How do I Build my Form to support Bulk Submit?

Modified on Mon, 26 Feb at 2:24 PM

When is Bulk Submit beneficial?

Bulk Submit will benefit you when you need to track and assign a single form to many people. Bulk Submit is often used for Contract Letters, Policy Forms, and Consent Forms. Using Bulk Submit can easily support your current process, especially if you use a spreadsheet to house the data for all the people you are sending this form.

How does Bulk Submit function within the workflow?

We are essentially moving the Start step to the second step in your workflow and using the Start step as the method of initiating several submissions at once through accepting values within a spreadsheet template, inserting those values into individual submissions, submitting the form, and assigning the form on the second workflow step to the intended assignee.

What do I add to my Form to support Bulk Submit?

Accommodating Bulk Submit can be a challenge when building out your form because this changes who is initiating your form. Follow the guide below and never hesitate to submit a support ticket if you need assistance.

1. Consider the fields that should be filled out by the person sending the form.

This can include an indefinite number of fields but must include the submitterName and submitterEmail fields, which will typically be the Name and Email of the person you are assigning a submission.
Any fields on your form that should be filled out by the person doing the Bulk Submit should be included in this list.
The order in which the fields appear on the form (left to right and top to bottom) will be the order of the columns for the spreadsheet template.

Ordering Your Fields
Many times organizations already have a spreadsheet that holds the data that will be added to the form. To simplify your process, order the fields in the same order as the columns on your existing spreadsheet. When you go to Bulk Submit, you will only need to copy/paste the data from your existing spreadsheet into the Bulk Submit template.

2. The first workflow step on the form must be relatively simple.

No signatures,
No document uploads,
No global datasets,
and We recommend not using tables

The first workflow step is the upload of the Bulk Submit template. Once the template has been uploaded, new submissions will be created for each row and those submissions will move to the second workflow step.

3. Edit your Visibility permissions for the first workflow step

The only visible fields should be those that are filled out by the initiator.
All other fields need to be "hidden" explicitly, or placed within a Section that is "hidden" on the first step.

4. Add a new workflow step and assign it using the name and email fields included in the Bulk Submit/Start step.

Create a new workflow step with the correct permissions so the assignee can complete the expected fields.
Hide any unnecessary fields in this workflow step
Assign the workflow step using the applicable code template below.

Option 1: When you are using fields other than submitterName and submitterEmail to input the assignee's name and email.

"{'name': componentIDHere, 'email': componentIDHere}"

Option 2: When you are using the submitterName and submitterEmail fields as the assignee's name and email.

"getSubmittedBy()"