Suppose your organization has established a Workflow for processing vacation requests. When employees want to request time off, they fill out a Form that is automatically routed along the Workflow upon submission. The vacation dates are tracked in the appropriate Human Resources calendars, so the Form data does not need to be stored elsewhere in Content Server.

To set up a vacation request Form:

  1. Define a Form Template that contains the text, fields, and buttons that you want to appear on the vacation request Form. For more information about defining a Form Template, see Defining a Form Template.

  2. Add a Form based on the Form Template. When you define the Form, use the following settings:

    • Do not specify a revision mechanism.

    • Specify Initiate Workflow and the submission mechanism, and associate the vacation request Workflow Map with the Form.

    For more information about defining Forms, see Defining a Form.

  3. Add a Workflow Map that processes the vacation request. The Workflow Map requires the following:

    • Enable Forms in the Workflow work package, and then add the vacation request Form to the work package. For more information about adding Forms to a Workflow Map package, see Adding Forms to the Work Package.

    • Use a Form Task step or make the Form available at User steps. For more information about Form Task steps, see Defining Form Task Steps. For more information about defining User steps, see Defining a User or Initiator Step.

    • Configure the Workflow so that the Initiate page does not display when a user submits the Form. On the Start Step definition, clear the Prompt for title at initiation check box on the Workflow Map's General page and the Display at Initiation check box on the Start Step Definition page. For more information about defining Start Steps, see Defining a Start Step.

Using the Vacation Request Example

Fill out the vacation request Form, and then submit the Form data. Content Server automatically initiates a Workflow, and then automatically sends the vacation request to the managers and Human Resources staff who process the request.

For information related to this procedure, see Revision and Submission Mechanism Examples.