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Automatically assign a step to the original process requestor

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Capture who kicked off a process and automatically route a later step back to them. Use it to send payment confirmations, completed documents, or results to the original requestor.

Use case

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You’re running a purchase request process:

  1. Sarah from marketing submits a request for new software.
  2. The request goes through approvals and finance.
  3. Your accountant uploads the payment proof.
  4. Sarah should automatically get that proof - without anyone remembering who started the request.

To do that, an Assignee Picker field on the kick-off form records Sarah at the start, and an automation assigns the last step to her.

Prerequisites

Section titled “Prerequisites”

Setting up this automation

Section titled “Setting up this automation”

  1. Capture the requestor on the kick-off form1 or in any other step

    Edit your template’s kick-off form. Add an Assignee Picker form field and label it something like “Who is making this request?”. Whoever launches the process selects themselves (or someone else if submitting on behalf of a colleague). Make it required so nobody skips it.

  2. Set up the step to be assigned

    Find the step where you want to notify the requestor - usually near the end. If you’re sending an email notification, set the step type to Email Auto-Send2. Configure the email content and use variables like {{step_4_upload_field}} to pull in data collected earlier. Set the step’s deadline too (for example, 1 hour after “Upload Proof of Payment” completes), because an Email Auto-Send step sends at its deadline.

  3. Create the automation

    Go to the Automations tab in your template editor. Click Add Automation and give it a clear name. For the IF condition, pick the assignee picker field from step 1 and set it to is not empty. For the THEN action, choose Assignment Action > Replace Assignees. Select your notification step and for the replacement source, pick that same assignee picker field. Save the automation.

How it works at runtime

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When someone launches your process:

  1. Sarah fills out the kick-off form and selects herself in the assignee picker field.
  2. When the process launches, Tallyfy evaluates your automation and checks whether the assignee picker field was filled in. It checks at launch because the condition reads a kick-off form field.
  3. Since it’s not empty, the automation fires.
  4. The Replace Assignees action swaps whoever was originally assigned to the final email step with Sarah from the picker field.
  5. The process moves through its other steps: approvals, finance, and the payment proof upload.
  6. Because you set the step type to Email Auto-Send, Tallyfy sends the email automatically on the due date.

If you put the assignee picker on a later step instead of the kick-off form, Tallyfy checks the automation when that task is completed.

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Footnotes

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  1. Pre-process form that collects initial data before a process launches from a template ↩

  2. Step type that completes itself once its deadline passes, and that completion sends the email to the step’s assignees ↩

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