Acknowledge Step

• Acknowledge Step Options
  • Step Label
  • Who will acknowledge at this step?
  • Customize Email Notification
  • Make Individual Form Sections at this Step Hidden or View Only
  • Disable Workflow Status Page
• Complete an Acknowledge Step Request

When an Acknowledge Step is created, the selected individual(s) will receive an email notifying them of an action taken on the form and that they have been requested to acknowledge that action. Progress in the workflow is not contingent, however, on an acknowledger taking action, and will not pause to wait for an acknowledgement to occur.

Within an Acknowledge step, you will need to define which users will be involved on the step, and set the additional step options.

Click on the acknowledge step in the workflow you wish to edit, and the flyout will appear to the right allowing you to modify the settings for the step.

Acknowledge Step Options

Step Label

Each step in the workflow can have a custom label applied do it. These labels help to identify the steps, both in the workflow and when reviewing them on the proposal.

For example, the default step name for an approval step is 'Approval' - but if every step were titled as 'Approval', it would be difficult to troubleshoot or identify where in the process it is.

The Step Label allows you to customize the name of a step so it more accurately represents this part of the process. This will help you keep your workflow organized as you are building out your process, and help provide clarity for reviewers who need to approve multiple times during the process.

The Step Label also appears in the Approval Notification that is emailed to the reviewer to help them identify where they are in the workflow process.

To change the Step Label, click into the step to open the configuration panel, then click into the Step Label field. Once you have updated the Step Label, it will save automatically and the step in the workflow will update to match.

Who will acknowledge at this step?

Once you have created an acknowledge step, the step options panel will open on the right-hand side of the screen. From there, you can choose from a list of individuals to participate at this step within the workflow. Each option is discussed below.

Person(s) in a role of a group, or the group's hierarchy, on the form

This option is available on the approval, task, acknowledge, and notification steps, and will allow you to choose a person in a specific role from any group that was mentioned on your form.

Once this option is selected, an additional field will load below that will ask you to specify the field on the form that lists the group.

You will then be prompted to select the role from that particular group that will participate at this step within the workflow. Based on the number of users within a role, this could potentially refer to a single person or several (such as a committee). 

Person(s) in a role of any specific group

This option is available on the approval, task, acknowledge, and notification steps, and will allow you to choose a person in a specific role from any of the groups that have been established.

Once this option is selected, an additional field will load below that will ask you to specify the role and the group. The roles will be listed with the group first, followed by the role. For example, "Accountancy - Administrators". This setting ensures that any user within the Administrator role of the Accountancy group will be brought into the workflow at this step, regardless of any selections on the form.

A person specified on the form

This option is available on the approval, task, acknowledge, and notification steps, and will allow you to choose a person listed in a field on the form.

Once this option is selected, an additional field will load below that will ask you to specify the field on the form where that person is listed. Additionally, you can select the submitter of the form by choosing "Submitter (meta.submittedBy)" from the drop down.

Note: The Created By and Submitted By options are currently the same person.  The ability for another user to submit doesn't yet exist in the application (other than via API).  We recommend using the Created By option if you want to insert the user that created the form.

Any specific person

This option is available on the approval, task, acknowledge, and notification steps, and will allow you to choose any person from any of the groups that have been established within your system, regardless of any selections made on the form. Once this option is selected you will be asked to specify the user. When a document is submitted into the workflow, the user listed on this step will always be selected, and it will not change unless you update the step. 

Customize Email Notification

The Customize Email Notification setting enables you to include a custom message in the notification that is sent to the assigned approvers.

Email Subject

Allows you to customize the subject line of the approval notification email that will be sent to the approvers. The subject can be customized with variables for additional personalization.

Email Body

Allows you to add a custom message to the approval email. The message can be customized with variables to further tailor it.

Add Variable

Allows you to populate and personalize the subject line with information from the form. For example, the subject line alerts the approver that they are approving the travel request of a specific individual. “Submitter - Display Name” in the subject line will be replaced with the form submitter’s name in the approval email.

Note: The Rich Text and Signature gadgets are not supported variables in custom notifications. Kuali intentionally does this to prevent your custom notifications from looking like spam emails to your end users.

Make Individual Form Sections at this Step Hidden or View Only

This setting provides the ability to to set entire sections of the form to be hidden, or set to view only. This can be helpful when you have sensitive information that not all users need to be able to view - and it can be set on a per-section-per-step setting. 

Once it has been enabled, all sections within the form will be shown along with options for Hide, View, or Edit. 

Hide

When selected, all fields within the section will be hidden at this step in the workflow. The user will be unable to see or edit anything within this section.

View

When selected, the section and fields within will be visible to the users on this step, but they will not be able to modify any of the contents.

Edit

When selected, the section and fields within will be visible, and the user will be able to edit the contents at this step.

Disable Workflow Status Page

By default, every user in the workflow will see the workflow details - including prior/future workflow steps and any comments added. However, if you don't want reviewers to see the workflow details, you can change this setting on an individual step.

Keep in mind when making updates to this setting that it will only impact documents submitted to the workflow after the setting has been changed and the workflow is published. 

Note: The initiator of a document will be able to see the workflow information if the document is ever returned since they are now a part of the workflow recipients.  If you need to hide workflow information from the initiator in this situation, you can disable it entirely in the Workflow Settings and then reenable at each workflow step where you still want it displayed.

Complete an Acknowledge Step Request

You can acknowledge an action taken on a form by going to the submission using the link from the email you received or by going to your Action List. Once you are in the form, click on the Acknowledge button in the top header of the document.