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Many work flows often involve a number of people filling out different sections of a single form. So when you're designing this type of flow, you're most likely dragging the same form into the flow designer repeatedly to create the different steps in the flow. Another way to create this type of flow is to use the Linked Steps feature of the flow designer. In this method, you create a linked version of a form for each step you want in your flow. One great advantage of this method is that if you need to make changes to the form step(s) after you've created your flow, you only have to edit the "parent" form — the editing changes are automatically propagated to its linked forms in the flow. Conversely, if you drag multiple copies of the same form into a flow to create steps, you'd have to make any changes to each copy of the form in each step. If you want to show or hide different parts of a form depending on which user is filling it out, you can easily do this in a flow designed with linked steps using the Security tab or Business Rules. One circumstance in which you might not want to use linked forms is a flow in which each user is filling out a different form. - To create linked forms in a flow, add a step to the flow by dragging a form into the flow designer.
- Click on the step and then click
 Link icon to create a linked form. - Continue clicking Link icon to create as many of the linked forms as you want.
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- Click the Link Icon to create a linked step.
- Click the pencil icon to open a step in the Form Designer to edit it.
- Click the delete icon to remove a linked step.
- Click the download icon on the parent step as a standalone form.
- Click the Image Modified Edit Step Properties to access the Property tabs for the flow step.
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Finding the Name of the Parent Step
Hovering over the flow step name on a linked step shows the name of the Parent form it was copied from. This is useful when you have a flow with more than one step that has additional linked steps.
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Linked Steps Workflow Examples
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- Click the Edit Step Properties icon on the step then click the Settings tab.
- Click the icon in the Properties Navigator on the left side of the screen. This takes you directly to the Settings tab.
- Click anywhere in the General Settings section of the Properties Navigator. This takes you directly to the Settings tab.
- Type the name of the flow step in the Name field on the Settings tab. For this example, the name of the third step is Finance.
- Click on the Assignment tab. Add the Finance role to the Assign to Role field. You can begin typing the role name in the field to filter the dropdown choices. Click Submit.
Save the workflow.
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Edit Step 1 of the workflow. Click the Rules icon on the Form toolbar. Write the Show/Hide rules and any other Business Rules you might need.
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- Click on a workflow step
- Open the Settings tab in one of 3 ways:
- Click the Edit Step Properties icon on the step then click the Settings tab.
- Click the icon in the Properties Navigator on the left side of the screen. This takes you directly to the Settings tab.
- Click anywhere in the General Settings section of the Properties Navigator. This takes you directly to the Settings tab.
- Type the name of the flow step in the Name field on the Settings tab.
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As with other forms you use to create steps, you can assign a linked-form step to a Role,so that the step is performed by someone with that role, or even by a specific user. In this example, we rename all three steps and assign each to a different role.
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