Tips to make the best out of rules in Zoho Forms
Conditional Rules are the brain of your form, and creating rules with complex logic can be challenging at times. Check out these tips that can help in building smart forms with conditional rules without hassle.
Tip 1: Structure your logic
Before you jump to configuring rules for your form, it is a good practice to put down your logic on a paper. This is particularly useful if your logic is complex with multiple condition groups connected by a combination of AND/ OR connectors. Structuring the logic down or breaking it to a flowchart can help you reduce complex logic to simple rules.
Tip 2: When a Formula field is involved in Advanced Rules
If a Formula field is used in the rules, the field(s) involved in the formula must be placed prior to the Formula field in the form.
For example, if you are calculating the Total Cost of a product after applying discount:
Here, the fields involved in the formula of Total Cost are Cost and Discount Applied. These 2 fields must be placed prior to the Total Cost field in the form as shown.
Tip 3: In Field Rules, a condition field should come prior to the Action field in the form builder for the rule to work.
If a Condition field is placed after the Action field in your form, you must interchange the fields' positions in the rule configuration. Alternatively, you can change the position of fields in the form builder such that the Condition field is placed prior to the Action field.
For example, if you have configured a Field Rule to show the Email field only when the user chooses the mode of communication to be Email :
In the above rule,
Condition field -> Mode of communication
Action field -> Email
For this rule to work, the Condition field ( Mode of communication ) should come prior to the Action field ( Email ) in your form.
For this rule to work, the Condition field ( Mode of communication ) should come prior to the Action field ( Email ) in your form.
If you try to change the position of these fields in the form such that Email field comes prior to the Mode of Communication field, you will encounter an error.
Tip 4: Rules are case-sensitive
Conditional Rules in Zoho Forms are case sensitive which means the uppercase and lowercase characters are treated as distinct in a condition. In a nutshell, the conditions trigger actions only when the case of the text in the defined condition matches the case of the respondent input.
Tip 5: Check if you have used AND/OR connectors properly
The choice of these operators in your rules play the most important role in deciding how your form functions. Incorrect usage of these connectors can result in unexpected behaviour even when the form works without any errors.
Check out the Rule Expression while configuring a rule that provides a summary of the criteria you've created.
Still confused? Save the rule, and you'll be able to see the rule summary, which will show you the structure of your logic with a much easier UI where you can see any discrepancies with the connectors.
Tip 6: Test your form
Test your form carefully to ensure that it functions as expected. This can help you detect any issues early on.