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A  workflow is a series of routed forms that can now run on all devices including the iPhone and the iPad. In this tutorial, we will create a workflow that can be used when onboarding a new employee joining your company. There will be three participants: the new employee, the new employee's manager and an employee that works for the company HR department. The new employee will complete four forms: Employee Information, W-4 Allowances, Education History and will have an opportunity to confirm the entered data with their signature on a Confirmation form by reviewing a W  - 4 generated pdf. These four forms are referred to as a screen flow. A screen flow consists of steps in a workflow that are performed by the same person. The new employee will complete the screen flow from an iPad and the task will be sent to the new employee's manager for approval. The approval step will be performed on an iPhone using the Quick Approval feature. Once the task is approved, it will go to the HR department for finalization and storage. This tutorial will cover the following:

  • Create the Screen flow

    using

    using the PageBreak control to design the forms for a mobile device, in this case, the iPad. The screen flow includes a confirmation form for the new employee to review the generated W-4 pdf. The Confirmation form utilizes the v5 Form Viewer and Signature controls. 

  • Create the Approval form using the Quick Approval feature. This step will be performed on the iPhone by the manager.
  • Create the desktop form for the company HR department
  • Create the Employee On Boarding flow. Assign an icon to it.
  • Generate an additional PDF for the federal W - 4 forms 
    • Add a field for the signature to the W-4 Acroform using PDFescape.
    • Upload the W-4 template, download the mapper.
    • Map the e-form controls to the Acroform field  and upload the modified mapper.
  • Create

    the  roles

    the  roles and users needed.

  • Create a  space.
  • Test the flow on the iPad, iPhone and desktop 

What are we going to need

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Warning

This is a one-time setup that will have to be performed by an administrator.

We will need three roles: employee, manager and hr. To create these roles in :

If you are using  Online, go directly to Step 5.  in-house users will have to create a tenant first before adding roles/users. Follow Steps 1-4 to do that:

  1. Login as the  in-house superuser admin.
  2. Click the  icon to create a new tenant
  3. Fill in the Add Tenant screen. 
  4. Click the Submit button. Logoff as the superuser.
  5. Login to  as the administrative user for your tenant.
  6. If you do not already see the Manage Tenant page, click the Manage link at the top right of the page.
  7. On the page that is displayed, click the "Manage Roles" link.
  8. Click the  icon and in the form that is displayed, type in the desired role. Note that role names are case sensitive.
  9. Repeat for the second and third roles.

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  • Drag and drop an image control from the palette to the canvas. Use this to upload a company logo image, if desired.
  • Drag a message control from the palette and drop it next to your logo. Type the text "New Employee Onboarding Form" in the message area. You can bold the text by checking bold on the Style tab for the message control.

  • Drag and Drop a date control and label it Date of Birth. The Date Format  defaults to Automatic. Check Required on the date control's property panel.
  • Add a text control next to the date of birth. Change the label to "Your Manager Is". Change the name of the control to manager. Uncheck the enabled property for that control. We'll use a rule to fill in the new employee and manager's names using the _data.getParameter
  • Drag and drop text controls for the First Name, Middle Initial and Last name fields. Click the Style tab and adjust the widths of the three fields so that they are next to each other on the same line. Check the required property on the FirstName and LastName fields but do not make the control named Initial required. 
  • Drop another text control below these controls. Uncheck the visible property for this control. Name this field FirstPlusInitial. This control will not be visible on the form. We will use a rule to combine the new employee's first name and middle initial and populate this field with that information. Then we will map the FirstPlusInitial field in the mapper for the W - 4 pdf later in this tutorial.
  • Add a text control below the FirstPlusInitial control  - name it SSN. A pattern can be used to ensure the correct format number for the Social Security Number. Here is an example of a valid pattern: \d{3}-\d{2}-\d{4}. Apply this pattern to the field by typing it into the Pattern field on the Control property pane. will display an error message if the entered data does not match the Make sure the required property is checked. 

  • Drag and drop an email control to the right of the SSN field.  Label it Personal Email Address. 
  • Add a Phone control below SSN. Name the control Home Phone. Help text showing different formats for the phone number is provided when you add the control to the form.
  • Add a second Phone control to the right of the Home Phone field. Name the control Cell Phone.   
  • Add a text control to collect Address information from the new employee. Make the width the size of the form and name it Street.
  • Drag and drop a text field below the Street control. Label it City. Make it Required.

  • Drag a dropdown control from the palette, name it State and make it Required. Type in the names of some states into the Options section on the dropdown control property pane:

  • Drop a text control to the right of the State dropdown. Label it Zip Code and make it Required. Designate a Max Length of 5 characters. 

