What you'll build
By the end of this guide, you'll have a self-service intake form where marketing team members request banners, copy, or video assets. Each request routes automatically to the requester's approving manager, and once approved, it reassigns itself to the right creative team member based on the asset type. You'll also have branded email notifications at every stage, a PDF summary of each request, and a portal where requesters, managers, and the creative team each see exactly what's relevant to them.
When to use this
Your marketing team keeps requesting banners, copy, and video through Slack messages and email threads that get lost
Design requests sit in someone's inbox for days because there's no clear approval step before work starts
You want managers to sign off on creative asset requests before they hit a designer's queue, not after
Your creative team wastes time figuring out who owns which request, or copy requests end up with the design team and vice versa
You need a record of who requested what, who approved it, and who built it, without digging through email
Part 1 — Build the request form with Magic Create
This is where the workflow starts. You'll build the intake form marketing team members use to submit a creative asset request, capturing the campaign, asset type, brief, and due date in one place. The fastest way to build it is with Magic Create, which generates the full form, including your admin-only fields, from a plain-language prompt.
1. Open Magic Create: From your Formaloo homepage, click Magic Create.
2. Describe your form: Paste a prompt describing the form. For example: "Build a creative asset request form for a marketing team. Include: requester name, requester email, campaign or project name, asset type (Banner, Copy, Video, Other), a long text brief describing the goal, audience, and key message, an optional file upload for reference materials, a due date, and a priority level (Low, Medium, High, Urgent). Add three admin-only fields: a status dropdown (Submitted, Pending manager approval, Approved, Rejected, Assigned to designer, In progress, Completed), an assignee field, and an internal notes long text field."
3. Generate the form: Click Create. Formaloo builds the form for you in seconds.
💡 Want internal fields, like status, assignee, and internal notes, invisible to the person filling out the form? Admin-only fields are the mechanism. See what admin-only fields are and how they help.
4. Verify your fields: Your form should look like this. Magic Create will have generated most of it. Verify each field and field ID matches exactly:
Field | Field ID | Type |
What's your name? | requester_name | Short text |
What's your email? | requester_email | Short text |
Which campaign or project is this for? | campaign_name | Short text |
What type of creative asset do you need? | asset_type | Dropdown |
What are the dimensions or placement for this banner? | banner_specs | Short text |
How long should the copy be, and where will it run? | copy_specs | Short text |
What's the target video length and platform? | video_specs | Short text |
What's the brief? Describe the goal, audience, and key message | creative_brief | Long text |
Upload any brand guidelines or reference files | reference_files | File upload |
When do you need this by? | due_date | Date |
How urgent is this? | priority | Dropdown |
5. Add the approving manager field: Add one more field manually: "Who's your approving manager?" as an Assignee field, populated from your workspace's managers. This is what routes each request for sign-off.
💡 Want to know exactly what the Assignee field can do, assign to a person, a team, or either? See what the Assignee field is and how to use it.
6. Publish your form: Click Publish in the island bar at the top of the editor.
Part 2 — Set up approval and assignment logic with Magic Logic
This is where the workflow becomes automatic. You'll add conditional logic so the right spec field shows up based on asset type, requests route to the approving manager on submission, and approved requests reassign themselves to the right creative team member.
💡 Want a request to move through review, approval, or rejection stages automatically? This is the foundational guide to approval workflows in Formaloo. See how to build an approval workflow in Formaloo.
1. Open advanced logic: In the form editor, open Advanced logic in the settings panel on the right side, and navigate to the Logic tab.
💡 Want your form to show, hide, skip, or require fields based on what someone just answered? See what logic is in Formaloo.
2. Open Magic Logic: Click Magic Logic in the top right corner of the Logic panel.
3. Describe your rules: Paste a prompt describing all conditions at once. For example: "If asset type equals Banner, show the banner specs field, hide it by default otherwise. If asset type equals Copy, show the copy specs field, hide it by default otherwise. If asset type equals Video, show the video specs field, hide it by default otherwise. On submit, assign the assignee field to whoever is selected in approving manager, and set status to Pending manager approval. If manager decision changes to Approved, set status to Assigned to designer, and reassign the assignee field to the design team if asset type is Banner or Video, or to the copy team if asset type is Copy. If manager decision changes to Rejected or Needs revisions, set status to Rejected, and show the manager feedback field to the requester."
4. Generate and review the rules: Click Generate Rules. Approve, redo, or cancel each rule the AI previews.
5. Save your logic: Once approved, click Save in the top right corner.
Note: Set up your Teams (Design team and Copy team) in Workspace Members before running Magic Logic, so the assignment rules have real teams to route to.
Part 3 — Create your email templates
This is where requesters, managers, and the creative team stay in the loop without anyone checking the portal manually. You'll build four templates: a submission confirmation, an approval alert to the manager, a decision update to the requester, and an assignment notice to the creative team.
💡 Want to send branded, personalized emails instead of Formaloo's plain default notification? See how to create and send custom email templates.
1. Open custom email templates: Click your profile icon, go to Apps and integrations, find Custom email templates, and click Add new template.
2. Generate the confirmation email: Clear the body field, add an AI block, and enter a prompt asking for a warm, brief confirmation to the requester referencing the campaign name and due date, letting them know their request is with their approving manager. Name the template and set the subject line using @campaign_name.
3. Generate the manager alert email: Repeat step 2 for a second template addressed to the approving manager, referencing the requester, campaign, asset type, priority, and a one-sentence brief summary, prompting them to review the request.
