Showing or Hiding Fields for a Step in the Submission Portal

This article is considered appropriate for administrators or workspace users with an intermediate level of knowledge about submission portals. If you are a beginner, we recommend to read the following article first:

• Submission Portal Key Concepts: Beginner

For more information about suggested learning paths, see Introduction to Submission Portals: START HERE.

Contents

• Overview
• The Purpose of Showing or Hiding Fields
• Where to Find the Setting
• Showing or Hiding Fields
• Show Value Exceptions

Overview

The process to show or hide fields on a form in a submission portal is executed through the Submission Portal Settings and not on individual forms. This article will walk through how to update the Show value for form fields on a Step in the submission portal.

The Purpose of Showing or Hiding Fields

The Submission Portal is designed to collect information from portal users through Steps, which are associated with forms that exist in a workspace. However, workspace administrators often want to hide fields, or make fields viewable (but not editable) for portal users. 

There are several reasons to hide or make fields view-only to portal users. A common use-case is that administrators want to have internal fields for tracking the status of a record, but don’t want a portal user to see or affect that status; these are often referred to as “admin-only” fields, and are frequently set to be hidden in a submission portal. 

Similarly, perhaps program administrators want to pre-fill certain fields in the administrative portal that will be displayed to the portal user, but should not be editable. The Award Amount field is one possible example of this. In these instances, the field can be set to View Only. 

Where to Find the Setting

In the Submission Portal Settings, the option to change the Show value of a field so that it is hidden or view-only can be found on the Details tab of the Step Settings page for the specific Step to be edited. 

To find the setting:

1. Logged into a program as an administrator, navigate to the Settings & Tools section by selecting the cog wheel icon in the top navigation bar.
2. Select the Submission Portal tile from the Plugin Settings section.
3. Select the Edit button to the appropriate submission portal.

4. To edit the Show value of a form field in a Step, navigate to the Step needing changes by selecting the appropriate link for the Step in the Portal Sections panel on the left side of the screen.  Multiple steps are highlighted in the screenshot below to show there may be more than one.

5. Selecting a Step in the Portal Sections panel will change the contents of the right panel and display the Step Settings, as shown below.

6. Select the Details tab to show a table-like view of the fields on the form associated with this Step. Each row represents a field on the associated form.

Showing or Hiding Fields

After navigating to the appropriate Step’s settings and Details tab: 

1. Select the Default Show column label to reveal a dropdown menu.  Please note that if fields have already been customized for the Step, the column label will read Custom Show; if that’s the case, skip to step 4 below.

2. Select Custom Show from the dropdown menu.

3. The column header now reads Custom Show, and a selectable dropdown arrow appears next to the Show value.

4. Select the dropdown arrow next to the Show value of the field to be edited.  The Show value options are:
   • Hide: Hides the field from portal users so it is not viewable at all.
   • Input + View: Makes the field viewable to portal users and allows them to provide input or responses.
   • View Only: Makes the field visible to portal users, but does not allow them to provide input or responses. 

5. After all fields are edited as needed, select the blue Save all settings button in the lower right corner of the screen.

--- IMPORTANT ---

If new required fields are added to the form after the Custom Show has been edited, the new fields will default with no value (or a “null” value) in the Show column and must be set to View Only or Input + View before the Step will work. Failure to do this will result in a “1206 Portal Error” when a portal user attempts to access the Step.

Show Value Exceptions

Even though there are three Show values (Hide, Input + View, and View Only), they are all not available for each field type.  The following list details the exceptions:

• Calculation, Headers, Presentational Text, and Summary fields can only be set to Hide or View Only.
• Required fields: 
  • Cannot be set to Hide as they are required for the portal user to complete.  Hiding required fields will prevent a portal user from completing a Step.
  • Required fields set to View Only can be a way to prevent portal users from completing a Step under certain conditions, but if set to View Only accidentally, this will also prevent portal users from completing the Step.
• Linked fields: 
  • Linked fields that are used to connect forms to the Profile or Primary form will not appear in the Details tab and will always be hidden. 
    • For secondary forms, this is the field that links to the Primary form. 
    • For the Primary form, this is the field that links to Profile.
  • Other linked fields can be shown or hidden.