Hello fellow form builders,

Zoho Forms' automation features help a great deal in automating your workflows, reducing human error, saving time, and increasing your productivity. One such automation feature is Conditional Rules, which are a set of simple If and Then conditions using which you can get your forms to trigger different actions. Up until recently, you could configure multiple conditions within a rule by using either all AND or all OR connectors between the conditions. However, we realized that this would not solve all the use-cases, so we came up with a new feature upgrade to help you solve all of your complex conditions. Configure Advanced Rules with a combination of connectors: only AND, only OR, AND/OR, and AND & OR to trigger actions based on the respondent's input across multiple condition groups with this new feature upgrade. And not just this, we have also come up with rules to deny form submissions if your conditions defined are not met.

Now, because that's a lot to take in, let's go over each of these new upgrades one by one!

Until recently, Zoho Forms had the following types of conditional rules:

Let us first understand what AND, OR connectors mean in Rules:

AND: If you require all the conditions in a rule to be satisfied at the same time to perform the intended action, use the AND operator.

OR: If you require at least one of the conditions in a rule to be satisfied to perform the action, use the OR operator.

Rules, until recently, could be used in scenarios where actions are taken when all or any of the defined conditions are met. 

Assume you have 3 requirements Condition 1, Condition 2, and Condition 3 to be fulfilled to execute Action 1 and Action2.

You can setup Rules to perform the actions when:

All the 3 conditions are satisfied: 

              If Condition 1 AND Condition 2 AND Condition 3 are true -> then perform Action 1 and Action 2

Any of the 3 conditions are satisfied:

              If Condition 1 OR Condition 2 OR Condition 3 are true -> then perform Action 1 and Action 2.

What if your conditions are not so simple and require multiple condition groups?

For example: 

If ((Condition 1 AND Condition 2) OR (Condition 3 AND Condition 4 AND Condition 5)) AND Condition 6 -> then perform Action 1 and Action 2

This is when, you can switch to Advanced Rules to get a solution for all of your use-cases and automate complex workflows.

With these new rules to deny form submissions, you can disable the Submit action in the form if your defined set of conditions are satisfied.

If (Condition 1 OR Condition 2) AND Condition 3 are true -> then Deny form submission.

You can display a message informing the user why they were denied the submit action.