Step Purpose
From a website users’ perspective the User Input step type is the closest equivalent to a standard form submission. That doesn’t mean that it is just about replicating the submission experience as the combination of assignees, display field and editable field settings can allow you to configure user input steps that serve a wide variety of use cases.
Step Settings Reference
A User Input step type can define the following settings in addition to the common step settings all step types have.
| Setting | Summary |
|---|---|
| Assign To | Define who the step will be assigned to and what fields of data they can modify when they access the entry detail screen. |
| Assignee Policy | Define how many assignees have to submit the step before it is completed. |
| Highlight Editable Fields | Select a visual style to help users identify which fields they can edit. |
| Instructions | Provide tips to guide assignee(s) on how best to complete the step. |
| Display Fields | Define what field(s) assignees can see, but not edit, on the current step. |
| Save Progress | Define whether assignee(s) must complete the step all at once or are able to save their progress and return to complete the step later. |
| Workflow Note | Define whether assignee(s) can/must provide a note along with submitting the step. |
| Emails | Configure notifications sent to assignee(s) when the entry reaches the step or at other points during its’ completion. |
| Confirmation Message | Define a message the assignee will see after completing the user input step. |
| Due date | Define if/when entries will be highlighted in inboxes based on a due date. |
Step Settings Details
Assign To
The assign to settings let you define who the step will be assigned to and what fields of data they can modify when they access the entry detail screen. There are two assignment types – Select and Conditional Routing – which each have different ways to determine the assignee and editable field selections.
Select
In this assignment type, you can use the multi-select field to define which individual users, roles within your site, or email fields should be able to complete the step. In each case, they will all have access to the same set of editable fields which you select for them. If you select a user and their role, when they submit the step it will consider both the user and role assignees as having completed the step. Only the fields which you select as editable will have inputs on the form for the assignee – the rest are equivalent to having set the fields as administrative display on the initial form.
Conditional Routing
In this assignment type, you can also define multiple assignees but with flexibility to control which fields are editable per assignee and conditional logic to determine if/when they should be considered an assignee. The condition settings follow the standard for Gravity Forms:
- Field/Data – What field, or entry data, should be considered?
- Operator – How should that field/data be considered?
- Value – What should the field/data be compared against?
Note that because the conditional routing is value based, it is possible for you to set up rules where a step would have no potential assignees meet their condition and the step be skipped. In this case, the timeline will indicate the step was bypassed due to no assignees.
Regardless of which assignment type you chose, the entry detail screen workflow box will identify the assignee(s) if it is configured for display on the inbox/status view.
Extra considerations regarding email field assignees
- An assignee based on an email field allows users without a WordPress user account to participate in a workflow. As email field assignees can’t log in or use the inbox within the WordPress dashboard, you will need to add the inbox block or shortcode to a page and use the {workflow_entry_link} or {workflow_entry_url} merge tag in the assignee email. If this is a feature of Gravity Flow you intend to use frequently, we recommend you review this user guide related to assigning steps to an email field.
- If the workflow scenario you are building involves an email address which is provided in a field and is associated with a WordPress user, we strongly recommend that you use the user selection in your assignee setting. It reduces the risk that the user is logged in when clicking on the tokenized link and doesn’t see the expected entry. When creating form/workflow settings with email fields, we recommend that you use a separate browser in private/incognito mode to reduce the risk of this issue when testing.
Assignee Policy
If you think of the Assign To settings as being focused on who can access the step and which fields they can edit on it, the assignee policy determines how many assignees have to submit the step before it is complete. It has two options:
Only one assignee is required to complete the step
Whoever is the first to submit the step that passes all field validation leads to the step being marked complete and moving to the next in the workflow. Their activity will be noted in the timeline. Any assignees who click a link from an email notification after this point will receive an indication the entry is no longer available to edit on that step.
All assignees must complete this step
For every individual user assigned, one user of every role assigned and each email field assigned must complete their user input step in order for the workflow to proceed to the next step. This is very useful when you want to make sure an entire team has a chance to modify the entry, but without causing bottlenecks if someone is on vacation. You may want to also consider including an expiration setting to avoid this. The entry detail screen workflow box if configured to display will show the current assignee the status of other assignees (pending/complete).
Highlight Editable Fields
When enabled, you can select between two different styles that help users to see which fields are editable within the form. This is most useful when you also have a lot of fields included with the display field setting. The two styles you can pick from when enabling are:
Green Triangle
Green Background
Instructions
When enabled, this will present a specific message you define. You might provide tips to help guide the assignee(s) on what to focus for completing the step, or use some of the Gravity Forms merge tags to reference other fields of data or link to more support materials if the business task the step is accomplishing has additional factors to consider.
Examples of using html tables or images within the instruction field:
Display Fields
While the assignee’s task most closely relates to the editable fields you define in the Assign To setting, being able to review, but not edit, other fields can be useful to provide support information related to that task. The Display Field settings provide 3 different approaches to support both small and complex forms.
- Display all fields
Any field which has not been defined as editable will also be displayed. This includes any with their visibility set to Hidden or Administrative. - Display all fields except selected
Allows you to define a small subset of fields which should NOT be displayed. - Hide all fields except selected
Allows you to define a small subset of fields which are the only ones that should be displayed in addition to editable fields.
In a workflow that has many steps or many fields, this setting is valuable to control what the assignee(s) see, helping them to focus on the particular task of this user input step. It also reduces the size of the page/form markup that can have help the perceived performance of your site.
Save Progress
For user input steps that you do not expect users to complete all at once, you can configure this setting to allow assignees to save their progress. This prevents required field validation from executing and stores whatever values they have provided to date. For user input steps that involve many editable fields, longer-form essay type answers, or uploading multiple files this can encourage the assignee to save frequently.
There are 3 different styles to pick from with the default being disabled.
Disabled
Radio Buttons
Submit Buttons
Workflow Note
If enabled, the Workflow Note field will display as a part of the workflow box on the entry detail screen. In the settings’ default ‘Not Required’ state it provides an optional place for assignee to provide general notes about the entry/task. The other three setting options (always required, required if in progress, required if complete) ensure that the assignee must complete the note depending on whether they are saving progress or attempting to complete the step.
Populating a workflow note
When a required note was not provided
Regardless of which setting is chosen, when the assignee populates the note it will be added to the timeline and any subsequent step emails or notifications can reference it via the {workflow_note} merge tag.
Be aware that only the latest note is made available via the {workflow_note} merge tag. So in a scenario where a user input step had 5 assigned users with an approval policy of ‘All’ and a required note setting, if a notification step was added immediately after the user input step using the merge tag, it would only display the note from the last assignee to complete the step.
Emails
As much as we all might strive for inbox zero and want to reduce the amount of messages which our websites send to staff, colleagues or customers, there are many cases where that extra email prompt is essential to ensuring a process is completed in a timely manner. If you have setup any notifications with Gravity Forms to follow the initial form submission, the sub settings for defining emails for Gravity Flow will be very familiar including the {…} button to populate dynamic values via merge tags.
The key difference is that the step email section includes multiple tabs which associate to when a particular email should be sent and in some cases additional controls to define who the message should be sent to.
Assignee Email
When enabled, this setting will send an email to each of the assignees as soon as the entry has been assigned. For assignee(s) that do not access the site on a regular basis, or based on an email field, it may be the only way that they become aware that the entry requires their attention/action.
Setting Notes
- If a role is configured to receive emails then all the users with that role will receive the assignee email.
- If you have any assignees who cannot access the workflow user UI (e.g. emails gathered from email fields in the form) use the {workflow_entry_link} or {workflow_entry_url} merge tag in the assignee email. This notification will send them a unique URL which they will use to access the workflow. Use the page_id to specify the ID of the WordPress page containing the inbox shortcode. You can find the ID of the page in the URL when you open the page for editing (it’s the post_id parameter). The text attribute is optional.
- A reminder about reminders: In addition to the common notification settings described below, the assignee email has a ‘Send Reminder’ setting. It can be used to re-send the assignee email X days after the step is started and then an option for the same reminder to go out every Y days thereafter. A common setup might be to have it sent after 7 days and then remind every 2 days thereafter.
Complete Email
Enable this setting to send an email when the entry has completed the step. Sub-settings to let you define select/conditional routing approaches for who the complete message should be sent to follow the same pattern as the Assign To setting. Note that the values evaluated in conditional logic are based upon the completed step values.
In Progress Email
Only available when one of the Save Status settings is active. Enable this setting to send an email when the entry is updated but the step is not completed. It lets you define the recipients just like the complete email with the values evaluated being based on whichever assignee saved their progress.
Consider the use case and likely user experiences when activating this email type. Every time the progress is saved, this message will be sent out to every assignee. What may be intended as helpful could quickly be viewed as more noise than signal for recipients that have many entries assigned to them.
Confirmation Message
Enabling this setting provides an option to define the message an assignee will see after completing the user input step. The tone or content of a confirmation message can help manage expectations in customers’ minds about the time remaining or next steps in the process.
Note that if the assignee completing this user input step is also an assignee on the next step in the workflow, they will not see the confirmation message but proceed directly to the next step for submission.
Due date
Enable the due date setting to allow entries to be highlighted when they have passed their due dates. An optional column can be set on the inbox / status page to display this value. When enabled, you can specify the due date relative to one of 3 approaches just like the step condition setting.
- Delay – Specify a due date relative to the the start of the step
- Date – The due date would be the date you select
- Date Field – If a date field exists on the form specify a due date relative to the field value.
Example Use Cases
Consider 3 different forms that only use user input step(s) and see how different the user experience can be based on the way in which we define the settings.
Staff pricing/quote scenario
As a part of a regular job activity a sales staff has to provide details for customer requests:
- Conditional routing assignee by user based on product type
- Editable fields – Lets them define the cost / time frame details for the customer.
- Display fields – Only display what the customer input
The order of the fields on the page match what is in the form, so we recommend structuring your form so the later the fields are used in steps of the workflow the earlier they are in the form. - Save progress – No. They should be able to do this in a few minutes per order
- Email – They are using the site daily so we don’t need to configure the notifications
- Due Date – Setup to highlight that response should be given within 2 days from step start
Incremental application scenario
Instead of having a 10 page form with several ranking and long paragraph fields to try and tackle in a single sitting, let’s explore what that might look like broken down into multiple user input steps.
- Assign to email field and include signature add-on
- Instructions – Highlight when the application period closes
- Expiration – Set a defined date.
- Save Progress – Default to in progress with radio buttons
- Email – Includes direct link to the entry
- Shortcode – Disable the 2nd column and back to the inbox to build the perception that this each step is uniquely tailored to that grant applicant.
Steering committee reviewing a project proposal
- Multiple users as assignees
- Instructions – Remind the committee what the criteria are
- Assignee policy set to All
- Save Progress – Enabled but default to complete with buttons.
- Use of discussion field for in-progress threaded conversation.
- Email – In Progress uses the discussion field and overall rating
- Workflow note is required if complete
As you can see, different combinations of settings allow one step type to serve quite a variety of purposes. When combined with the approval step also has some specific integration with user input step types.