Prevent Task from Being Marked as Complete If Required Fields on Custom Form Attached to the Task Are Blank

[jerflo]

Hello my community friends. I am looking to get some feedback on this idea. If interested, please schedule some time with me using the link below. We can delve deeper into this, share screens, and talk shop.

https://calendly.com/jeremyflores

[MoniqueEvans]

This would be SUCH AN AMAZING FEATURE!!! I would prefer this live on the project level, but task is a good start. I have so many exception reports that call this out but still have to police this so we have data filled in. Being able to force the project to stay open will create an annoyance (in a good way) to the users on the project team that tell will actually be compliant

[CalvinFold]

Task-level and project-level, set separately, would be welcome.

[RandyRoberts]

Could this just be part of form validation?

[jerflo]

@Randy Roberts‚ tell me more...

cc. @Gevorg Kazaryan‚ what are your thoughts here?

[RandyRoberts]

@Jeremy Flores‚

I thought I heard something somewhere about Workfront being interested in doing some type of form field validation. Like If you have an email field it would check to make sure it included one or more characters followed by an @ symbol followed by more characters followed by a dot followed by a few more characters.

I can't remember where I heard it though, or maybe it was a suggestion in the innovation lab.

Either way, it's a really good feature to have.

Edited to add: This is probably what I was remembering:

https://one.workfront.com/s/idea/0870z000000PSEhAAO/detail

Back to the original post, Workfront already does this on a project level. If a required project field isn't populated, you can't open the project. I think doing this in reverse (can't complete it) with a task is worthwhile. Although it shouldn't prevent you from marking the task as something that equates with complete (CPL), like waived or cancelled.

[jerflo]

Gotcha. Great feedback, @Randy Roberts‚; thanks for elaborating. Say this feature existed already...how would you go about enabling it? Where would you go in the application to use it?

[RandyRoberts]

@Jeremy Flores‚

I think if I were to engineer it, I would start like this.

Required fields behavior would be contextual:

If Project form: Required to open project

If Task form: Required to Start or Close task

If Document form: Required to upload document

If User, Portfolio, Program, etc. form: Required to activate object

Validation would be a on individual fields with a checkbox to activate. Maybe have a "Rules" dialog box where standard javascript statements are entered using standard IF statements like this: If x is Not a Number or less than one or greater than 10

if (isNaN(x) || x < 1 || x > 10) {text = "Input not valid";} else {text = "Input OK"}

Standard javascript would easy to learn with a TON of tutorials out there. This alleviates the burden of documentation on Workfront's part.

Or maybe three input boxes labeled IF, Then, and ELSE

There could also be a dropdown for some common validation rules like email address, Not a number, character count, existing object (user, project, portfolio, etc.). I'm sure there are several more that could be standard that I'm not thinking of.

[jerflo]

Very interesting feedback @Randy Roberts‚ thanks. Going to include @Gevorg Kazaryan‚ for visibility on this as well.

[CalvinFold]

@Jeremy Flores‚ , are still seeking feedback this idea? (I'm catching-up on back-reading of digests‚Ķ)

[jerflo]

Hey @Kevin Quosig‚ - yes, still looking for additional takers on this one. Also, would it be more beneficial to have this at the Project level first?

[CalvinFold]

I think project-level first for us, since there is mandatory financial information that gets skipped. Though I could see uses of the task level too, if it were available.

[jerflo]

@Kevin Quosig‚ at what point in the process does this information get skipped? Are there certain points in the process where you would need this validation? Thanks again!

[CalvinFold]

Specific examples elude me at the moment in NWE, but in Classic we had cases where a user started a project without one of our templates, which menat without some custom forms that are required for various financial info and tracking.

Adding these forms after-the-fact did not seem to kick-off the filling out of the form.

Another example I just thought of: what if we need to make change to a custom form that requires a new custom field, and that field is mandatory? Having a way to force the field to be filled out would be very useful.

[jerflo]

I'd like to get your perspective after having run this in the NWE. The functionality works differently in the new Workfront experience than it does today in Classic. For example, you can't add a custom form to a project or task in NWE without filling out the required field. I can see how this can create some challenges, and although we are talking about two different use-cases (not being able to attach a form unless a required field is populated vs. not being able to complete a task or project unless a required field is populated) I believe they are very closely related.

[JuhiKa]

Hello @Jeremy Flores‚ we are looking for a similar feature. I guess this can be done via Fusion. But is there a way to do it without fusion. As our request submitters are asked to manually add a custom form to a task before submitting it to reviewers, they forget sometimes and hence causes back n forth and mess.

Do you think we have a solution already for this type of use case.

Thanks in advance.

FYI @Agnieszka Markuszewska-Shehata‚

[jerflo]

Hi @Juhi Kanjani‚ - thanks for your message. There is not a way to do this natively without fusion, unfortunately. Admittedly, I was working on a solution around the time of this post but had to prioritize other items ahead of this so this got pushed to the bottom of my backlog. I'm sure at some point we will revisit this I just don't know exactly when that will be.

[Kundanism]

Hello @Jeremy Flores‚ . this will be a very useful feature in Workfront native, in addition to Fusion. I agree with above users too.

Mvh

Kundan.

[jerflo]

Thanks @Kundan Kumar‚ - I'm glad to hear that there is still interest in having a capability like this.