Send Unknown Users for Approval Prior to Registration

Back to: Automate New User Registration with Gravity Flow

Next we will address any unknown users who attempt to register for access to your site. First, we will send their registration for approval in case they mistyped their email address or belong to a new member company who hasn’t made it into your known users list yet.

Let’s start by creating a new step. We’ll call this one “Registration Approval.”

I have added a description to mine to remind me of the purpose of this step in case the name is not descriptive enough: When an unknown email domain attempts to register, send for approval.

This time the Step Type will be Approval.

You may choose to highlight this step. I’ll explain more below.

We do not need to set any conditions on this step because only anyone who did not meet the conditions in the first step will make it to this second step.

Again, I will have this run immediately, but you could schedule a delay if that works for your use case.

In the next section, you will select who needs to approve the registration. You can choose an individual (or several of them) or a role type so that every registered user with that role type is asked to approve the registration. You also have the option of sending the request to an email field on the form, which might be helpful if you included a field like Supervisor or Member Representative on your form.

Once you’ve selected your assignees (just click on them to move them to the right – click again to move them back to the left), choose how many need to approve it. You can set this option to allow any one of the assignees to approve the request or to require that they all approve it before it can move forward.

Next, set up an email to be sent to the assignee. Check the box next to Send an email to the assignee to get started.

Enter a From Name for the email that the assignee will recognize. The from email address will default to the admin email. Fill in Reply To, CC, and BCC if necessary. Enter a subject that will be meaningful to the assignee.

Notice: Each of the fields has a Merge Tag icon next to it so that you can populate them with information from the form entry.

The message will automatically say “A new entry is pending your approval. Please check your Workflow Inbox.” You can edit or add to this message. I’ve added merge tags for some of my fields so that the assignee knows who has submitted a registration without having to go to the Workflow Inbox. 

At the bottom of the merge tags you’ll find Approve and Reject links, URLs, and tokens. You can insert these into the email to provide a shortcut to the Workflow Inbox. Generally your assignees will still need to log in, but there is a One Click Approval process you can try if your use case requires it.

I have also added a reminder in case the assignee doesn’t respond right away. They will continue to receive a reminder every two days until they complete the Workflow step.

Before we go further, let’s take a quick detour to find the Workflow Inbox (click Update Step Settings before you leave the page). In the Admin toolbar, click Workflow, then click Inbox. 

This is where any pending tasks will be waiting for you. This is where the highlighting could come in handy. If your Workflow Inbox is busy and you want these tasks to stand out so you can respond to them quickly, the highlighting could be helpful. (Note the yellow bar on the side of the task below.)

Back to the Workflow Step Settings screen. At the top of the Email section, you’ll notice there are also tabs for Rejection Email and Approval Email. Let’s set up a rejection email.

You could send an email to the registrant notifying them that their registration was rejected. I have set up the rejection letter to notify the sales team of the attempt to register so that they can reach out to the registrant and discuss membership.

I won’t set up an approval email because the next registration step will send an email to the new user. However, if you collect a password on your form and don’t send a user registration email, you could set up an approval email to notify the registrant that their registration was approved.

Once your emails are all set, set the next steps: 

• If rejected: Workflow Complete
• If approved: Next step in list

Then click Update Step Settings to save.