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  • Click the  save and exit icon to save the work we have done.
  • On the Forms Home Page, click the  icon for the Employee Information form to continue editing.
  • Rules add behaviors to forms. We will add 4 rules to this form to accomplish the following:
    • The first rule will fill in the First and Last Name of the new employee and the name of the manager they report to, from the login information using the _data.getParameter when the form loads.
    • The second rule will combine the employee's First Name and Initial and store it in the hidden field called FirstPlusInitial
    • The third rule will combine the City, State and Zip Code information and store it in the hidden field called FullAddress
    • The fourth rule will work with the GPS features on mobile devices detect the new employee's location information when they are filling in the Employee Information form.
  • Click on the  Rules  Rules icon on the designer toolbar to access the Rules Editor. Click the  icon then the  icon to open the Rules validator screen. Give your rule a meaningful name: in this case we will call it Form Load. Copy/Paste the rule below into the rules canvas.

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  • Refer to the Rule Validator for help in troubleshooting if there are any issues with the rules that we are adding to the form.
  • Click the   edit form icon in the designer toolbar to return to the form. Your rules will be saved.
  • As a precaution, click the the  save save and exit icon to preserve the work we have done so far.
  • On the Forms Home Page, click the the  icon for the Employee Information form to continue editing.
  • Although  automatically adjusts to the screen size of a mobile device, the PageBreak control gives the forms designer a tool to specify the sections of your form that appear on a page. Drag and drop a PageBreak control below the manager control. Click on the PageBreak control and notice the property pane shows both phone and tablet checked. This is the default value and we will leave it as is. This will ensure that the controls above the first PageBreak will appear on the first page when the form is rendered on the iPad or the iPhone. 
  • Drag another PageBreak control from the palette and drop it below the FullAddress control. Check phone and uncheck tablet on the PageBreak property panel. With these PageBreaks in place, the Date of Birth and manager fields wiill appear on the first page and the name, address SSN, phone and email controls will appear on the second page on the iPhone and iPad.
Tip

The pagebreaks icon acts as a toggle to display the PageBreak controls in your form. Once you add PageBreaks, then save the form, the PageBreak controls will not be visible in the designer unless you click this icon. Clicking the icon a second time will hide the PageBreak controls again.

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  • Your form should look similar to the image below:

  • Click the the  save save and exit icon to save the Employee Information form. 

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  •  Be sure to save your form by clicking on the the  save save and exit icon in the designer.
  •  You can test this form by clicking on the Test button on the Forms Home Page. The Today's Date should be populated with today's date and entering values in A_allowance, B_allowance,and C_allowance should show the summation in the Total_Allowances field.

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  • Delete one of the columns in the table by clicking on the column and then clicking on the    delete icon.
  • Drag and drop two quantity fields into the table to make the Start Year and End Year columns.
  • Change the label of one of the columns you added to Start Year and the name of that column to StartYear. Change the label of the second column to End Year and the name of that column to EndYear
  • Move the Start Year column to the leftmost postiion position in the table and the End Year column to the right of the Start Year column . Move the columns by clicking in the column header and clicking the  green arrow  that appears. Columns will move to the right each time you click on the arrow for that column.
  • Move the other columns to get the Start and End Year columns in the correct positions.

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  • Click on the Table control then select the Style tab on the Properties panel. Enter these percentage values, separated by a space, to adjust the widths of the four columns: 10% 10% 50% 25%

  • Click the the  save save and exit icon to save the form.  

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This form will be used by the new employee's manager to approve or reject the screen flow. In this scenario, the manager, Jerry, will use his iPhone to perform this task when it appears in his Task List. You can use the  Quick View feature to make that process easy . Quick View requires an Approval control. An approval control is a section control in your form with a text area control inside of it. You can set up a signed section if you want the manager to sign after approving or rejecting the task . Drag and drop a section control into the Approval form. Name it Manager Review. Add a text area control for manager comments. Click on the Security tab for the section. Assign the role of manager from the role list. Choose Text/Signature Image or Wet Signature type from the dropdown for the signature type. Refer to Electronic Signatures for more information. Quick view is setup in the flow designer but it will not work if the form does not have an approval control in it. 

Be sure to click the the  save save and exit icon to save the form.

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The last step in the Employee On Boarding flow is performed by Sue, who works in the HR department of the company. Sue receives the task from the manager, Jerry and proceeds to complete the final form, sign it  and submit the data to the company database. Create a form similar to the image below. 

  • Add a date control for the Performance Review Date and a dropdown control for the Pay Grade.

     

     Click

    • Use a message control for the instruction: "Confirm that the new employee has completed the following:". One way to bold the message text  is to use HTML tags in the message control. For example, the text should be encased in <b>text</b>,  as shown in the image. 

