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Purchase Request Routing - Requester may sometimes be an approver.

I’ve been struggling with the best way to automate one of our form workflows with Docusign and the only way I’ve found to do it is with two separate templates. I’m hoping to get some tips on using conditional routing to simplify my solution.

Here is a summary.

I have a purchase request form with a possibility of 3 recipients.

  • Requester
  • Approver
  • Purchaser

If the form is filled out by a VP, SVP, CEO, etc. the requester completes and signs the form (In this case, the requester is also the approver). Next, the purchaser places the order, adds notes to the form, and marks it completed.

If the form is filled out by an employee who is not a VP, the requester completes the form. The form is then sent to a VP for approval and then the purchaser who places the order adds notes and marks the form complete.

My current solution using the DocuSign API is.

The requester clicks on a link from a page on our Intranet.

If the requester is determined to be a VP or above,

  • generate an envelope from the “VP Purchase Template” that has 2 roles (requester and purchaser) and add the name and address of the requester.
  • Display the envelope in a web view for the requester to complete.
  • Let DocuSign handle the rest via email routing.

If the requester is determined to be an employee,

  • Display a web page asking the requester to select an approver.
  • Create an envelope from the template “Employee Purchase Request”.
  • Add the requester and approver to the envelope.
  • Display the document in a web view to the requester who fills out the request section of the form (no signature required).
  • Let DocuSign route the form to the approver and purchaser via email.

My first attempt to get this process down to using one template was using conditional signature fields, but I couldn’t make a signature field conditional.

Is there a way to solve this problem with conditional routing or some other method I haven’t considered? I know I could go “Full API” to solve this, but I’m trying to keep things as simple as possible because there are several forms that follow the same workflow and I don’t want to have to do a lot of back-end coding for each of them.

Hello, @VaughnB 

 

Welcome to the Docusign Community!

 

Have you take a look in the Conditional Routing feature?


Using Conditional Routing

https://support.docusign.com/s/document-item?language=en_US&rsc_301&bundleId=gav1643676262430&topicId=aqm1578456487908.html&_LANG=enus

 

I hope that helps!

 

Best,

Alexandre

Thanks, Alexandre - 

I tried conditional routing but couldn’t figure out how to make the signature conditional based on that. Here is the problem I’m having.

If the person filling out the form is a Vice President, they need to sign the form. If the person filling out the form is not a Vice President, they submit the form without a signature and it is forwarded to a VP for signing.

 I thought I could accomplish this using conditional rules on the signature field, but Docusign doesn’t seem to allow conditional rules for signature fields.

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