Working with Record Drafts

Overview

Drafts allow you to work on a record and save it before it meets all of the validation criteria required by the form. This is helpful for long forms, where you might want to save what you're working on prior to officially submitting it. 

For example, you can save a draft record without filling out a required field, but you could not save a complete record that way. 

Identifying and Saving Draft Records

Drafts are grayed out within the Zengine data view, to clearly indicate to anyone with access to the form that the record is a draft. 

When the form view of a draft record is displayed, there are two indications that the record is a draft. First, the word Draft will be displayed at the top of the form view, next to the record name:

Second, a gray Save as Draft option will appear at the bottom of the form view, next to the standard blue Save Record button. 

Selecting this save option will save any changes while maintating the record's status as a draft. Selecting the blue Save button will attempt to save the record as a complete record, if all required fields are completed and the values in each field match any data validation rules that have been set.

Finding Draft Records

You can filter on whether or not a record is a draft. The filter condition Draft is True (as shown below) will display only draft records. This filter condition can be combined with other conditions to further narrow down the set of records that will be displayed.

Conversely, the filter condition Draft is False will show only completed records.

You can also add the Draft column in the Data View for a form and sort or group records by that column value.

Things to Note

• If you create a draft of a record, then the created date will be the first time you saved a draft, and not the first time that the record was saved as a complete record. 
• Draft data will also be used in calculations, permissions, and webhooks unless those records are specifically excluded by filtering only on completed records. 
• Once you mark a record as complete, it can only be reverted to a Draft record via two methods:
  • You can use the Bulk Actions plugin to edit the draft status of any number of records to "true."
  • You can use the Revert to Draft plugin to change individual records back to draft status.
    • If you want to have either of these plugins installed or set up for specific forms (in the case of Revert to Draft), please contact the Zengine Support Team. 

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