Conditions - Field still ending Empty

Hi,

On my form, I have conditions to fill a particular field depending on if it's empty or not. Please see the photos. Why is it still showing as empty after submission? I want to ensure that it is never empty!

The field that should never end up empty is 'Contact UID Final'

Thank you!

Hi Dominique,

Thanks for reaching out to Jotform Support. I checked your form’s conditions and saw that there are contradictory ones causing them not to work properly. When you set the IF conditions as Empty, the condition checks if the field is empty, and as soon as it’s filled, the condition stops working. For example, in your case, it first checks if Contact UID Final is empty and then fills it with the Participant SSN. But once that happens, Contact UID Final is no longer empty, so it gets erased.

To fix this, we need to change your conditions and avoid using an empty IF condition with the targeted field. Let me walk you through it:

1. In Form Builder, in the orange navigation bar at the top of the page, click on Settings.
2. Click on Conditions in the menu on the left side of the page.
3. Scroll down and hover your mouse over the 8th condition and click on the Pencil icon.

4. Change it as you see below and click on Save:

5. Then, update the 9th condition the same way as the conditions below:

6. Finally, update the 10th condition as shown below:

Now, the conditions will work like this: if Contact UID Prefill is filled, it will insert it. If it’s empty but Participant SSN is filled, it’ll insert the Participant SSN. If both Contact UID Prefill and Participant SSN are empty, it’ll insert the Participant Email. Lastly, if Contact UID Prefill is empty, but the Distribution Email field is filled, it’ll insert the Distribution Email. Check out the screencast below to see how it'll work:

Give it a try and let us know if you need any help.

Hi,

The logic should be:

If Contact UID Prefill is filled, copy that to Contact UID Final

IF NOT,

If Participant SSN is filled, copy that to Contact UID Final

Otherwise, copy Participant Email.

Participant Email & SSN - at least one of them must be filled no matter what.

Hi Dominique,

Right now, your conditions are checking whether Contact UID Final is empty, but since that’s the same field you’re also filling, the rules end up contradicting each other. As soon as Contact UID Final gets a value, the 'is empty' check no longer applies, so the following conditions either don’t run or overwrite it, which is why the field sometimes ends up blank after submission.

If you'd like, we can make Contact UID Final a required field and add a note, such as 'This field requires you to provide one of the following: Contact UID Prefill, Participant SSN, or Participant Email.' so the form won’t submit unless the field is filled.

As soon as we hear back from you, we can work on getting you a solution for this.

All the UID fields are empty and hidden from the form filler.

So if I understand correctly, any field that is empty and is copied to the Contact UID Final essentially markes the Contact UID Final as now being 'filled'?

Hi Dominique,

When the conditions have rules that contradict, the action will cease to run, which is why you were seeing the behavior where the Contact UID Final was not coming through for your submissions. I've gone ahead and cloned your form and tested my colleague's suggestions, and they do ensure that the Contact UID Final field now always comes through with a value.

From my understanding, you want to use Contact UID Prefill, then Participant SSN, and finally Participant Email in that order of priority. Just to make sure I’ve got this right, can you confirm if you are looking to use the Distribution Email field as a factor as well, or should Participant Email supersede Distribution Email? If you would like to fill Contact UID Final with Distribution Email, you can follow along exactly with my colleague's instructions. If not, you can follow up to step five and then disable the Distribution Email condition. Here’s all you need to do:

1. From Form Builder, select the Settings tab on the top-middle of the screen.
2. Go to Conditions, and hover over the condition to insert the Distribution Email.
3. Select the Gear icon and hit Disable.

Try that out and get back to us if you have any issues.

Hi,

I made the suggested changes and now have had submissions come in where they put both the SSN & an email address, and the email address ended up in Contact UID Final. Here are my conditions.

If the SSN is filled, the Contact UID Final should be filled with the SSN.

The order of priority for filling the Contact UID Final is (if the first one is empty, move to the next)

1. Contact UID Prefill
2. Participant SSN
3. Participant Email

Hi Dominique,

Based on the information and the issues you described, the key point is to set up your conditions so that the 'Contact UID Final' field is filled according to the priority order you specified without contradictions. This means:

1. If Contact UID Prefill is filled, copy that value to Contact UID Final.
2. If Contact UID Prefill is empty but Participant SSN is filled, copy Participant SSN to Contact UID Final.
3. If both Contact UID Prefill and Participant SSN are empty, copy Participant Email to Contact UID Final.

To avoid the issue where the field ends up empty or overwritten incorrectly, you should avoid using conditions that check if Contact UID Final is empty as part of the IF rules, because once it is filled by a condition, that condition will no longer apply and may cause conflicts.

Create or edit conditions to set the priority logic without checking if 'Contact UID Final' is empty. For example:

• IF Contact UID Prefill IS FILLED, THEN SET Contact UID Final TO Contact UID Prefill.
• ELSE IF Participant SSN IS FILLED, THEN SET Contact UID Final TO Participant SSN.
• ELSE SET Contact UID Final TO Participant Email.

Additionally, make sure to ensure it is never left empty on submission. You can do this by selecting the field in Form Builder, clicking the Settings (gear) icon, and toggling the Required option to On. This setup ensures that the highest priority field with a value is always copied to 'Contact UID Final' and that the field is never empty when the form is submitted.

Give this a try and let us know if you need any further assistance.