    • Drag a section from the palette and drop it on the canvas. Select the HR role on the section security tab. Add these controls to the section: 

      • Use the T/F control for the policy questions - Drag 6 of them from the palette into the section. Make sure they are below the Message control.  Check the New Line property on the Style tab to get the T/F controls to line up underneath each other.
      • Change the labels of the T/F Controls to: Read Harrassment Policy, Read Email Policy, Read Confidential Data Policy and Received the Employee Handbook. 
      • Add a Signature control or choose a Signature type from the dropdown on the Security tab of the section 
    Click
      • Image Modified
     save
      • save and exit  icon to save the form. 


 

Create the Employee On Boarding Flow

Open the Flow Designer by clicking on the Flows menu item. Click on the  Image Removed icon the Image Added icon to create the new Employee On Boarding flow. Drag and drop your Employee Information, Allowances, Education History, Confirmation, Approval and Office Use Only forms from the palette to the flow editor.  Review this documentation for information about the Flow step properties you can set up. In the image below, the new employee will see the Navigation toolbar to chart progress when filling out the screen flow. Click the Image Removed icon the  icon in the toolbar. With the who can use the flow permission visible in the dropdown, select Public in Tenant in the Visibility dropdown. New employees will have to log onto the tenant to access the flow. Check to see that the deployment is set  to Production. Click on the Confirmation Form and customize the Continue Label for this step of the flow to say "Send to Manager".

Tip

Forms can be created or edited directly from the flow, if necessary. Click the form to be edited, (the New Form if you are just creating it) then click the the Image Modified icon to open the form designer. This copy of the form is not the same as the one we created in the Form Designer. Changes to the form in the flow will not affect the original form that was dragged from the palette. 

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  1. The Setup Quick View wizard will display all sections of your form that meet the criteria of an Approval control. In this case, there should only by one - the Manager Review section of the Approval form.
  2. Check the Enable box.
  3. Type a Summary statement that will appear on the Task List, if desired. This is essentially the same as the Task Information so if you have set that up already you can leave the summary blank.  To add the new employee SSN to the Quick View, type SSN: followed by the templatized string for the Social Security field. Clicking on the Control dropdown will list all the controls in all the forms in your flow in alphabetical order.
  4. The Manager Review section should be listed in the Approval Control box.
  5. Click the the  save save and exit icon to close the wizard. You will see the lightening  lightening bolt on the Approval flow activity if Quick View is setup correctly.

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Jerry, the manager, will receive an email informing him that there is a New Employee On Boarding task on his Task List. Notice the {task.list.url} is replaced by the link to Jerry's task list. When Jerry clicks this link, he will be directed to his task list. He will have to login if he is not signed on to access it.

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  • Dragging mappable fields from the outline and dropping them onto the PDF field (hi-lighted in either yellow or green).
  • Clicking on a PDF field to activate the PDF Mapping Dialogue

We will use the Drag and Drop method in this tutorial. Information on using the PDF Mapping dialogue can be found here.

Follow the steps int his section to map fields in the Employee Information and Allowance forms in our flow to the W - 4 acroform pdf.

Open the Employee On Boarding workflow in the flow designer. Click on the  the   view forms forms generated by the form/flow icon on the toolbar.  Existing mapped pdfs for your form/flow will be listed.


Since we have not mapped a pdf yet, there will be none listed.

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Map the E-Form Fields to the Acroform Fields

Click the Map  Map Fields icon.

Ensure the PDF Page thumbnail Image for page 1 is selected.

Contract the property pane by clicking in the header.

Click the Image Modified icon  icon to the left of the Employee Information and Allowances forms to expand the control list in the Mapping Form Outline.

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Click the  Edit icon to return to the designer. Highlight the Confirmation form by clicking on it. Click on the Image Modified icon to edit the form. Drag and drop one Form Viewer control from the flow palette to the form. Change the label of the Form Viewer control to Review PDF Forms. Change the label color and any other style changes you want to make on the Style tab in the Properties pane. See Style Properties for more information.  

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On the Flows Home page, click the Image Modified icon to assign a thumbnail to your Employee On Boarding flow that will display on the iPad and Iphone. You can upload your own icon or select one that  provides. 

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  1. Log in as the designer. Click on the Spaces tab.
  2. Click  to create a new space, type a Space ID and Space Name, and then click Create.
  3. Since we set the state of the Employee On Boarding flow to Production in a previous step, it will automatically be included, along with the Task List as menu items in the newly created space. 
  4. Click the  Edit icon.  Click the  icon to hide the left panel and select regular for the form width from the Min Width dropdown on the Property pane. 

  5. If your tenant is in the cloud, click the Save and Exit icon and proceed to the Test the Employee On Boarding Flow section.
  6. If you are using an in-house installation,
    1. Click the Image Modified menu  menu edit icon. Replace the <localhost<localhost:8082> 8082> in the urls for the Task List and the Employee On Boarding workflow with your server name and port. 
    2. Click the Save  Save and Exit icon to save the changes and proceed to the Test the Employee On Boarding Flow section.

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