With paper forms, you have no control over how much of a form an applicant fills out. An applicant could choose not to fill out basic info, like their name, and leave the paper in your dropbox. With our online forms, required fields are, well, required! But sometimes it's nice to not have to complete required fields.

Another option you have with forms is to collect a deposit at the time of application, but what if you also want to see what the rest of the fees would be after that? Here are some things you might want to do that you don't want most applicants to do:

Civic Review accomplishes these things by adding data to the application form URL. You may have seen this when you go to fill out a form yourself as a staff member. The application URL has: ?novalidation&nodeadline&projectedfees at the end of it which makes it so you can skip fields and view projected fees.

The current URL modification options are:

You can use just one of these options, or multiple.

This allows you to skip validation (checking that required fields are completed) for an entire form. As mentioned, this would allow you to preview a form without having to fill out all the required fields - which could get annoying if you're actively working on updates to an online form and just want to see it.

Put a ? at the end of the URL, followed by novalidation. For example:

Allows you to submit an event-based form while ignoring any deadlines on submission dates. Sometimes you might have an event-based form that requires an applicant submit the form no less than 7 days before the specified start date. This option allows you to ignore that restriction.

Put a ? at the end of the URL, followed by nodeadline. For example:

If you have a form that requires an initial payment upfront with their application, followed by more fees after approval (for example, if you require a deposit with a building permit application, but then Civic Review will calculate and add fees later on) - normally applicants cannot see the second round of fees. You can use this option to show those fees on the fees page underneath the initial required fees.

Put a ? at the end of the URL, followed by projectedfees. For example:

Allows applicants to skip only specific fields, even if they are required. This option differs from novalidation in that you provide specific field IDs. The applicant is still required to complete most required fields, but you might want to allow someone to skip some for special reasons.

A common reason to use this would be if you have a kiosk in your office where applicants can fill out forms themselves. Well, what if there is a required field asking them to upload a picture of their driver's license? Normally they'd be stuck, or you could take their license, scan it on a thumb drive, have them plug it into the kiosk and then upload it (annoying, right?).

Using this option, you could have them to submit the form without uploading anything to that field, and then you can take their driver's license over the counter and go back and scan your own copy, then attach it to their application through the dashboard.

Here's a screenshot to illustrate. If you'd prefer, the applicant wouldn't have to provide their First Name (even though most people would normally have to):

Put a ? at the end of the URL, followed by one or more novalidationfields=[insert_field_id_here], separated by a &. For example:

The sample here tells the form to skip validation for two different fields (two field IDs are provided.

Here's how you get the field ID:

If you want to pass more than one option in the URL, you can list each one separated by the ampersand (&). For example: ?novalidation&nodeadline&projectedfees will skip validation for the whole form, ignore the event-based deadline, and show all projected fees.