Add “Claim Entry” functionality in GravityView

TLDR: You can claim an entry in GravityView using the Gravity Flow plugin as described in this how-to article.

What’s “Claim Entry”?

Many of our customers use GravityView to display a list of businesses (a directory). They add the businesses and then want the business owners to be able to update the information—store hours, address, description, etc. Right now, there’s no easy way to do that. Here’s how it is currently done: the business owner creates an account, sends an email to the site administrator requesting she assign the business’ Gravity Forms entry to them, the administrator uses GravityView’s “Change Entry Creator” functionality to update the entry manually, then she emails the business owner that they are now able to edit their GravityView business listing. That’s tedious. Too much work!

There must be a better way.

Many times, I investigated how to add “Claim Entry” functionality to GravityView. It’s one of the first features we planned on launch. Many customers want it, but it’s complex, and I wanted to make sure it was done right. Each time I started developing the Claim Entry functionality, I had a feeling it would be better achieved using the Gravity Flow plugin. Gravity Flow specializes in this type of functionality: it makes approvals easy that need lots of steps. I reached out to Steve at Gravity Flow and asked his opinion how he would recommend setting up Claim Entry. He replied with the perfect solution. In this how-to, he outlines a simple process where you can set up your own Claim Entry form. Because Gravity Flow does Claim Entry so well, I believe this is the right solution for claiming an entry in GravityView. We will not be adding this to GravityView core; I recommend using Gravity Flow in combination with GravityView instead. Follow these instructions to set up Claim Entry using Gravity Flow and GravityView.