Anvil Workflows serve as a complete paperwork solution– helping you gather data through Webforms, automatically fill PDFs, and collect legally binding e-signatures. This article is a step-by-step guide to help you get started with building your own custom Workflows.
- Getting started
- Customize Webforms
- Configure signers
- Personalize settings and publish
- Test and collect Submissions
- Additional resources
Getting started
Before you start building your Workflow it’s best practice to templatize your document(s) first. While you can choose to create a Workflow with new documents or forego documents altogether, templatizing your document(s) first offers you more flexibility and ultimately saves you a lot of build time later on.
In fact, templatizing your document(s) is so important that we have an entire tutorial dedicated to the topic. Check it out here. Once your document templates are set up, you’re ready to create a Workflow!
To create a Workflow:
- Click on the Workflows icon in the left side navigation bar
- Select Create a Workflow
- Choose your template(s)
- Click Start with documents
Congratulations, you’ve now created your first Workflow! Your Workflow will include a Webform, mapped Webform and PDF fields, and optionally signers. Depending on whether or not you leveraged Document AI (enabled by default) when you created your Workflows, signers may have been automatically created and mapped to signature fields for you.
In the next steps we’ll jump straight into customizing your Workflow. If you’d like an in depth overview of the Workflow editor check out this article instead.
Customize Webforms
Your end users will spend most of their time interacting with a Webform, rather than the document(s) directly. You can create guided experiences by providing clear instructions, grouping similar questions together, streamlining relevant questions with logic, and more.
Since you’ve already configured your documents when you templatized them, we’ll spend most of the time in the following tutorial going over how to configure your Webfrom.
For more in depth information about the topics covered in this tutorial, check out these articles:
- Adding or removing fields in Webforms.
- Connecting Webform and PDF fields.
- Moving fields within a Webform and adding page breaks.
- Adding Webform field and page logic.
- Adding PDF field logic to dynamically fill PDF fields.
- Setting up list and array type fields.
Configure signers
Workflows support multiple signers and you can add as few or as many signers as you’d like. Depending on your documents and whether or not you leveraged Document AI when you created your Workflow, signers may have already been created for you.
The following tutorial will show you how to add and remove signers, configure signer settings, and connect signers to signature fields.
For more in depth information about the topics covered in this tutorial, check out the following articles:
- Adding or removing signers.
- Configuring signer settings to control how and when signers sign.
- Connecting or disconnecting signers from signature fields.
Personalize settings and publish
Before you can start an end-to-end test or collect submissions, you’ll need to configure your Workflow settings and publish your first version. Don’t worry if it’s not ready to share with your users yet. Workflow building is an iterative process and frequent publishing makes it easier for you to test your changes.
In the following tutorial, we’ll go through the different Workflow settings and show you how to publish your Workflow.
For more in depth information about the topics covered in this tutorial, check out the following articles:
- Change the title of a Workflow and the name of Workflow submissions.
- Set up automatic submission and or Workflow locking.*
- Manage white label settings by adding a custom CSS stylesheet.*
- Determine who receives Workflow email notifications when a submission is completed.
- Publishing a Workflow and restoring a previous version.
*Please note that these are Custom plan features.
Test and collect submissions
Once the first version of your Workflow has been published, we highly recommend testing your Workflow from end-to-end with a test submission. Test submissions give you first hand experience filling in the Webform(s) you’ve created.
They also help you ensure that your documents are being filled in correctly and everything is working as expected. Test submissions are always free and will never count against plan limits, so test away!
We’ll show you our best tips and tricks for effective testing and then we’ll get into the good part- sharing your Workflow!
For more in depth information about the topics covered in this tutorial, check out the following articles:
- Using test submissions to test Workflows end-to-end.
- Download resulting files or submission data as a CSV.
- Restore a previous version of your Workflow.
- Collect submissions with a unique or shareable link.
Additional resources
Now that you’ve automated your paperwork via Workflows, you can automate even more complex processes or take things to the next level by connecting and extending automation across your tech stack.
Check out the following resources to see how:
- Add multiple Webforms to your Workflow to collect information from different parties.
- Pre-fill fields in subsequent Webforms with information that was collected earlier in your Workflow.
- Embed your Workflows in your own application or website using iframes.
- Not a developer? Not a problem! Trigger customized events between your Workflow and thousands of other applications using our Zapier integration.
