Gravity Form Add-On Step Types

• External Feeds
• Create a Form
• Setting up the Slack Add-on
• Creating a Feed for the Slack Add-On
• Create the Workflow
• Payment Add-On Feeds
• About the Form Connector extension
• Create a Page for the Payment Form
• Create the Form Submission Step
• Within Site Add-On Feeds
• Advanced Post Creation (APC)
• Partial Entries

Feed/Step Type	Details
External Feeds	Connects your form to an external site via an API key or unique identifier and allows you to map field data from the entry to the 3rd party system. The Gravity Flow steps for these feeds require no user interaction.
Payment Feeds	These follow a similar setup process to standard external feeds, but the payment focus brings additional data or integration options to your site. The Gravity Flow steps for them involve user interaction. In some cases, we have an entire extension dedicated to the depth of functionality and use cases they provide are covered in their extension documentation.
Within Site Add-On Feeds	These trigger other activity within your WordPress site to do a wide variety of unique functionality. In fact, Gravity Flow is itself an example of a Feed Add-On.

This documentation covers covers at least one feed of each type. The goal is to give you a good grasp of how Gravity Flow steps interact with that type of feed and confidence to set up any other feed of that type. Across the 3 types there are generally common setup activities you’ll be doing:

• Configure an API key or unique identifier that allows the external service to securely identify your submissions as coming from you.
• Identify the form you want to use to send the information.
• Map the form fields to the other add-on or service you want to populate.

External Feeds

Gravity Forms provides a lot of external feed-based add-ons. This guide will follow the setup for one – Slack – and build a workflow that has it triggered after an approval step. The majority of content for the Slack add-on and feed setup of this section comes from the Gravity Forms Guide for their Slack add-on. There are similar guides for each Gravity Forms add-on which we recommend you review.

Create a Form

Let’s set up a cold-call sales form for everybody’s favourite paper company – Dunder Mifflin – which we can use to simulate notifying our sales team Slack channel anytime a new high-value order request has been approved. It will have 5 fields:

• On the left side navigation menu, hover over Forms and click on New Form.
  • Give it a title of Paper Sales
  • Press the Save button.
• Add a Name Field
  • Set it to be required
• Add an Email Field
  • Set it to be required

• Add a Product Field
  • Set the product label to “Best Paper – 20lb / 92 Dwight”
  • Set the price to $50
  • Set it to be required
• Add a Total Field
• Add a Paragraph Field
  • Set the label to ‘Additional Details’
• Press the Update button in the upper right corner to save the form.

Setting up the Slack Add-on

• Pre-Requisites: Download and install the add-on and have an active Slack account
• Setup
  • Log into your WordPress admin dashboard.
  • On the left side navigation menu, hover over Forms and click on Settings.
  • From this page, click the Slack tab.
  • Click the button labeled Connect to Slack to begin authorizing the Slack add-on.
  • You will be sent to the Slack website and prompted to authorize the application to your organization. Click Authorize. You will be sent back to your site, and Gravity Forms should display that the authorization is complete.

Creating a Feed for the Slack Add-On

To create a feed to Slack using the Slack Add-On for Gravity Forms, do the following from your WordPress Admin Dashboard:

1. Click on Forms in the left side menu.
2. Select the form that you want to use with Slack.
3. Once within your desired form, hover over Settings and click on Slack.
4. Click Add New to create a new feed.
5. You will be presented with the Slack feed settings screen where the following fields are available to populate:
   • A feed Name is required. It is only used for identification.
     
   • An Action is required. Select Send Message to configure the feed to send a message inside Slack.
6. When Send Message is chosen as the Action, the following settings will display:
   • Send To: Based on your selection here, you will be able to send the triggered message to a channel, group, or individual.
   • Slack Channel: Select the specific channel, group, or individual that the message should be sent to. Use this drop down to select your desired destination.
   • The Message setting determines the content of the message that will be sent by the feed. Within this box, enter any text you would like to be within the message. This text area also supports the use of merge tags to dynamically generate content.
     
     *Congratulations team!*
     Our wonderful website has identified another potential paper order that is ready for one of our amazing sales associates to close. Please discuss who isn’t so busy that they can take on the new customer and follow-up:
     
     *Name:* {Name (First):1.3} {Name (Last):1.6}
     *Email:* {Email:2}
     *Request:* {Best Paper – 20 lb, 92 Dwight (Quantity):4.3} for {Total:5}
     *Additional Details?*
     {Additional Details?:6}

Create the Workflow

If we submitted the form now, the feed would execute immediately to send the message to Slack. This would give Jim too many opportunities to mess with Dwight so we will set up an approval step first for Michael before a Slack step to notify the sales team. 

