My users have been complaining about this an app feature for some time now and thought maybe it's good idea to put it out there?
If you have a multi-page app on Canvas and some or all of your fields are 'required', the app does not let you proceed to next page if you have not completed all the 'required' fields on that very page. This restriction at page level appears to unnecessary? It would be better if the app allowed you to move from page to page without completing all the 'required' fields AND did not allow you to make the final submission unless you completed all 'required' fields. This way the user will have the freedom to jump to any question on any page as per their convenience. In any case if a user missed a required question he would not be able to make the final submission - something that will make sure users completed all required fields.
Thoughts?
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Agreed. You are not the first to complain about this. If you do not have any workflow steps, the Table of Contents (TOC) is available which allows you to move around pages without completing the fields exactly like you are describing. However, as soon as you add a workflow the TOC goes away and you are stuck.
Also, without TOC and mandatory fields you are forced into a linear progression. If you want to skip to the end then come back, you have to go through and put a bunch of wrong answers in just to get through to what you want.
There is one other major pitfall with this besides just being flat out annoying.. For really large apps with many pages, without mandatory fields, you keep clicking 'next' quickly trying to navigate through to the screen you want. As you are clicking away, you get a little lag going on and then all of the sudden "zap" off goes the app for submission or handoff and it gets sent to the first person in the email list who is always set as the default (alphabetically) because you can't force the user to make a selection in the email selection list on the final screen either.
Best answer I have come up with is to remove all mandatory fields which will allow navigation thoughout the app without answering every question, but add a mandatory "tail hook" question at the end with something like "Are you ready to submit the app for completion or hand off" "Yes or No" so the user can't click, click, click through and submit by mistake.
Farooq,
Have you enabled Table of Contents for your app? With this the user will get a menu (3 horizontal bars) icon at the top left that they can use to jump to any other page. They'll be marked if incomplete and if required they can't submit without all fields completed, but they should be able to jump throughout the form and complete in any order.
Matt
Matt,
Fantastic!
Cheers
I would like to see this too. Almost all of my apps have workflow enabled, so I can't use table of contents. It would be nice to have table of contents for the pages of the app are available to the point of the hand-off. We have multiple forms that force us into a linear workflow that aren't necessarily linear in practice.
This is an interesting point -- building an App that's broken up across multiple screens as opposed to one long screen is often considered a design choice, but there's clearly there's a discrepancy in functionality between the two here. Thanks for sharing your insights and experiences here -- definitely something for us to keep an eye on.
All the best,
Siobhan