Workflows and approvals

A workflow records where a submission stands and what happens next. A leave request, say, starts as “Requested” and becomes “Approved” or “Rejected”, and the manager decides through a link in her email. You build the workflow in the “Form” tab under “Workflow”.

Statuses, actions and roles

• A status shows where a submission stands. You create 1 to 12, each with a name and a color. New submissions get the start status, which you pick with “Make start”. Without a workflow of your own there are Open, In progress and Done. Under “Remind after days” you set after how many days in this status you get an email. It comes once per submission, until the status changes again.
• An action is a button on the submission, up to 20 per form. Under “Offered in” you tick the statuses where it shows up. With nothing ticked it shows up in every status. It sets a new status or keeps the current one.
• A role is a person outside your team, up to 10 per form. Enter a fixed address or take it from an email field of the form, for example to reach the person who sent it. Your team may run every action; a role only the actions where it is ticked under “May also run it by link”.

The canvas

Statuses and actions are boxes you move freely on the canvas. Drag an arrow from a status to an action: the action is offered there. Then drag an arrow from the action to the next status: that is the status it sets. Click a box to edit it. Delete removes a selected arrow or box. Without a mouse, select a box with Enter, move it with the arrow keys and connect it in the panel next to the canvas.

What an action does

Each action can do four things, in this order:

1. Delete answers: the chosen fields are removed from the submission. This is final; we cannot bring them back either. Useful for data you may not keep once the decision is made.
2. Set the new status.
3. Send emails, up to 5, to a fixed address or an email field. Subject and text take answers with {field:name}, for example “Your request for {field:date}”.
4. Send the run to the website's integrations. A webhook then gets the event submission.action with action { id, name } and the new status.

Approval by email link

If you pick a role under “Link for role” on an email, the email contains a link. It opens a page with the answers, the current status and a button for each action that role may run right now. No account is needed. The link is valid for 30 days. Anyone who has it can run those actions, so it should not be forwarded. If you delete the role, its links stop working at once.

Good to know

• “Save” stores the form page and the workflow together. If you try to leave with unsaved changes, including with the browser’s back button, we ask first.
• Workflows need stored submissions. With retention set to “Don't store, deliver only” we keep nothing, so there is no submission an action could run on.
• If you delete a status, its submissions move to the start status when you save.
• The ID of a status or action stays fixed once saved. Filters and the API use it.
• Through the API you set the workflow with PATCH /api/forms/{id} and the field workflow, and run an action with POST /api/submissions/{id}/actions/{action}. AI assistants get the tools set_workflow and run_submission_action, see AI assistants and MCP.