Gravity Flow ensures that if there is any step related to a feed in your workflow that the default post form submission feed does not get executed.

To create the the Slack Step:

• From the Form editor screen select Settings → Workflow
• Chose to Add New step and select the Slack Step Type
• Set the Step Name to ‘Notify Sales in Slack’
• Select the Feed you set up earlier
• Click the Update Step Settings button

Now, as soon as Michael approves the entry from his inbox the timeline in the entry details page shows that the notification was processed to Slack.

And the Slack channel paper-sales receives this cheeky notification if Michael doesn’t catch all of Jim’s funny names.

The feed type and what data you need mapped into it will obviously be very different for your use case. But hopefully you can see how standard external feeds are quite easy to set up as one step in a larger workflow. For new or small organizations, building an onboarding workflow that stitches together SAAS services can be a wonderful way to offer a seamless new customer experience. 

If this is an area that interests you specifically, you might want to check out Jennifer Bourn’s episode on the Unemployable podcast or her more comprehensive Profitable Project Plan that goes in depth on building scalable business workflows.

Payment Add-On Feeds

Unlike the standard feed steps which will automatically be actioned when the workflow reaches them, a payment step requires additional user input. The way in which Gravity Forms supports (or each payment vendor requires) integration and user interaction has an impact on what the setup process for the feed or step looks like. 

In each case, there is either a dedicated Gravity Flow extension dedicated to the Gravity Forms add-on (Stripe, Paypal), or the Gravity Flow Form Connector extension supports it via the Form Submission step

Each of these extensions has their own documentation that we recommend you review before setting up your form or workflow with it. Instead, we will use the Form Connector Extension and its’ Form Submission step type, to create seamless payment experience that any other form on your site could leverage.

About the Form Connector extension

The Form Connector extension allows Gravity Flow administrators to create steps at any point in a workflow that can interact with other forms either on the same installation or a different server. This includes the ability to delete entries, create new entries, update existing entries, complete an approval or user input step for an entry in a different form or wait for the submission of a different form.

A quick review of what the workflow will look like when we are done. The blue highlighted items are actually a second form for payments we will be setting up, but from the customer perspective the Form Connector Form Submission Step will make it a seamless experience.

Pre-Requisites

• Install + Activate Gravity Flow Form Connector Plugin
• Install + Activate Gravity Forms Paypal Checkouts Plugin 
• Go to Paypal Developer Dashboard and create sandbox accounts for both merchant and consumer. Note the Email ID and generated password it provides for you for each as they will be used in your non-production/test environments.
• Follow the instructions from Gravity Forms PayPal Checkout Add-On with particular focus to setting up the Paypal Checkout Add-On to connect your Paypal Sandbox merchant account to your website.The portions related to creating a Paypal Checkout Compatible Form and Configuring a Feed for it will be covered briefly in context through the remainder of this lesson.

Create the Payment Form and Paypal Checkout Feed

The form will be similar to our original form – but with several of the common fields set to administrative as the form connector will populate them not the customer.

• On the left side navigation menu, hover over Forms and click on New Form.
  • Give it a title of Paper Payments
  • Press the Save button.
• Add a Name Field
  • Set it to be required
  • In the Advanced Field Settings set the visibility to Administrative
• Add an Email Field
  • Set it to be required
  • In the Advanced Field Settings set the visibility to Administrative

• Add an Address Field
  • Set the Field Label to be ‘Shipping Address’
• Add a Product Field from the Pricing Fields
  • Change the Field Type to Drop Down
  • Set it to be required.
  • Add the following choices
    • “Best Paper – 20 lb” with a price of $50
    • “Bester Paper – 50 lb” with a price of $75
    • “Bestest Paper – 100 lb” with a price of $100
• Add a Quantity Field from the Pricing Fields
  • Set it to be required
• Add a Shipping Field from the Pricing Fields
• Add a Total Field from the Pricing Fields
• Add a Paypal Field from the Pricing Fields
  If you do not see the option, verify that the Paypal Checkout Add-on is installed/active.
  • Set it to be required
  • Set it to only have Paypal Checkout as Supported Payment Methods
• Press the Update button in the upper right corner to save the form.

If you go to the Settings > Paypal Checkout menu, you will find that Gravity Forms has already created a Products and Services feed based on your inclusion of the Paypal field on the form. Verify that the following feed settings are associated and save the settings.

• Payment Amount = Form Total
• Billing First Name = Name (First)
• Billing Last Name = Name (Last)
• Billing Email = Email

Create a Page for the Payment Form

The Form Submission step will map in many of the details, but the customer will still be providing their data and the form requires a page in order to do so.

