. Keep link expiry short for sensitive decisions.
See how this fits an application review or client onboarding process. For why we built stages this way, read the stages launch post.