Saving a custom form during the Request Process

[JillAc]

So I went through my practice onboarding training (we launch next week!) with one of our managers and I literally got stuck at Step 1 - Make a Request Using a Custom Form. She said that when she fills out requests (currently a Word document that gets emailed) she works on it over the course of a few days, filling it in as she gains more information about the project. The first question is, can a requester save the form in progress before they submit it? Any workarounds to make that happen? Uploading the Word document is not a great option, but the only one I can think of. I suggested that the only thing she really needs is the name of the project and the due date, and when the project becomes live she can play with the form to her heart's content. She countered that she doesn't want other people looking at the form until she feels confident it's 100% correct. The 2nd question is, can a form be made "private" until the person who owns the project (or the task or whatever) decides it's ready for Prime Time? I'm thinking I can make the first field something like "This Form is in Progress" and "This Form is Ready for Action" so the readers will know if the form has actual facts in it and not placeholders. Any other ideas? Thanks! Jill Ackerman

[SkyeHa]

My workaround would be to put in an Approval Process so that if the request is set to NEW (as it would be during submission), there is an approval pending to the Primary Contact (this is your requestor). It can just stay in New--Pending Approval stage as she plays with the custom form until she's done. Once she's done, she can click on Approve and it can move onto the next step. The catch is that the person who is assigned to work on the request does get notified that it has been created. They just don't have a "Work on it" button until it's been approved. You could also give your requestor access to the Request Status field during the entry process. They can set the status to some sort of custom status (e.g. DRAFT) and re-set the status to NEW when it's ready to be worked on. I just like the Approval process better because the assigned worker literally cannot "work on it" until the requestor has approved it. -skye