Workflow example: Tracking vacation days and managing budget requests

This feature helps you track vacation days and manage budget requests!

• Calculate helps you keep track of time off requests, budget requests, and employee recognition awards.
• With Form Answer, the information from submitted forms is automatically stored for you. Find form answers under magic variables and use them to take specific actions in workflows!
• Combine the results from multiple forms into one document with Merge PDF Documents. You can then store the merged document, send it in a chat, or attach it to an email.

Watch the video below for a 2-minute walkthrough of both workflows:

Time-Off Request workflow

Overview

Let's say you want to track how many vacation days an employee has left after they take a vacation.  Once they fill out a request form and get approval from a manager, the workflow below will use the new Calculate action to subtract how many days were requested in the form by the current amount of days left.

This type of workflow can also be used to manage points for employee rewards programs, inventory for work t-shirt orders or anything else you can think of.   

Step-by-step instructions

1. As a first step, we need to build the form that will allow employees to submit their request. Go to the “Dashboard” and click on “Toolbox”, then “Forms”.
2. Set up your time-off request form.
   1. Check out your Toolbox under “Get Inspired” to get a ready-to-use holiday request template that you don’t need to create from scratch!
   2. Or this Help Center article from point 2, for some helpful tips.
   3. Include a field for the user to input how many days they will be away. We need this input to be manual from the user and numerical, so make sure you add a description in the form field for the user to know they can only use numbers.
3. Next, we need to create a custom profile field with the number of vacation days available. Go to the “Dashboard”, and then click on “Settings”, and on “Profile Fields”.
4. Add a new profile field at the top right of your screen.
   1. Choose Type “number” and name your profile field
   2. Unselect the possibility for the user to modify the field
5. Via the user select or manually, add the number of time-off days available to each employee. We will use 25 days in our example.
6. Next, we need to build our automation. Go to the “Dashboard” and click on “Toolbox”, then “Workflows”.
7. Click on “Create new Workflow” if this is the first workflow in your tenant or  “Add New” if there are already some workflows. Enter the workflow name and optional description.
8. Then click on the “Add a Trigger” placeholder to add a trigger.
9. Select “Form submitted” from the trigger list and click on “Add”.
10. Within the panel on the right side, in the field “Form name” select the Form which should trigger the workflow. This is the name of the form you created in the first steps. You can just start typing, and a proposition of forms will pop up. Select the correct form.
11. Then click on the “Add an Action”.
12. Select an Action: “Retrieve user profile data” and click on “Add”.
    This step allows to get more information from the selected user’s profile such as: first and last name, role, user email, user name, # of comments, # of likes, # of posts, last activity date, profile creation date…etc. You can reference these fields in the further steps of the workflow, for example to create a dynamic file name or address the chat message or email.
13. Add another action.
14. Select “Convert form submission to a PDF”. Select the magic variable “Submitted form”. This will transform each user’s time-off request into a PDF that you can use later in the workflow.
15. Add another action.
16. Select “Send Request and Branch on Approval Status”.
    1. Choose a title, description, due date and attachments for your request.
    2. Requested by: We recommend input the magic variable “Form Submitter”, so the form submitter is able to follow the progress of their request. Alternatively, leave it empty, and the Workflow Automation Bot will be considered the creator of the request.
    3. Approvers: Select up to 5 approvers. You can choose the magic variable “Answer for” from your form set up in the first steps, so the manager of the employee will be dynamically assigned to the request.
    4. Optionally, you can add other approvers, such as HR.
17. In the “Approved” branch, add another action.
18. Select “Send a chat message”.
    1. Send to: Select the “Form Submitter” as a recipient
    2. Message: Confirm to the recipient that their request has been accepted. You can use the magic variable “First name” (that you retrieved in step 12) to address the recipient directly.
19. Add another action.
20. Select the “Calculate” action. We will use this to subtract the number of days the user is away from their total quota of available time-off days. You will have set up this field in step 2.
    1. Choose the profile field for the time-off quota that you created in step 3.
    2. Operation: Use “subtract”
    3. Quantity: Select “Answer” to retrieve the number of days the user has chosen to be away. This is also why we need this value as a numerical manual input.
21. Add another action.
22. Select “Update user profile field”.
    1. User: Choose the magic variable “Form Submitter”.
    2. Field name: Choose the profile field you created in step 3. 
    3. Field value: Select the magic variable “Calculation result”. This will update the user’s profile field with the new value of time-off quota minus the number of days they are away.
23. In the “Rejected” branch, add another action.
24. Select “Send a chat message”.
    1. Send to: Select the “Form Submitter” as a recipient
    2. Message: Tell the recipient that their request has been rejected.
25. Validate and save your workflow. Now that your entire workflow is ready you can validate the trigger and each action and save if everything is correct. The system will not let you save the workflows in case something is missing or not correct. Correctly updated triggers and actions will have a green checkmark.
26. Flip the toggle to activate it.
    
    

Budget Request workflow

Overview

In this example, a worker wants to request budget for new equipment. First, they have to fill out a form and send it to their manager. The manager adds a few more details, like current inventory and level of priority. We want to send the final submission to the finance team, but as one PDF, instead of two separate documents.

With our new merge PDF function, you can combine the results from both forms and merge them in one place. Send them directly to the finance team without everyone searching for two separate documents.

Step-by-step instructions

1. As a first step, we need to build the form that will allow employees to submit their request. Go to the “Dashboard” and click on “Toolbox”, then “Forms”.
2. Set up your budget request form.
   1. Make sure you include a field for the user to request a numerical-only value. This is very important for the workflow to work, so add a description in the form field for the user to know they can only use numbers.
   2. In most cases, you will also want the user to be able to select the manager with the User Select. We will also need this further along in the workflow.
3. We will also create a second form that the manager can fill out with further information after receiving the first form. Set up this second form, and add information such as:
   1. Who needs to approve it next by choosing the “User Select” form field.
   2. Purpose of the request.
   3. Cost center.
   4. Etc.
4. Next, we need to build our automation. Go to the “Dashboard” and click on “Toolbox”, then “Workflows”.
5. Click on “Create new Workflow” if this is the first workflow in your tenant or  “Add New” if there are already some workflows. Enter the workflow name and optional description.
6. Then click on the “Add a Trigger” placeholder to add a trigger.
7. Select “Form submitted” from the trigger list and click on “Add”.
8. Within the panel on the right side, in the field “Form name” select the Form which should trigger the workflow. This is the name of the form you created in the first steps. You can just start typing, and a proposition of forms will pop up. Select the correct form.
9. Then click on the “Add an Action”.
10. Select an Action: “Retrieve user profile data” and click on “Add”.
    This step allows to get more information from the selected user’s profile such as: first and last name, role, user email, user name, # of comments, # of likes, # of posts, last activity date, profile creation date…etc. You can reference these fields in the further steps of the workflow, for example to create a dynamic file name or address the chat message or email.
    1. Choose the form submitter as the user
11. Add another action.
12. Select “Send a chat message”.
    1. Send “Answer” to the manager selected in step 2.
13. Add another action.
14. Select ”Convert form submission to PDF”. Choose the magic variable “Submitted form” so it will be transformed into a PDF.
15. Select “Create a task and wait for completion”. We will send a task with an embedded form to the manager of the request. They will have to fill out the second form that we created in step 3.
    1. Choose your title, optional description and due date.
    2. Requested by: We recommend input the magic variable “Form Submitter”, so the form submitter is able to follow the progress of their request. Alternatively, leave it empty, and the Workflow Automation Bot will be considered the creator of the request.
    3. Assigned to: You can choose the magic variable “Answer” from your form set up in the first steps, so the manager of the employee will be dynamically assigned to the request.
    4. Embedded form name: Select the second budget request form you created in step 3.
    5. Attachments: Select the file attachment, and input the magic variable “Generated PDF file key”, so the manager understands what they are approving. We are inputting the converted form submission from the previous step 
16. Add another action.
17. Select an Action: “Retrieve user profile data” and click on “Add”.
    This step allows to get more information from the selected user’s profile such as: first and last name, role, user email, user name, # of comments, # of likes, # of posts, last activity date, profile creation date…etc. You can reference these fields in the further steps of the workflow, for example to create a dynamic file name or address the chat message or email.
    1. Choose the embedded form submitter as the user
18. Add another action.
19. Select ”Convert form submission to PDF”. Choose the magic variable “Embedded form submitted” so it will be transformed into a PDF.
20. Select “Send Request and Branch on Approval Status”.
    1. Choose a title, description, due date and attachments for your request.
    2. Requested by: We recommend input the magic variable “Form Submitter”, so the form submitter is able to follow the progress of their request. Alternatively, leave it empty, and the Workflow Automation Bot will be considered the creator of the request.
    3. Approvers: Select up to 5 approvers. In this step, you could choose all the next approvers, e.g. HR, or the board.
21. In the “Approved” branch, add another action.
22. Select “”Convert form submission to PDF”.
    1. Submitted form: Choose the “submitted form” (not the embedded one)
    2. Approver profile data: Choose the magic variable “Approvers” to choose all approvers selected in step 20
23. Add another action.
24. Select “Merge PDF documents” and choose the two PDF files.
25. Add another action.
26. Choose “Send a chat message” and select the form submitter. Attach the merged PDF file key, and the recipient will receive it in the chat message. You can also choose the action “Send an email” to send the merged PDF file.
27. Validate and save your workflow. Now that your entire workflow is ready you can validate the trigger and each action and save if everything is correct. The system will not let you save the workflows in case something is missing or not correct. Correctly updated triggers and actions will have a green checkmark.
28. Flip the toggle to activate it.