A simple approval workflow
If your forms need to be reviewed and checked for accuracy before they are assumed to be “official” or “approved”, you can use XForms’ approval workflow for this. It’s super easy.
An overview of how it works
- Designate one or more form templates to a workflow, which can be single step or multi-step
- Designate one or more people as the “approvers”
- When one of your field techs submits a form as usual, instead of that form being submitted directly to the “Forms” page of the reporting dashboard, it appears in the “Approvals” screen of the reporting dashboard.
- Two-way SMS text messages, emails, and push notifications are used to alert the approver(s) and the field tech (submitter) that there are pending forms waiting for their review.
Mobile app view
Here’s what the mobile app screen looks like when a field tech submits a form that goes through an approval workflow. The form is displayed within the Approvals screen of the device instead of the Forms screen of the device. It also will display a little status tag on the top left of the submitted form indicating the status of the submitted form (i.e., Pending, Rejected, or Approved).
Dashboard web app view
On the web reporting dashboard, a little alert notification apears on the top right of the screen, where the bell icon is. Click it to slide open the notifications pane. If you click on the notification itself, you will be taken to the Approvals screen (accessible from the middle of the menu navigation pane on the left of the screen. Here you will see the submitted form waiting for review. Click on the PDF icon to view the submitted form. Then click on the Reviews (edit) icon to the left of the PDF icon to either approve or reject the form.
If you are approving the form, you will then need to sign the approval screen (on the graffiti-style signature block). If you are rejecting the form, you are forced to enter comments. These comments make their way to the mobile app as a comment thread, so that the field tech has some context as to what they did wrong or what the issue(s) are related to the submitted form.
Signature append on PDF
Once a form is approved, the approval signature, date and time will be automatically appended to the form’s final PDF.
More info
If you want to know more about XForms’ approval workflow feature, visit the following article: https://xformsmobile.com/simple-mobile-form-routing-approvals-workflow/
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