Many processes require multiple documents to be completed and submitted before an application is ready to be reviewed. For example, when a student submits a financial aid application, there are almost always supplemental documents that accompany the application form. This article provides an overview of how to create a metadata field to act as a “Missing Document Tracker” so you can easily see which documents must be submitted before the application is complete.

This example references the following documents:

Every time a new document is created in an application folder, a workflow (screenshot below) creates a multi-value token listing each document that is needed in the application folder. The token is called “All Docs Needed.”

The For Each Value activity cycles through the “All Docs Needed” list and checks whether all the documents are in the application folder. It does this by running a search that looks within the relevant application folder to find a document that contains the field of “Document Type” set to the current value of the For Each loop. If the document exists, keep looping through the values. If the document doesn’t exist, append the current value to the previously mentioned “Missing Docs token.”

Using the example documents from above, the “All Docs Needed” token has the values: “Application for Financial Aid”, “Selection of Financial Aid Plan”, “Name Certification” and “Bank Information Verification.” This means that the search will run four times.

The first search looks in the application folder for a document with a Document Type field set to “Application for Financial Aid.” If that document exists, move to the next value. If it doesn’t exist, use the Assign Token Values activity to append “Application for Financial Aid” to the “Missing Docs” token.  Continue running the search until all the token values have been evaluated. Once the loop is complete, use a blank “Assign Field Values” to clear the existing values and then use another “Assign Field Values” to apply the “Missing Docs” token values to the multi-value metadata field.

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