Overview
When adding forms to a policy, you may want employees to complete the forms with a specific order. This is where sequencing and stages come in.
- Sequencing sets the order forms show up in. The employee can still utilize the top navigation bar to fill out forms in whatever order they like.
- Stages gate the forms. The employee can't get to Stage 2 until everything in Stage 1 is complete, can't reach Stage 3 until Stage 2 is complete, and so on.
Sequencing is a suggested order of the forms and stages enforce the order.
Sequencing and Stages can be accessed via the Onboarding Portal > Configuration > Forms > Form Sequence:
*Note* You will need the following permissions to access Forms:
- View Forms
- Create Forms
For more information on permissions, please see the article titled Onboarding - User Groups and Permissions.
When to Use Sequencing vs Stages
Use sequencing when you want forms to appear in a sensible order but don't mind if the employee jumps ahead. Good for when there's a natural flow but no hard dependency.
Use stages when the order of the forms within the workflow matters, and one step has to clear before the rest make sense.
- The classic stage use case is a "gate". For example, an account runs a background check before any other paperwork and doesn't want the employee filling out tax and direct-deposit forms until that background check comes back clean. By placing the background check in Stage 1 and everything else in a later stage, the workflow holds the later forms until Stage 1 is done.
- Another common gate is policy acknowledgment. If an account needs employees to read a handbook or policy before they sign off on it, sequencing alone can't hold them to that order, an employee could open the acknowledgment form and sign it before opening the policy. Put the policy form in an earlier stage than its acknowledgment, and the acknowledgment stays "Locked" until the policy is complete.
Building Stages
Begin by navigating to the Onboarding Portal > Configuration > Forms > Form Sequence:
Within the "Form Sequence" window, select "New Stage" at the top right:
Enter a name for the Stage and select "Create Stage":
You will see the new stage appear as an empty group:
Continue to add the rest of your stages in the order you want them to run, top to bottom.
Once complete, move each form into the stage where it belongs. Any form you don't place stays in the Unordered Forms list:
*Note* The "Select Multiple" option can be used to move more than one form at a time to a Stage:
Within a stage, drag the forms into the order the employee should see them. This is the sequencing part as it sets the order inside that stage:
*Note* Please keep in mind the following relating to form sequencing and stages:
- Stages are global, meaning the forms will be sequenced/gated as they are within the stage(s) regardless if a policy has a different sequence of any of those same forms.
- Forms left in the Unordered Forms list are not gated as they fall outside the stage order. Forms within this list will be sequenced based on how they are listed within the policy they are added to.
- If a form isn't behaving like part of the gate, confirm it is added to a stage and not sitting in the unordered list.
What Employees See
The employee works through the current stage first, based on the forms included within the policy.
Forms in later stages show a "Locked" badge and can't be opened until every form in the earlier stage is complete.
Once the stage clears, the next stage unlocks on its own.
Within a stage, forms are ordered the way you sequenced them, but the employee can still move between them freely using the top navigational bar. The lock only applies across stages, not within an individual stage.
*Note* For more information on employees completing Onboarding Actions, please see the article titled Onboarding - The Applicant Process.
Clearing the "Needs to be Sequenced" Banner
When forms in your account are not part of a sequence, the Onboarding Dashboard shows a banner that states "You have # of forms that need to be sequenced" with a "Manage form sequence" button that opens the "Form Sequence" window:
To clear it, move each flagged form into a stage, or into the sequencing order within a stage.