There are 6 step settings which are common to all step types available in Gravity Flow. Let’s explore what they are and either where the values show up throughout the workflow experience or how the workflow execution is modified based on the selections you make.
Name
The Step Name is one of 2 required settings along with the Step Type. It is meant to provide a meaningful title to the step to inform both site administrators building workflows and assignees interacting with an entry workflow in several areas of your website:
- When editing a form within the Workflow Steps List
- When viewing the entry detail screen, within the Workflow details box if that is the current step for the entry. It could also appear within the timeline if the entry has already completed the step or had an admin use the Send to Step feature.
- When viewing an Inbox or Status page as a default column. This applies to both the WordPress admin pages accessed under Workflow > Inbox or Workflow > Status or any shortcode/block based pages you set up on the front-end of your site. It also appears in the status filter bar to let you identify entries based on the step.
- Within exports you generate for entries via the Forms > Import/Export menu. Each export includes a column for the status of each step that includes the Step Name.
- Within the Reports section including as a part of the report filter bar.
- Within the Workflow Activity panel that tracks all of the discrete actions every entry has taken as it progresses through from submission to completion.
What makes a good Step Name?
Something short and sweet to uniquely identify this step. We recommend a maximum of 3-4 words that focus on what task will be accomplished by completing the step. For interactive steps, it should be something that will help users who might gloss over your well written notifications or instructions as to the primary task for them. For non-interactive steps, it might include details about which system(s) are involved in the automation or the type of data being sent or modified.
Description
An optional field which doesn’t appear on any user-facing portions of the interface. It can be used to provide additional context of what the step does for site administrators editing the workflow. Depending on your workflow complexity, you might describe why various other settings are configured in a particular way so that your future self (or your colleagues) will know what you set the step up for.
Step Type
The Step Type is the other required setting, along with the Step Name. The list of available step types to choose from will be based on what plugins are installed and active on your website. When creating a new step, clicking on the Step Type button will cause the Step Settings page to reload with additional settings fields for you to define. You can click through multiple step types to see what additional settings are required, but once you successfully save the step the type cannot be changed. When editing an existing step, the step type will already be highlighted – as we can see in the screenshot below, where the Approval step type is highlighted.
- When editing a form within the Workflow Steps List
- When viewing the entry detail screen, within the Workflow details box – if that is the current step for the entry. It could also appear within the timeline if the entry has already completed the step or had an admin use the Send to Step feature.
- When viewing an Inbox or Status page as a default column. This applies to both the WordPress admin pages accessed under Workflow > Inbox or Workflow > Status or any shortcode/block based pages you set up on the front-end of your site.
- Within exports you generate for entries via the Forms > Import/Export menu. Each export includes a column for the status of each step that includes the Step Name.
Highlight
The step highlight setting presents a color picker which will help individual steps stand out in both the workflow inbox and the step list. It can be used to bring attention to important tasks and to help organise complex workflows.
Here are some common scenarios where it might be useful to use highlights to differentiate between different rows:
- By role/type of task
For an inbox focused on a single form that has an entry coming back to an assignee through multiple steps, this can provide an at-a-glance context. - By form
For an inbox with multiple form/workflows, color-coding can be easier to scan (or use less page real estate) than including the form name as a column. - By 3rd party system
For a workflow involving multiple incoming and outgoing webhooks to 3rd party systems, associating a color for each makes editing or troubleshooting a workflow easier.
Condition
Similar to how Gravity Forms provides field conditional logic to determine whether an individual field should show/hide on a given form, the Step Condition settings let you define whether the workflow should bypass or execute the step when the entry arrives at it.
The condition involves multiple sub-settings:
Conditional Logic Type
Perform this step if Any/All of the condition rule(s) match. Will any one of the rows of conditions being true satisfy the condition so that the step gets executed or do all of the rows conditions have to be true?
Each condition rule has 3 sub-settings:
- Condition Field/Data
What field (or entry data) should be considered? - Condition Operator
How should that field/data be considered? - Condition Value
What should the field/data be compared against? This setting will change depending on what is chosen in the other 2 sub-settings. For example, selecting a dropdown field with an IS operator will make the value section a dropdown with the potential field values. Whereas selecting the same dropdown field with a CONTAINS operator results in a text field to put in the partial value you want to search for.
If a step is bypassed due to the conditions, it will not show up in the timeline at the bottom of the entry details screen. From the user/workflow perspective, it is as if the step does not exist. However, if an administrator uses the Send to Step feature, that takes precedence over the condition settings defined and the step will be executed.
A few examples of where the condition setting is invaluable:
- Including optional steps that should only execute when certain data conditions are met.
- If your workflow requires a different set of assignees to make an approval based on certain field values. You can create one step, duplicate it, and then adjust the condition. Keep in mind that if multiple steps conditions can evaluate to true that they will all be executed.
- When combined with the Next Step setting, you can create entire branches of multiple steps which can be skipped. Consider a form that has checkboxes for which types of services you provide. If the user does not select logo design, there are an entire series of user input steps and approvals that can be bypassed.
Learn more about setting up branches in your workflow
Schedule
Scheduling can be useful when two steps are being triggered too close together, or when you need to perform a step on a specific date.
This feature is particularly useful for so-called “content-dripping” where a series of notification steps are triggered over a number of days or weeks. For example, a customer has signed up for a course that should be delivered by email every day over the course of a week. You’d create 7 steps, each with a delay of 1 day.
Steps can be scheduled to begin after a specified delay in minutes, hours, days or weeks.
Steps can be also scheduled to begin on a specific date. For example, for an event.
Finally, if your form contains any date fields, steps can be scheduled to start on, before or after the date in a date field.
Next Step
If the Step Condition does not preclude the step from starting, the Next Step setting will determine where the entry should proceed to upon completion. There are some variations to this setting based on the step type which are covered in their respective step settings documentation. The options you can select from are:
- Next step in list
Choosing this will let the entry proceed to the next step as defined in the workflow settings screen. This is advantageous because it means any changes you make to the order of steps (by dragging and dropping on the workflow settings panel) will not require you to make additional changes to the next step setting. - Workflow Complete
No matter where the step is within the step list, the workflow will be marked as complete and no further steps executed. This is useful when a branch you have designed into the workflow has no further processing requirements. - Send to a specific step
The rest of the dropdown is populated with all of the steps in the workflow except the step you are currently editing. By selecting a separate step you can create a useful loop or break out of a loop when combined with the Condition step setting.
Hopefully you can see both the simplicity of each individual step setting and yet the powerful flexibility that can come from even just combining the common step settings we have covered in this lesson. After you have created your first few steps and workflows, we are confident you will find the setup process to be very efficient.
These common settings can be combined with the step specific ones which the other documentation in this category covers, to produce some incredible dynamic processes.