Do you want to be able to review and approve (or have a group of people approve) an entry after it is submitted? If so keep reading.

With the automation plugin, you can create an approval workflow in which you can put an entry into an approval process and do other actions (like sending an email or updating the entry status or a field) after the entry is approved or rejected.

To do so follow these steps:

1.- Go to the aio workflow page and create a new workflow

2.- Configure your workflow, in here you can configure a sequence of actions that are performed when a form is submitted, for example, you could send an email, change the status of an entry and then send the data to an API but for this example, we are going to focus just in creating an approval action.

To do so I just need to click the plus button in the “Start” node

and then I will select the approved action

3.- Configure the approval process. The approval action has 4 main settings:

Assign to: Here you configure the users or roles assigned to the approval process

Approval type: Here you configure how the approval is going to work, currently it can work in two ways:

• Only one person is needed to approve
• All the assignees need to approve

Workflow Step After Accept: The workflow step used after the entry is accepted

Workflow Step After Reject: The workflow step is used after the entry is rejected.

These are completely configurable, for example, in the screenshot below the workflow was configured to send an email and update the entry status after the entry is approved and delete it if it is rejected.

Instructions: Additional instructions that are shown above the approve and reject buttons.

For example, if I configure these instructions:

They are going to show above the approve and reject buttons

4.- Configure the email notifications. You can set up an email that is sent when someone is assigned as an approver when the entry is approved or rejected.

5.- Once you finish configuring your workflow you need to activate it.

That’s it, now your workflow is going to be executed when a form is submitted.

How to approve or reject an entry

Once an entry reaches the approval step, the users assigned to approve or reject it can go to the entries screen and approve it from there:

Firing the workflow conditionally

You can also configure the workflow to be executed only for specific submissions (like submissions done by a specific user or that were filled in a certain way). To do so follow these steps:

1.- Go to the start node settings (you can go to its settings by clicking the pencil icon)

2.- In the condition section set up your condition. In the example below the workflow will be fired only for entries where in the field called “Numeric” a number “1” is submitted

You can also create workflows directly in an email, for example after you receive a notification of a submission you could review it and approve it (or send it to someone else) directly within your email, no need to log into wordpress or send an email manually.

To add an automation to an email do the following:

1.- Open the form designer of the form that has the automation that you want to use. If you are not sure how to create an automation please check the “Getting Started” tutorial first.

2.- Go to the email designer and click on “Automations”

3.- Select the automation that you want to use and the text of the link

4.- That’s it! Now the email will contain a link to execute the automation that you selected.

One of the most powerful features of the plugin is the ability to execute automation within your pages (created with the Pages add-on). This gives you the flexibility to create a whole bunch of sites. For example, you could create a user portal where users can cancel, update or even send you an email regarding their previously submitted entry.

To add an automation to a page do the following.

1.- Open the AIO page designer

2.- Add a link to your page

2.- As a link type select “Automation”

3.- Select the automation that you want to add

That’s it! Now your page will be generated with a link to execute the automation

You can also configure automation to not be fired automatically and run it directly in the entries screen. You could use this to quickly do a routine task like sending an email or approving an entry after reviewing it.

To add an automation to the entries screen do the following:

1.- Open the automation that you want to add to the entries screen. If you are not sure how to create an automation check this tutorial first

2.- Click on “Advance Options”

3. Check “Execute from entries screen”

That’s it! now the entries screen will have a new action to execute this automation

With the automation add-on, you can execute actions like

• Sending emails
• Updating an entry
• Add a comment to an entry
• Send the data to a third-party app

When an action is executed such like:

• A form with specific information is submitted
• An entry is updated or deleted
• A button created by the “Pages” add-on is clicked

To create an automation do the following:

1.- Go To AIO->Automation

2.- Click on “Create new automation”

3.- Select a form and a trigger type, depending on the trigger type the automation will be executed after an action is executed like submitting a form

4.- (Optional) Define a condition, if defined the trigger will be only executed if the entry met this condition. In the example below the automation will be executed only when the field called “Button selection” has the option “Option 1” selected.

5.- Select an action, this is the action that will be executed when the trigger is fired

6.- Depending on the action selected you will need to fill in different fields, for example, if you select “Send email” you also need to configure this email

7.- (Optional) If you want you can configure additional actions, all these actions are going to be executed when the trigger is fired

8.- By default all the new automation are disabled so you need to activate it so it is executed

And that’s it! now your automation is going to be fired automatically when your trigger action is performed. This is just the tip of the iceberg though with the automation add-on you can do a lot more stuff like adding a button to the entries screen or even an email that when clicked will automatically perform the automation, this will be covered in another tutorial.