Create Forms for Invoice Approval Process
- How to leverage the result of the Decision in an approval form
- How to create an approval form
- How to create forms to notify process participants
Prerequisites
- Created the trigger, the automation and also the decision to come to this point in the process
There are different requirements and business situations when a form is needed in a business process. You have already created a form to start the process. Most often you probably need a form to maintain some input data or to approve or reject a request or even to send out some notifications. The two latter ones are your focus now.
- Step 1
Choose + at the connection flow after the decision Determine Approver to open the context menu. Then select Approvals > New Approval Form.
Maintain the Name
Invoice Approval Form
and also the DescriptionForm to approve the invoice
. Choose Create. The Identifier is created automatically.Choose the three dots on the created form’s artifact and select Open Editor to do the same. Just ignore the red frames, you will fill them later.
Now you are in the Form’s Editor, where you can define the layout and input fields. First add via drag and drop a new Headline 1 into the canvas. Provide this headline
Invoice Approval
.Drag and drop a Paragraph into the canvas. Insert
Invoice Details
in the paragraph.Include a Text field in your form.
Change the name to
Company Name
and select Read Only, as you will display here some information from the process content.Add some further input fields to your form. Please ensure you have selected the correct type and also maintain all of them as Read Only.
Field Type Name Text Invoice Number
Number Gross Amount
Text Employee Name
You are done with the layout and input fields of the approval form. Save your work.
Go back to your process, you will recognize some errors, e.g. inputs are missing. No need to worry, you will provide the required details in the next steps.
Select the Invoice Approval Form and in the General tab of the form properties, move to Subject and choose Select Item.
Enter the text
Please approve the invoice
and add the process content Document Number. You will find this underneath Invoice Details. This combines plain text with process-related information and serves as an unique identifier for the end user.In the Decision you have defined the approver of the invoice. The output of the decision has been an email address. Now add from the process content within
Approver_Output
the eMail in the Recipients as Users. This means only the selected approver will get this approval in the inbox.Switch to the Inputs tab and within Employee Name choose Select Item. The process content will open again.
Now add the attributes from the process content to the related input fields.
You can only assign fields with the same type, e.g. text in the process content to text input field.
If you cannot assign, e.g. Invoice Number from the process content to the Invoice Number in the input field, the type of the input field might be wrong. If so, please correct your form.Process Content Input Field Employee Name Employee Name Sender Name Company Name Gross Amount Gross Amount Document Number Invoice Number As this mapping of process content and forms is quite important to ensure a proper flow of the relevant data in your process, please check them again. It should look like this.
Save your work.
Select the type of form you have created now:
- Step 2
Choose the + of the control flow for Approve coming from the Invoice Approval Form you have just created. In the context menu, select Forms > New Form.
Maintain the Name
Invoice Approval Notification Form
and also the DescriptionForm to notify about the approved invoice
and choose Create. As always, the Identifier has been created automatically.In the newly created Invoice Approval Notification Form, choose the three dots and select Open Editor.
In the form, add a headline
Invoice Approval
, a paragraphYour invoice has been approved.
and also a text fieldInvoice Number
and select here Read Only. Save your work.Go back to the process, select Invoice Approval Notification Form to maintain the information in General tab.
Maintain Subject, choose Select Item and type
Approved Invoice:
and add the process content Document Number.Select for the Users in this case Process Started By from the process content.
Select Inputs tab and assign the Invoice Number from the process content here.
Save your work.
Can you combine plain text and process content attributes in the subject of a form?
- Step 3
With this you completed designing and configuring the notification form. You can copy the same form to create another form to send a rejection notification to the requester.
If copy is not available then create the form in the same way and modify the texts wherever relevant as shown below.
To add the new rejection form, you will use the Duplicate feature.
Duplicate feature is used to copy artifacts within the Business Process whereas Copy feature is used to copy artifacts across the business processes.
Click on the Overview.
In the Overview screen, do the following:
- Find Invoice Approval Notification Form under the Artifacts section and click on ….
- Choose Duplicate.
The duplicate artifact pop-up will appear.
Change the name to
Invoice Reject Notification Form
and click Duplicate.The
Invoice Reject Notification Form
is automatically opened in the form builder.The screen shown will be the same as
Invoice Approval Notification Form
.Change the invoice rejection form in the form builder to reflect the data for rejection case.
Change the Description to
Form to notify about the rejected invoice
and the following fields to:Form Fields Field Settings with Label Headline 1 Invoice Rejection Paragraph Your invoice has been rejected Keep the text field
Invoice Number
and Save your work.Go back to the process builder and add the invoice rejection notification form to the process.
- Select Invoice Approval Form and Choose + option for the Reject
- Choose Forms and select Invoice Reject Notification Form
Select Invoice Reject Notification Form to maintain the information in General tab.
Maintain Subject, choose Select Item and type
Rejected Invoice:
and add the process content Document Number.Select for the Users in this case Process Started By from the process content.
Select Inputs tab and assign the Invoice Number from the process content here.
Add an end event, choose the + of the control flow from the Invoice Reject Notification Form and select Controls > End.
Your process is ready to be released, deployed and executed. Save your work.