Forms Portal - How to work public steps into process?

asked on November 9, 2020

I'm trying to wrap my head around the best approach for integrating public forms into our processes. We do have the Forms Portal, and will now be using it for the first time.

Scenario:

As a part of a multi-step process, we have a form that needs to be signed by someone outside of our organization. In one use-case this is a confidentiality agreement. In another use-case, this is a release of information form. After the form is signed and returned, there would be additional steps in the process.

Since we need to wait for the external (public) user to submit the form (to return it to us), it makes sense to me that we would use a User Task, but I don't know how to assign a User Task to an external user. Is this possible? We are collecting their e-mail address in a variable earlier in the process.

Or, do we need to start our process as usual and include an e-mail task that includes link with the form they need to complete, which would actually be a different process? (we could embed variables into our URL to pass information between the processes)

Or, is there another (better) approach?

Thank you in advance!

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SELECTED ANSWER

replied on November 9, 2020

Only the form in the start step of a process can be accessed by anonymous user without authentication when the process is set as public, so I think you can archive it with the second approach which is emailing the user with the link to the public process and pass variable values in the URL, and trigger a workflow in the public process after public user submit the form to pass the variable values back to the original process.

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replied on January 21, 2022

I'm assuming I need to update some forms Input Parameters in the workflow in order to have workflow update a difference forms process than the public process that started the workflow.

Which variables would I need to update to have that workflow now set variables in the first forms process?

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replied on January 24, 2022

We have two processes: what I'll call the "parent" process, and then the public process. The parent process sends an e-mail with a link to the public process. This link has variable information embedded into the URL, including the Instance ID of the parent process, which we store in a hidden field in the public process (to "link" the processes together).

When the public process completes, it saves a form to our repository. From the parent process, we run a Workflow that looks for this form in the repository (using the Instance ID from the parent process as an identifier) - if it's found, then we know the public (child) process has completed and we update variables accordingly.

I hope that helps!

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replied on January 24, 2022

Thanks,

I was looking for a way to update a different forms process than the one that spawned the workflow. I'm trying for what would be best, and I'll work my way down from there. Despite changing some of workflow's variables, it still will only update the forms process that started it. Reading Xiang's response above, the last sentance made me think it was possible to pass variables from workflow into a process that didn't trigger it.

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