Request an Approval

Key Concepts

• Instance fields (Approver, Invoice, Comment)
• Adding an Action (Assign a Task with Y/N fields to approver)
• Adding an Action (Send notification to the submitter)

Autogenerated Transcript

Welcome back to Catalytic.

In our last video we walked through the Catalytic platform so we can familiarize ourselves with the basics before we start building.

The Workflow that we’ll be building in this video will be based off of the Catalytic core work pattern of approvals, routing and notifications.

Our next videos will cover the rest of these patterns, which are gathering data with web forms, creating documents working with Catalytic tables for data manipulation, and using API’s and built in integrations.

This video in the next will focus on building an approval process that will vote to the correct person and tasked them to look at an invoice, approve or deny it and provide comments after.

To accomplish this, we’ll be setting up a few instance fields to gather data, as well as an action to assign a task to someone to view.

Let’s go ahead and expand the triggers in fields portion of our builder, we can add a trigger a way of starting a Workflow that can be automatic or manual, but we’ll get back to adding a trigger later.

Since we won’t be doing that in this Workflow.

We can also set up instance fields and form fields.

Instance fields are variables that you can define to be referenced throughout your Workflow.

An example of when these are useful is setting static values for variables in your flow.

Form Fields are fields that the user can interact with to provide information.

When using a webform trigger or starting an instance manually, the webform built will be used, we’re going to add our variables as form fields so we can interact with en manually fill out each field that will be used in our Workflow.

Because this is an approval process, we’ll be adding a field to specify who has to approve the invoice being submitted.

Let’s go ahead and click on add a field under form fields.

This brings up a configuration screen so we can set up our field.

Let’s go ahead and fill out the display name for our field which will just be approver name, you’ll notice that the field reference name automatically goes ahead and fills itself out with a unique value.

Next, we’re going to go ahead and configure our type.

And actually, we’re just going to keep this as short text.

But just you know the difference between short text and long text is that long text doors newline characters where a short text does not.

We have a lot of different data fields to choose from.

And you can read all about these in our documentation on our help site as well.

You can choose the ones that are most relevant to the form you’re trying to create or the field you’re trying to configure.

validation rules can be created so form can be submitted unless the field is properly formatted.

You can also add a default value that will populate that field automatically when opening a form or task.

A description and example can also be added as well as the ability to toggle if the field is required to submit.

If you want to get into more advanced features, you can utilize machine learning to create a model that will predict the field value.

But we won’t worry about that right now.

I’m going to keep these values blank, but you’re more than welcome to fill them out.

So when we test our flow later, you can see where these values are added on our form after configuring them.

Now that we have our approver Name field set up, we’re just going to go ahead and save it using this button in the top right.

And now we’re going to add two more fields, the first one is going to be for that invoice that we’re submitting.

So we’re just going to go ahead and call that field invoice.

And then the type is going to be a file, because we’re going to be sending in a file for our invoice to get approved.

I’m going to keep the rest of these values blank, similar to how we did for our approver name.

And now we have one more field that we’re going to set up.

And that’s going to be for the comments.

So any comments that you might be adding that would be helpful for that approver who is approving the invoice.

So again, we’re going to add another field and call that field name comments.

And we’re going to change it to long text because long text stores newline characters.

So in case there’s any formatting we want to add, keep the rest of these blank as well.

And now let’s just go ahead and save that field.

So now under our form fields, we can see the three different fields that we have, you can drag and reorder them if you would like.

But in order to see what it actually looks like when you’re interacting with this, you can go to this test button up here in the top right of your Workflow.

And you’ll notice that now you have all three of those fields that have been added on to this form when we go ahead and submit or test our Workflow.

Now that our form fields are set up, and we’re able to submit information, let’s go ahead and add our first action.

To add our first action, all we have to do is just describe the process we want to occur.

Since Catalytic is a no code platform in lieu of coding we use natural language processing to reference your description against our Cloud Library.

We have configurable actions, Catalytic will grab the one it thinks is most similar to what you’re trying to accomplish.

And then it’s just click and configure for that action.

So let’s go ahead and add that first one.

We just want to task someone to look over our invoice.

So let’s go ahead and write that out.

Let’s go ahead and add task two Look over invoice.

So using that description we provided Catalytic went ahead and grabbed the correct action of assign task to a person.

But in case didn’t grab the right action, you could just click on this drop down, go to view all actions at the bottom, and then navigate from hear from these different buckets of categories for our actions.

And there’ll be documentation as well.

So you can see exactly how each of these different steps work.

All this information is also available on our help site.

Now we can start to configure this action, which will assign a task to somebody that they can interact with via the Tasks tab, or from the Catalytic main dashboard.

What we’re gonna do is we’re going to go ahead and assign it to ourselves for the time being.

Now from this drop down, we could go ahead and select our name, or go ahead and type it in, or what we can do.

So that way we can use a dynamic field reference is we can go ahead and open up the global fields on the right side here.

And we’ll see all the different form fields that we have gone ahead and added into our Workflow as well.

Now, the approver name is going to be the name of the person that we want to approve it.

So all we’re going to do is just copy this.

And we’re doing that just by clicking on approver name.

And now go into that assigned to let’s go ahead and paste that reference.

And you’ll notice it will have that field reference name with the two handlebars and the dashes instead of spaces.

And this is that dynamic field reference where any value that we put in that approver name will be passed in to the assigned to.

And now we can just start building the message for our instructions.

So we could go ahead and type in whatever text we want.

But in order to actually reference those different fields that are on our web form, or any of the fields that we have available in our Workflow from here on the right side, we have a few different ways of doing that, we can insert a field reference from this drop down here.

So for example, I could click on approver name, and it will add that and I’ll go ahead and add a bit more to our message as well.

And now we’re going to link to that invoice or have a reference to that invoice as well.

So it’s able to be downloaded from this task.

So again, all I did was just click on the invoice on the right side.

So I copied that field reference and then pasted it into the body of our message.

And we’re also going to say the following comments have been provided.

And we’re going to go ahead and choose a field reference from the drop down here.

So the last way that you can actually do field references in the body of your instructions, or any of the fields is you can do the double handlebar reference as it is for this approver name.

And to show that you can click on this show marked down here, just so you can see how it’s actually formatted.

But we’re just gonna keep it in the editor.

And you’ll know that it is a field reference, if it has this blue highlight over it.

And before we’re done configuring our step, we need to add some form fields to this task.

So we can get a response from the approver.

So under our form fields, we’re just gonna add a field, and we’re gonna call this approved.

Now this will be a single choice, so you’ll only be able to select one of the options that you define in the drop down.

And we’re gonna say that the choice of choosing yes or no on if this is approved.

So let’s go ahead and save this field, we’re going to add one more field in this field is going to have some conditional logic around it.

So it will only appear if the approved field is no.

So let’s go ahead and add that field.

And this is just going to be feedback.

So again, if the approval is denied, that way, we will have a way to get some commentary back to that submitter.

We’re gonna have this type be long text.

And now we’re gonna navigate over to this Advanced tab, and we’re going to add a condition.

Again, this just allows you to define some business rules, you can decide whether or not to show or hide any of these fields based off of certain conditions.

So what we’re going to say is if the field approved, and you can click on this drop down to see all the different fields available in your Workflow to build this logic around is equal to the field choice of No.

And again, what this is saying is if the approved field is no, then show this feedback field so that way we can get that commentary.

So we’re gonna save our field again.

So we’ve added those form fields, and we’re not going to add any deadlines or dependencies and conditions on this step.

And we’re also not going to delay it either, but you’re more than welcome to mess around with any of these options.

Now, we can just go ahead and save our step.

And now it’s time to actually test our Workflow and see how this is gonna run.

So let’s click the Test button.

And let’s go ahead and fill this out now.

So you can go ahead and put in your own name for approver name.

One thing to note though, is that any assignments that are created as you’re running your Workflow in test mode will automatically be assigned to you.

So this is a little bit redundant because it would be assigned to us anyways, but that way we could see at least how our Workflow rounds, we’re going to go ahead and upload that invoice.

And lastly, we’re going to add our comments to this.

So let’s go ahead and hit start and we’ll run our Workflow, we’ll be brought to this process run page, which you can open in a new tab, rather than just having it as this modal pop up by clicking on this link in the top left.

Again, that’ll open it as a brand new tab within your window.

And here we can see the task that has been generated and assigned to us.

We can interact with it from this process run page, or we can go to our tasks tab in the top left, and see that task available here as well.

And those dynamic field references have been replaced with that information we actually submitted on our form.

So the approver name is here, that invoice is available to download as a hyperlink.

And then we have those comments that we added at the bottom as well.

Now under this approved if we choose yes, we’re gonna see that there is no other field that pops up.

But because that business logic, if we decide no, we’ll have our feedback appear.

So let’s go ahead and fill this out and say, you know, this is from 2019.

Please send the correct one.

And with that, we will go ahead and complete our task.

And our next video we’ll be going over how to modify this approval pattern to add some more complexity into our Workflow and get some feedback back to that original submitter.

Thanks for tuning in.