An application process usually needs more than a submit button. Applicants provide information, staff check it, someone approves or declines it, and the requirements change over time. FormWork supplies configurable forms, stages with owners and approvals, automations and entry history for building that process.
This walkthrough describes a configuration pattern. It is not an automated eligibility decision system: people make the decisions, and FormWork records them.
Define inputs and checks
Build the application from typed fields, conditional sections and any repeated details. Use server-side validation to require the information relevant to an applicant’s answers. For supporting documents, use file upload fields.
Preview both complete and incomplete applications. Include boundary cases: an empty repeated group, a changed answer that hides a section, and a step in an automation that fails.
Set up the review stages
On the form’s Process page, start from the Review and approve template or build your own stages. For example:
| Stage | Kind | Owner and due time | Moves on with |
|---|---|---|---|
| New | Open | The Admissions group, due in 2 days | Send for approval, or Decline with a required comment |
| Waiting for approval | Waiting, needs approval | No owner; approvers are asked by email | The decision: to Approved, or to Declined |
| Approved | Open | Keep the current owner | Mark as done |
| Declined, Done | Closed | None |
Someone in the Admissions group takes each new application from My work, checks it, and uses an action to move it on. Applications still in a stage after their due time show as overdue. Use team fields for internal details that aren’t part of the stage, such as a score or an interview date.
Ask for approval
Make the approval stage ask the right people: a person or group in your account, or a fixed email address for a panel member without a FormWork account. Choose whether any one approval is enough, everyone must approve, or at least a set number must. Tick only the answers the approvers need to see.
Approvers get an email with Approve and Reject buttons. Rejecting needs a comment, and each decision is recorded in the application’s history. See approvals.
Keep applicants and staff informed
- Notifications can confirm receipt to the applicant and email the team about each new application.
- An automation with the Approval is decided trigger can email the applicant the outcome. One with In a stage too long can remind the owner or approvers.
- If you want applicants to follow progress, turn on respondent status and choose a neutral label for each stage. Leave it off if progress is sensitive.
Steps that contact other systems run in the background after submission, so a failed request doesn’t undo the submission. Check automation runs and decide how staff should handle failed handoffs.
Decide who should have access
Everyone in an account can open every application, whichever group owns it. Groups decide who owns and approves work, not who can see it, and the Member role is not a restricted reviewer role. Review the permission model before deciding who joins the account, and use approvers outside the account where someone only needs to decide.
Change requirements without rewriting history
Publish revised questions, stages and automations as a new form version. Applications keep the questions they were answered with, including ones still in progress, while the process and automations follow the latest published version. The publish review asks what to do with applications in any stage you remove. Each application’s history shows corrections, stage moves and decisions.
Define completion for your team
An application is complete when the required information is present, it has reached a closed stage, and any handoffs have succeeded. Configure those checks for your process; FormWork doesn’t infer your organisation’s approval policy.
Explore product capabilities, monthly plans, or discuss your requirements.
Choosing a platform
For the same applicant and reviewer journey, read FormWork vs Jotform and FormWork vs Cognito Forms. Check the difference between a person responding to an approval and a team member maintaining the process.