WorkZerk
Start free trial
← All help articles

Request packs

requests

Most of what you ask people for is the same every time. A new contractor needs their insurance certificate, their license and a signed site agreement. A new staff member needs their tax form, their bank details and a signed handbook.

A request pack is that list, saved once. Add the pack to a portal and every ask in it is created there in one click, ready for the person to work through.

Where packs live

Open Requests and click Request packs on the title row. That page is the whole library: every pack you have built, and the asks inside each one.

You can hold up to 100 packs, with up to 100 asks in each.

Starting from a template

Start from a template at the top of the page holds ready-made packs for the paperwork most businesses collect: one for staff and one for contractors, for Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Pick a country to see its two packs and the asks in each, then click Add this pack.

  • Staff packs cover tax forms, retirement savings where the country has them, bank details for pay, right to work and an emergency contact.
  • Contractor packs cover the business number or tax reference, insurance certificates with their expiry dates, licenses and payment details.
  • Asks that depend on the role, such as a Working with Children Check or a white card, are optional, so each pack works as it is for most businesses.
  • Where an official government form exists, the ask links to it, so the person can open it straight from their portal.

Starter request packs by country lists every ask in all eight packs.

Adding a template makes an ordinary pack of your own, named after the template. Change, remove or add asks the same way as any other pack. Adding the same template twice gives you a second copy with a number after its name.

Documents and answers that belong on the person's record, like a public liability certificate or an ABN, are saved to contact fields. If you already have a field with the same name and type, the pack uses it; otherwise it is created for you. If you are at the 30-field limit, or you already use that name for a different type of field, the ask is still added but is not saved to a contact field, and the page tells you how many asks that happened to.

The template's country only picks which packs you see first. It is worked out from your account's time zone, and the one you pick last is remembered in this browser.

Building a pack

Type a name in the box at the top and click Create. Name it after the kind of person it is for, because that name is what you pick from later: Contractor onboarding, New starter, Driver, Stallholder.

Click a pack to open it. The pencil beside it renames the pack and gives you a description field, worth filling in the moment you have two packs with similar names: the description shows under the name in the list, so you can tell Driver from Driver (interstate) without opening either.

To add an ask, type what you want to call it, choose a kind, and click Add. Everything else about an ask is set by opening it.

Drag the handle on any ask to reorder it. The order in the pack is the order the person meets them in, so put the thing you most need first.

The kinds of ask

Kind What it does
Upload They send you a file.
Text They type an answer.
Choice They pick from options you write.
Terms They read and accept a document from your terms library.
Task They confirm they have done something.
Contact field Their answer writes onto their contact record.
Heading Groups the asks under it and collects nothing.

Headings are worth using once a pack passes about six asks. A pack split into Before you start and First week reads as a brief; the same asks in one long run read as a form.

Setting up an ask

Open any ask to configure it. What you see depends on its kind.

Every kind has an instructions box, which is where you say exactly what you need and in what format. Most kinds also have a They can't finish until this is done tick, which makes the ask required. An Upload works differently: Fewest files is what makes it required, so leave it at 1 for something you must have and set it to 0 for something optional.

  • Upload asks add Fewest files and Most files, so you can accept one certificate or up to five site photos. Set the fewest to 0 and you have a "send it if you have one" ask. There is also Ask for an expiry date, which makes them enter the date the document runs out. Right for a public liability certificate, meaningless on a headshot. Under it, Don't use AI to check expiry date stops the expiry date on files for that ask being read and compared with the date entered.
  • Text asks add an Answer shape, so you can insist on a phone number, a number, a date or an email address rather than free text, and Give them a big box to write in for anything longer than a line.
  • Choice asks take your options, one per line, and They can pick more than one if it is not either-or.
  • Terms asks take Which terms, either your default terms or any document in your terms library, plus They type their name to accept and They draw a signature to accept. Your default terms means the document that is your default on the day the pack is applied, and the ask keeps that document if you change your default later.
  • Task asks can take Steps from a workflow, which turns a single "confirm you did this" into a checklist built from one of your saved workflows.
  • Contact field asks take Which detail this updates, so the answer lands on their contact record and is there next time you work with them.

An Upload ask can also keep its file on the person's contact. Under Also save their file to a contact field, pick one of your Upload contact fields, and the latest file they send becomes that field's current document. It only appears once you have built at least one Upload field. To save a written or picked answer onto the contact, use the Contact field kind rather than Text or Choice.

Sensitive asks

A Text, Date or Upload ask can be ticked Sensitive, and it arrives on every portal already marked. The answer is then stored encrypted and only admins can view it. See Keeping sensitive information private.

Attaching a document to an ask

Any ask can carry a reference document, so the person can see what you mean before they answer: a site map, a sample certificate, a uniform photo, a policy.

Under Document to show them, choose either a file from your files library or a link to a document elsewhere. Files in a pack always come from your library rather than being uploaded to the pack itself, and that is worth knowing: replace the file once in Files and every portal the pack was ever added to shows the new version. If you delete the library file, the ask still arrives on the next portal you add the pack to, without its document.

Adding a pack to a portal

Open a portal from Portals, go to its Requests panel, and the pack picker sits at the top. It lists your own packs first, then the templates for each country. A portal with no requests yet also shows the two templates for your country as buttons under the picker. Clicking one chooses it in the picker for you.

Choosing a pack lists every ask in it underneath the picker, with its kind, a Required badge where it applies, and its description. Every ask starts ticked. Untick the ones this portal does not need (Untick all clears the list when you only want one or two, and Tick all puts them back). The button beside the picker counts what is left, such as Add 5 requests. Only the ticked asks are added, and the pack itself is not changed.

Click the button and you are asked to confirm first, because a pack lands several requests at once and every one of them is visible to the person the moment it exists.

Picking a template saves a copy of it in your request packs and adds the asks you ticked to the portal in one go, so an empty portal is one choice away from a full staff or contractor checklist. The saved copy is always the full template, whatever you unticked. A template that is turned away, because two-factor authentication is off or the portal has no room for that many requests, is not saved to your packs: both of those save nothing.

Adding a pack is additive. Adding the same pack twice really does add every ticked ask twice, so if you want a second copy of a question you can have it, and if you did not mean to, delete the extras from the panel.

A portal holds up to 200 requests. If the asks you ticked would not fit in the room left, none of them are added and you are told how many they needed and how many are already there, rather than the portal ending up with three of a pack's seven asks and no sign of the other four.

Adding a ticked Upload ask needs two-factor authentication turned on for your account, the same as adding an upload request by hand. With it off, none of the pack is added, a template is not saved to your request packs either, and the panel tells you why. Untick the uploads and the rest can go on without it.

A pack is a starting position, not a live link

Once a pack has been added to a portal, the requests on that portal are its own. Editing the pack afterwards changes nothing that has already been added, and deleting the pack leaves every portal it was ever used on exactly as it is.

There is one deliberate exception. A Task ask that draws its steps from a workflow reads those steps live, so editing the workflow in Tasks updates the steps on every portal the pack was added to. That is the same behavior as applying a workflow to a task by hand.

What a pack does not carry

Conditional sections are not part of a pack. A conditional section is gated on the answer to another question on that portal, or on a named group of people, and neither of those exists in a saved pack. Add the pack first, then add the section gate on the portal, where the question and the people being gated actually exist.

Getting help

If a pack is not landing the way you expect, email [email protected] and we will take a look.

Related articles

Still stuck after reading this? Open a help ticket and we'll answer your specific question.