Question

Email Link to Submitted Form with Current Data (Not a specific task)

Forms

Updated November 17, 2023

asked on November 9, 2023

We have a Forms process that goes through a variety of approvals steps and can take a considerable amount of time to complete. The customer is wanting the initiator (licensed user) to be able to quickly see the status of their instance in real time. As the process has so many approvals steps and paths it can take, we are not wanting to send the initiator an email after each step just to keep them up to date. And while we know that the initiator can log into their Forms Inbox, go to Completed Tasks, and then find instance in question, this takes a bit of work and can be cumbersome/confusing for those who do not use Forms regularly.

Our goal is to have an email that the initiator receives immediately after submittal that has a link directly to the instance, no matter what task step it is currently assigned to. The initiator could then just refer back to this email at anytime to see where their request currently is sitting in the approval process. While the combination of variables and text below gets close, it shows an error because the specific task ID is not included.

{/dataset/_forms_server_url}/Forms/form/submission/history/{/dataset/_instance_id}?hideHeader=true
- e.g. https://www.laserfiche.com/Forms/form/submission/history/123456?hideHeader=true
What it wants (task ID in bold):
- e.g. https://www.laserfiche.com/Forms/form/submission/history/123456/567890?hideHeader=true

Has anyone found a way to email someone a link to a specific Forms instance that goes to the current/latest task, without also having to know that current/latest task ID? I am also hoping that Laserfiche will make this a variable we can just call in the future without having to custom build something out.

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Replies

replied on November 9, 2023

It sounds like you are wanting an "Approval History" report that could be accessed by a URL where you could pass a query string value for the Instance ID.

It would be nice if you could do the same thing with a Custom Report where you could pass in a filter value using a query string, but reports can only be viewed by users with certain license types, so that would not be as useful.

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replied on November 9, 2023

Yep, that is essentially it. Most of these are participant users so any reporting built into Forms is out of the question.

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replied on November 9, 2023

That would be a great feature to have because most of our users and Educational License only. In the past I have used a Form Status field that is updating on each task and stored it in SQL so it could be looked up in a separate form. I just send the initiator an email with the instance ID and reference that to pull where the form is currently sitting. Its a lot of extra work for both parties though :(

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replied on November 14, 2023

Hi Beau,

The ID in bold should be the submission ID of completed user task, and can be accessed by process variable 'Previous user submission -> submission ID' ({/dataset/_fs_submission_id}). Could you give a try?

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replied on November 16, 2023

That will give a link to that submission however the end-user is wanting a link to the current version of the form and latest variables. I need to be able to send them a link that will always go to whatever the latest version of the form/variables for that instance.

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replied on November 16, 2023

Forms security doesn't work that way. To see the latest variables for a specific instance they would have to have higher rights in the system. And if they have those rights, then you could just point them to the Monitor page using an URL and pass in the instance id along with it.

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replied on November 17, 2023

When I go into a Form that I was involved in (submitted or approved) via the "Completed Tasks" in my Inbox, I am able to see the Form along with the current values for the Action History and the current values for the variables, listed in the Summary area. Ultimately that is what they are wanting so I guess a link to their initiator instance would work so long as it showed the current values in the Action History & Summary sections. Ultimately we are just trying to find a way for people who do not use Forms regularly, to quickly find the status of things they submitted that are still in progress, without having to learn the Inbox.

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Email Link to Submitted Form with Current Data (Not a specific task)

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