Flow Forms

Dynamic Steps

Dynamic steps create approvers on-the-fly based on form data or submission context. They're used when the approvers aren't known in advance and need to be determined from the submission itself.

Overview

Dynamic steps use a trigger mechanism to extract user information and create approval notifications.

Dynamic Types

Initial (initial)

Assigns the original submitter as the approver for this step.

Behavior:

  • Retrieves the user who created the submission
  • Creates a notification for that user to approve
  • Useful for confirmation or acknowledgment workflows

Use Case: "The employee who submitted the request must confirm the final details."

Form (form)

Extracts user data from form fields to create new approvers.

Behavior:

  • Reads email, name, and optionally phone from specified form elements
  • Creates or updates users with the extracted data
  • Assigns a role (typically external for outside collaborators)
  • Optionally adds the user to a specific group
  • Can handle multiple rows from repeating fields

Configuration:

  • Email field (required) - form element containing email
  • Name field (required) - form element containing name
  • Phone field (optional) - form element containing phone
  • Role - role to assign to created users
  • Group - optional group membership

Use Case: "A manager enters their supervisor's email in the form, and that supervisor becomes an approver."

Approvers (approvers)

Uses approvers from a previous flow step.

Behavior:

  • References another flow step by ID
  • Collects all users who approved that previous step
  • Creates notifications for those same users at this step

Use Case: "The same committee members who approved Phase 1 must also approve Phase 2."

Features

Graduation Support

Dynamic steps can connect to another form for related workflows (e.g., student graduation linking to a different approval form).

Multi-Row Extraction

When the form type is set to form, the system can extract users from repeating field groups:

  1. Identifies rows based on the email field element
  2. For each row with an email value, extracts corresponding name/phone data
  3. Creates/updates users for each row
  4. Creates notifications for all extracted users

User Creation

For form type dynamic steps:

  1. Checks if a user with the email already exists in the account
  2. If not, creates a new user with:
    • Email address from form
    • Name from form
    • Phone (if provided)
    • Assigned role
    • Optional group membership
  3. Sends appropriate notifications to new users

Step Sequencing

Dynamic steps follow specific sequencing rules:

  • Can be preceded by: conditional, collective, all, dynamic
  • Cannot be directly preceded by: one, multiple, group_select

This ensures proper workflow branching when using conditional logic.