• On the left side navigation menu, hover over Pages and click on Add New
• Give the Page a Title of ‘Payment Form’
• Click the + at top of the page to open the block selector 
• Type Gravity into the search box and select Form
  
• Click the ‘Select a Form’ dropdown and pick your saved form titled ‘Paper Payments’’
• The block will turn into a preview of the form with the non-administrative fields on display.
• On the right side under the Block settings tab turn the Form Title and Description sliders off.
  
• Publish your page from the link in the header of the block editor interface.

Create the Form Submission Step

With all that setup, we can now modify our existing Paper Sales forms’ workflow to add two new steps. The first will be a basic user input step that allows the sales team to contact the customer and confirm or upsell on their potential order. The latter will be the Form Connector Form Submission step that ensures the workflow will wait for the submission of our new payments form.

• On the left side navigation menu, click on Forms
• Hover over the ‘Paper Sales’ form and use the Settings dropdown to select Workflow
• Chose to Add a New Step to create the User Input step with the following settings
  • Name: Close/Upsell the Sale
  • Step Type: User Input
  • Assign To: Select / Role of Sales
    (or in your local environment whatever role is appropriate to allow you to test)
  • Editable Fields – Best Paper – 20lb, 92 Dwight and Total
  • Assignee Policy – Only one assignee is required to complete the step
  • Emails – Deactivate the default assignee email
    (The slack notification already informed the sales team)
  • Press the Update Step Settings button
    
• Use the ‘Add Another Step’ link to create the Form Submission Step.
  • Name: Customer Payment
  • Assign To: Email Field
  • The Assignee email is critical b/c email based assignees do not have an inbox to view steps assigned to them.
    • From Name – Dunder Mifflin
    • Subject – Confirm your Paper Purchase with Payment
    • Message:
      [Tooltip for copy paste – your field IDs in the merge tags may be slightly different depending on order of field creation]
      {workflow_form_submission_link: text=”Please submit the following form to complete your purchase!”}
      Order Summary:
      Product:{Best Paper – 20 lb, 92 Dwight (Name):4.1}
      Price:{Best Paper – 20 lb, 92 Dwight (Price):4.2}
      Quantity: {Best Paper – 20 lb, 92 Dwight (Quantity):4.3}
      Subtotal: {Total:5}
  • Form – Paper Payments
  • Submission Page – Payment Form
  • Field Mapping
    • Name (Full) / Name (Full)
    • Email / Email
    • Paper Product / Best Paper – 20 lb, 92 Dwight (Name)
    • Quantity / Best Paper – 20 lb, 92 Dwight (Quantity)
  • Press the Update Step Settings button
    

When the workflow gets to the Form Submission step, it uses the Form and Submission Page settings to generate the {workflow_form_submission_link} merge tag with a secure token that is unique to the entry and email field to provide payment. From the customer’s perspective:

• They submitted the original form
• A sales staff followed up with them to confirm details about their order.
• They received an email with a link to take them directly to provide payment for their order through Paypal.
  
• When they click on the Paypal option it opens a secure link for them to select their payment details. Note that with your Paypal sandbox account used to set up the add-on, only your test consumer user/password will work to complete the step.
  
• Until the Form Submission (Payment Form) step is complete, the workflow will not proceed.

[Tooltip – While the approach for each payment feed add-on for Gravity Forms will have slight differences, creating a Form Submission step as a part of your workflow with the Gravity Flow Form Connector extension would be quite similar to the above. Be sure to check out our online documentation that goes into more detail until the full course is available.]

Within Site Add-On Feeds

The last type of Gravity Forms feed add-ons which Gravity Flow provides native step type support for are ones which lead to data within your WordPress site being created/updated. They require comparatively little setup in contrast to some of the examples this lesson has gone in depth on.

Advanced Post Creation (APC)

This add-on enables you to convert a form submission into a blog post. After setting up the add-on and creating an APC feed to define how the form entry data should map into the potential blog post, you can create a Post Creation step type. The only step setting unique is to select the specific APC Feed the step should execute.

Any business/use cases involving guest authors or paid-article submissions would find this step type of particular use as you could coordinate topic outline, payment(s) and content review before the draft post gets created for final edits and layout tweaks.

Partial Entries

The Partial Entries Add-On for Gravity Forms allows you to capture user input before the form is fully submitted. This can be quite helpful in identifying where users may be abandoning your form or making offers to encourage their completion. Gravity Flow integrates with this to optionally allow workflows to start when a partial entry is created. This integration can be used to create a sequence of emails that is triggered after a form submission has been abandoned. 

For details related to setting up a partial entry step refer to our documentation setup guide for it.