4. Generate the decision update email: Repeat step 2 for a third template addressed to the requester, sharing the manager's decision and, if rejected or needing revisions, the manager's feedback.
5. Generate the assignment email: Repeat step 2 for a fourth template addressed to the creative team member, referencing the campaign, asset type, brief, relevant specs, due date, and priority.
6. Set conditional triggers: Back in Advanced logic, add rules so each template sends at the right moment: the confirmation on submit, the manager alert on submit, the decision update when manager decision changes, and the assignment email when status changes to Assigned to designer.
Part 4 — Build a PDF summary of each request
This is where every request gets a clean, shareable record. You'll create one PDF template that captures the request details, brief, approval decision, and final assignment, and regenerates automatically whenever the record updates.
💡 Want every form submission to generate a polished, branded document automatically? See how to create PDF templates to turn responses into documents.
1. Open custom PDF templates: Click your profile icon, go to Apps and integrations, and click Custom PDF template.
2. Add a new template: Click Add new template, switch the editor to the HTML view, and paste your PDF's HTML code. Use @field_id variables to pull in the campaign name, asset type, brief, specs, approving manager, decision, feedback, assignee, and status.
💡 Want to pull a submitter's own answers into later questions, emails, or PDFs? See how to use answer piping in Formaloo.
3. Name and save the template: Give it a name like "Creative asset request summary," and click Save.
4. Attach it to your status update logic: In Advanced logic, set the PDF to regenerate and attach to the decision update email whenever status changes, so requesters and designers always have a current snapshot.
Part 5 — Set up the portal and pages
This is where requesters, managers, and the creative team each get their own view of the workflow. You'll activate a portal, add role-based pages, and restrict each group to what's relevant to them.
💡 Want to give clients, applicants, or teammates their own space to submit and track requests? See how to create a portal and manage users' access.
1. Activate your portal: Go to your project, click the settings (gear) icon, select Activate portal, then click Manage user and open the setup wizard.
2. Set up your user directory: Search for an existing user directory or add a new one, then click Next step to configure login, sign-up, and CAPTCHA settings.
3. Add user roles: Go to your user directory, click Edit profile fields, and scroll to the User roles field to add Requester, Manager, and Creative team roles.
💡 Want reviewers, approvers, and applicants to each see a different view of the same portal? See how to create and assign user roles in your portal.
4. Build the Requesters group: Add a "Submit a creative request" form page, plus filtered table pages for "My requests," "Pending approval," "In progress," and "Completed," each restricted to the requester's own records.
💡 Want each logged-in user to see only their own submissions, not everyone else's? See how to let users view and edit their own data in your portal.
5. Build the Managers group: Add a "My approval queue" table filtered to records where they're the approving manager and status is Pending manager approval, plus a "My team's requests" table for their full history.
6. Build the Creative team group: Add "My assignments" as a Kanban board filtered to their own assigned records, plus "My work by due date" as a table sorted by deadline.
💡 Want a visual, drag-and-drop way to move records through stages, like a pipeline? See how to create a Kanban board.
7. Build the Ops admin group: Add "All requests" as a Kanban board grouped by status, plus "By due date," "By asset type," and "Overdue" tables with no restrictions.
8. Build the Reports group: Add two charts, "Requests by asset type" and "Volume over time," for capacity planning.
9. Share your portal: Click Publish, then share the portal link with your marketing team.
Note: Portals can be set up on a custom domain, available on the Business plan or the Brand removal add-on.
What you now have
A single intake form that replaces scattered Slack messages and email threads for creative requests. Every request routes to the right approving manager automatically, and once approved, lands in the right creative team member's queue based on asset type, no manual reassignment needed. Requesters, managers, and the creative team each see their own filtered view of the pipeline, and every request generates a PDF record that captures the full approval trail. Nothing gets lost between "I need a banner" and a finished asset.
What's next
Route requests to the right team automatically at scale As your marketing team grows past a couple of designers, you may want more granular routing than asset-type alone, like splitting by brand or region. → How to automatically assign submissions to the right team member or team, and control what each assignee sees
Track SLAs on urgent requests If urgent requests need a guaranteed turnaround time, you can add deadlines that calculate automatically from the submission date. → How to use the Due date field in Formaloo
Give your creative team one queue across every form If designers also handle requests from other forms, like event materials or sales collateral, they can check everything assigned to them in one place. → What is the Activity page in Formaloo and how to use it
Ready-to-use templates
Don't build this from scratch, we've already put it together for you.
Employee request workflow — Internal request management for HR and ops teams. The same approval-then-assignment pattern applies directly to creative requests, just swap the routing logic for asset type instead of request type.
Job applicant tracking workflow — Tracks records across stages with reviewer assignments from one view. Useful as a reference for structuring the Kanban pipeline your creative team will work from.
AI lead qualification & scoring form — Routes records with conditional emails based on a scored or categorized field. Its conditional routing logic is a close match for how this workflow assigns requests by asset type.
Learn more how-tos
See the generic approval pattern this workflow builds on If you want the broader mechanics behind manager sign-off before this article's asset-specific routing, start here. → How to build a dual-approval request workflow in Formaloo
Apply the same pattern to expense approvals If your ops team also needs manager sign-off before a different kind of request moves forward, this article shows the same pattern applied to reimbursements. → How to build an employee expense reimbursement workflow in Formaloo (pending publish, FRM-1901)
Turn approved requests into signed documents If a creative request ever needs a client-facing sign-off, not just an internal one, this article covers generating a document straight from a submission. → How to turn form responses into proposals and contracts in Formaloo