At EverCare Clinic, Lisa, the clinic’s digital administrator, is tasked with setting up an online healthcare consent form using Zoho Forms. The clinic has a strict policy: anyone under the age of 18 must have parental or guardian consent to submit a form.
One day, while reviewing form submissions, Lisa notices that some minors had submitted forms without parental approval. She needs to fix this quickly and elegantly without adding a complicated setup.
Lisa remembers that Zoho Forms has a feature called Deny Submissions that can automatically block a form from being submitted if certain conditions aren’t met. Perfect.
Lisa’s Goal: Stop form submissions if the person is under 18 and hasn’t checked the consent box.
How Lisa solved it (and how you can too):
Step 1: Build the Form
Lisa opens Zoho Forms and adds the basic data collection fields such as name, email, phone, and gender. She then adds:
- An Age Number field (mark it as mandatory under Form Properties).
- A checkbox field for adults above the age of 18 stating 'I am consenting to the usage of my PHI for diagnostic and insurance purposes' and a respective signature field.
- A parental/guardian consent checkbox field labelled 'I am a minor and I have parental/guardian consent to submit this form' and a parent/guardian signature field.
Step 2: Set up Field Rules
She sets up field rules in the Rules tab of the builder, so that:
- The minor consent checkbox and parent’s signature field appear when the age is below 18
- The adult consent checkbox and signature field appear when the age is 18 or older
Step 3: Set up Deny Submission Rules
Lisa clicks on Rules → Deny Submissions and adds a new rule like this:
Condition:
If Age is less than 18
And
Parental consent is not selected
Then:
1. Deny submission
2. Show message: 'You must be 18 or have parental consent to submit this form.'
Step 4: Test the form
Lisa tests her form:
- A 17-year-old with no consent? ❌ Submission denied.
- A 17-year-old with consent? ✅ Allowed.
- An 18-year-old? ✅ Allowed.
Flawless.
Lisa saves the new form settings. Now, EverCare Clinic can safely collect healthcare form submissions without worrying about underage users bypassing parental consent.