The Caspio Low-Code Platform
All the Tools and Support You Need
Unlimited Users With Every Plan
Ned Pajic, Technical Evangalist, Caspio
Ned Pajic:
Hello, and welcome everyone to this course on how to create an approval workflow application with Caspio. My name is Ned. I am a technical evangelist here and in this video series, I will teach you how to create an application from scratch that incorporates many Caspio features. How do we go about creating an application from start to finish? Let’s take a quick look at the agenda on how the video lectures are divided in part one, which is this overview video. I will give you a live demo of the application so that you have a good understanding of what you will be creating and what you will have created by the time you’re done with this course. In part two, I will teach you how to create all the database tables and how to establish relationships between the tables, by joining primary keys to foreign keys.
In part three, I will teach you how to join tables together, using views, how to properly set up a view to filter out different users and their unique roles, and how to create login screens for users to be able to access the application. In part four, which will be the bulk of our video content. I will show you how to create user folders and all the application interfaces, or as they refer to inside Caspio data pages. Finally, in part five, I will teach you how to deploy the entire application to a website, so your end users will have the ability to interact with the live application. If you have a desire to know how to use Caspio or know how to build an application in general. I hope to quote unquote, see you in all of these lectures, you’ll have a lot of fun.
You’ll learn how to use Caspio, and hopefully you’ll be able to expand upon this application or even build your own unique application for your own business or project. Let’s begin. I put together a flow chart for this course to explain the workflow of the application. What I would like to do is go back and forth between my flow chart and the live example, so that you can see exactly what we plan on developing in this course. Let me give you a quick rundown on what this application is about. If you look on the leftmost column, you’ll see that we have the ability to log in as a customer and for customers, we created limited functionality where we allow ’em to submit a request for service. Now, after submission, if you follow the arrow, you will see that the service reps will be able to log in and pick a request and also assign the request to themselves.
After assigning it, they’ll be able to manage the request and submit the request for approval. Upon submission the request should now be visible in the approving manager’s dashboard. From here, the approving manager really has three options on how he or she can deal with that request. We can decline the request, approve the request, or have the request be resubmitted for approval. If we choose to have the request be resubmitted for approval, it’s gonna go back to the service rep where they’ll be able to make additional modifications to it and be able to resubmit that request for approval. By looking at this illustration, you can see a nice cycle of what happens to a request when it goes back and forth between the approving manager and the service rep. I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with this type of workflow.
In our example, we chose a use case that deals with technicians going out in the field and performing a service for customers, but you can very easily modify this application for your own needs and apply it to many different types of use cases or workflows. Now what I would like to do is go back and forth between this flow chart and a live example so that you can follow along in the workflow and understand exactly what we plan on creating in this course. Let’s go ahead and log in as a customer. In my example, my sample user for a customer is gonna be Ken.
As soon as I log in as Ken, what you’ll notice is we have that ability to submit a request for service. In our use case, we’re using technicians to go out in the field and perform that service. The type of services that we have in this example is we can do a new install. We can do troubleshooting, or we can do cancellations. For example, if a customer wants to do a cancellation, they can add some notes. We’ll just put N/A for now and click on, submit. Upon submission, you get to see the confirmation message. Now the next step is for the service rep to be able to log in and find that request. Let me go back to my flow chart. Now, the next step is for the service rep to be able to log in and pick that request that just came in.
Let’s go back to the application. What I’ll do is I’ll log out as the customer, and I’m gonna log in as the service rep, who, in my example, it’s going to be Tyler. When Tyler logs in, I’m gonna be able to see a report that shows me all of the new requests that are coming in. This report here is actually filtering data or filtering these requests that are flagged as new. If I wanna assign this request to myself as Tyler, I can select that request. I can click on this link here at the top. All I need to do is change the status from new to pending review. Once I select pending review and click on update, you’ll notice that the report is no longer going to show that request. Because again, this report is only filtering requests that are flagged as new.
Once you update the status, now you need to build a different report. That’s going to filter out all the ones that are showing pending review requests. Now, as Tyler, I should be able to manage this request. in my navigation menu, I can go to manage requests. There’s that same request, but now this request is pending review. This report is going to filter out all the requests that are flagged the pending review or the ones that need to be resubmitted for approval. This one that’s pending review, I can click on the details link. Now as the service rep, I have additional things that I can do to this request. I can add some internal notes. Once again, just to save on time, we’re gonna put NA. I can add some additional appointment notes. I’ll just put NA and I can the appointment date, let’s say for this Saturday.
If I want to be able to submit the request for approval to the approving manager, all I need to do is change the status to submit it for approval, click update, and notice how I no longer see that request in this report. Why? Because of this request, now we change the status from pending review to submit for approval. Now the next step is for the approving manager to be able to log in and find that request. Let’s go back to our flow chart because I do wanna show you that once that request is submitted, it’s now going to end up in the bucket for the approving manager, where they can decline the request, approve it or resubmit for approval. Let’s go back to our live example. Let’s go ahead and log out as the service rep and let’s log in as the approving manager, who in our example, it’s going to be Jane.
When Jane logs in, she’s going to be able to see a report that filters out all the requests that are flagged as submitted for approval. Here’s their cancellation. Not only can we see who the request came from, which is Ken Wales, we can also see who is the assigned rep. That’s handling that request. Now, when I go to “details” as Jane, you will notice that Jane has three options here. I can approve the request, decline the request, or have the request be resubmitted for approval. I can also add additional comments as the manager. If I say resubmit for approval, and I can tell the service rep here, you need to add additional appointment notes, click on update.
Jane no longer sees that request because it’s been resubmitted for approval. Let’s go ahead and log out as Jane and let’s log in as Tyler, who is the service rep in our example. Once I go to manage requests, I’m gonna be able to find out requests that’ve been resubmitted for approval by Jane. Remember what I said before this report is going to filter all the requests that are flagged this either pending review or resubmit for approval. As Tyler, I can go in here and I can find all the comments provided by the manager. I can add my additional notes. I can submit that for approval and click update, and let’s just complete the process. Let’s go back in as Jane, we’re gonna log out. Log in as Jane. I can find out the request, assuming you’ll force that Tyler provided those additional appointment notes. I’m gonna go to details. All I’m going to do is say request approved, change my notes. Thank you for providing additional notes and click on update. Once the request is approved, let’s go back and log in as Tyler. One more time.
We have an additional bucket in our navigation menu here that shows me all of the ones that have been flagged as approved or declined. If I click on this link, I’m gonna see an additional report that shows me all the requests that have been approved and all the requests that have been declined. Here is the one that was just approved by the approving manager. We can go to details. What you’ll notice down below is we have the request approved. We see who was the approving manager to approve that request. We can see additional notes, and we know when that was last updated. this is the application that I’m going to show you how to develop inside Caspio. There are many ways to go about creating this workflow inside Caspio. Sometimes it really just depends on personal preference. I’m gonna show you one method, but it doesn’t mean that that’s the only method that you can do this inside Caspio, but what’s great about it is you’re gonna be able to log in.
You’re gonna learn how easy it is to use Caspio. Everything that we do inside the platform uses a point and click methodology. There’s no coding in Caspio. You might have some limited coding here and there, but that is actually very easy to do in Caspio as well. You’re going to learn a little bit of that today in today’s course. I hope to see you in part two. There I’m going to show you how to build your tables and how to establish relationships between your tables by joining foreign keys to primary keys. Thanks for watching part one. I hope to see you in part two.
Share this post: