Save Draft

Thursday, Dec 28, 2017

Process steps and rules can be applied differently to submitted forms and draft forms, this allows a student to submit a partial booking, in preparation to a full submission.

Document forms

In the case of a document the use of the “save draft allows the following scenario:

  • Student wishes to attend a course and begins a registration/enrolment form.
  • Within the form there is a field that requires upload of an identification file, or a purchase order for payment is required.
  • The student may not wish to lose the data entered so s/he can submit a ‘draft form’, which triggers an email with a link to complete the form when the student has the necessary data.

Forms can also have fields that are mandatory based on submitted or draft saves, this allows less information to be gathered (ie fewer mandatory fields) should a draft form be saved instead of a submitted form. In the example above the purchase order might be mandatory for submit but not for draft.

External forms

Another use of the save draft is when using external forms. An external form that is an assessment or quiz may limit the student to a specific number of maximum attempts eg 3. If the quiz is long, complicated or expects research it may require the student to come back multiple times before the quiz can be completed. In these cases the student can save the quiz as a draft and, as in the above example, receive a link to complete the form for either another attempt or save as draft. For external forms draft submissions do not have a maximum limit whereas submit attempts can be limited (see below for a caveat to this).

Note
When the student saves an external form as a draft the resulting page does not display the typical correct/incorrect feedback alerts however these alerts eg ‘You got this answer incorrect’, are displayed on non-draft submit

Working example:

  • Student receives a link; as part of the registration workflow in an email or displayed as a link after payment/document submission the student is allowed 2 attempts
  • The student attempts to complete the quiz, and runs out of time, submitting the form as a draft.
  • The display paqe content defined on the form ie Content for Save Draft, can invite the student to click ‘back’ on their browser and continue answering further questions or follow the link provided in an email
  • Clicking back or following the link the student continues completing the form, when they have chosen an answer for all questions they submit the form, ie not clicking the ‘save draft’ button.
  • Those questions that are not answered correctly receive the expected in-line response giving hints and notifying the student that they have selected the wrong answer in addition to the content defined on the form ie Content for failed, attempt Again.
  • The student changes those answers s/he got wrong and re-submits the form. The display page shows the content defined on the form based on if the final submission was successful ie Content for passed, or a fail, ie Content for failed.
  • Looking in the status history of the document it is possible to see that there was a draft submission, and two submits for the extranet form.
Note
It is possible to configure external forms so that there are unlimited submissions. Basically not allowing the form to be submitted until all answers are correct. In this case submitting as a draft is not beneficial neither does it work as expected.
Note
When the ‘save draft’ button is not required (because no forms are expected to be saved as a draft) this button can be hidden using CSS