You can use the approval plug-in to:

  • Notify an approver to review a request

  • Allow approvers to approve/reject a request immediately

  • Notify employees about their request outcomes

 

1. Double-click Approval plugin & select approvers

In the popup, select your 1st and (optional) 2nd approvers.



Note that for the employees' names to appear in the dropdown option, you need to provide them access to this process first. You can do so under Process Details:

 


2. Draft approval email content

There are 4 emails that are relevant for approval reviews:

  1. First approval email — Notify 1st approver to review a request

  2. Second approval email — Notify 2nd approver to review a request

  3. Successful email — Notify employee that his request has been approved

  4. Rejection email — Notify employee that his request has been rejected

If you do not wish to send some of the above 4 emails, you can always disable them as shown in the image below. You can customise each of the 4 emails using placeholders as shown.



Here's what you need to know about placeholders:

  • [form:submitter-name] and [form:submitter-email] are present by default. They refer to the name and email address in a user's Forma account.

  • {{APPROVAL_LINK}} refers to the link that directs approvers to the approval review page. Alternatively, you can use the default "Please click here to review request" for approvers to access the link.

  • {{APPROVAL_SUBJECT}} is the title of the review. This is filled in by approvers in the review approval page shown in step 3 below.

  • {{APPROVAL_DETAIL}} is additional information given by approvers during their review. This is filled in via the review approval page shown in step 3 below.

  • For other placeholders such as [form:name], [form:type-of-leave] to appear, you need to have included their form fields in your form previously as such:


    3. Publish and test your workflow

    After you publish your workflow, try submitting a test form. Upon form submission, the first approver will be automatically notified to review the request:




    Upon clicking "here" in the email, Tessa will be directed to her review approvals page. She can immediately indicate to approve/reject the request here.

    • If she rejects, the rejection email will be sent to the submitter.

    • If she approves, the second approver email will be sent to Mindy for the next review. Only if Mindy approves the request too, will the submitter then receive the successful email.

    As mentioned in Step 2, the {{APPROVAL_SUBJECT}} and {{APPROVAL_DETAIL}} placeholders originate from this review approval page as shown: