Troubleshooting Form Submissions

Overview 

In an effort to make the parent experience as seamless as possible, most admission portal 3 form errors are not displayed to parents. This differs from previous versions of the admission portal where we were preventing parents from submitting forms with errors without guidance on how to correct the error, blocking them from continuing through the application process. This approach keeps parents in the flow of completing forms and reduces their likelihood to navigate away from the portal before completing multiple tasks but it does create an administrative burden to manage and resolve form errors.

Why Do Errors Occur?

There are many reasons why a form submission might throw an error in Axiom. Most frequently, errors occur because of a mistake made by a parent when completing the form or a form misconfiguration. Both of these causes should inform your form design and any adjustments you need to make along the way. For example, if you are seeing an influx of errors caused by parents consistently misunderstanding a question, you may consider adding help text that directly addresses the common misunderstanding. Submission errors can provide you with essential insight into how parents are actually perceiving and interacting with your forms.

Error messages are generated by the database itself when data that has been submitted does not match what the database is expecting. These error messages can be worded in a rather confusing way, e.g.

Because these messages are generated at the database level and contain references to specific records, we don't currently have a good way to "humanize" them. Please refer to the "How Do I Interpret Error Messages?" section below for more guidance.

Where Can I Find Form Submission Errors?

There four primary places where form submission errors can be found:

• The "Recent Activity" query on the Candidate Changes homepage
  • This query displays the 25 most recent form submissions, including errors

Red highlight: there was an error of some kind
Green: successful submissions
Purple: candidate is of Phoenician background (jk, no idea)

• The "Errored Submissions" query on the Admissions: Candidate Changes homepage
  • Displays all errored submissions across all forms

• The "Errored Submissions" detail category on the form detail screen
  • Displays all errored submissions for the form you are viewing

• The "Submission Logs" detail category on the submission detail screen
  • Displays all errors associated with the specific submission record you are viewing

How Do I Interpret Error Messages?

As mentioned above, error messages are generated by the database and can be difficult to understand.

 Here are a few tips for interpreting error messages:

• The first segment of the error message (everything before the colon) tells you something you already know - this submission for this form couldn't be processed because of an error - and can largely be ignored
  • 
  • In this case, the procedure used to process the language form is reporting the error
• The second segment of the error message contains two critical pieces of information - the type/category of data point causing the error and the type/category of the error itself
  • 
  • In this case, the data point causing the error is a person language record and the error is that this submission is attempting to insert a duplicate record
• Some errors contain additional segments that provide the record IDs for data points related to the error
  • 

How Can I Resolve Them?

When errors do occur, it is important that you review them and take action to ensure that the data in your database is accurate and that the parent experience is not impeded. There are two primary ways of resolving form submission errors: administrative submission editing and submission invalidation.

Administrative Submission Editing

Submissions that have entered the system as errors can be resolved by anyone with the SysAdmin_1 or Admissions_1 security role using the Admin Edit URL. The Admin Edit URL can be accessed from several system queries (see the "Where Can I Find Form Submission Errors?" section above). 

Upon clicking on the Admin Edit URL for a submission, the form will be opened in a new tab in admin mode (note the yellow banner):

In admin mode, you are able to adjust all data points that were submitted by the parent, as well as any hidden elements that are part of your form design.

Once you have adjusted the submitted data accordingly, click the submit button at the bottom of the form to reprocess the submission using the adjusted data. When the submission has been processed, you will see a success screen and may close the browser tab.

Reviewing Adjusted Submissions in Axiom

Submissions that have been adjusted using the Admin Edit URL will be reprocessed and display a transaction in the nested query on the "Submission Logs" detail category.

As mentioned by the message shown, Axiom users can review the exact changes committed via the audit log. Changes to submitted values are expressed as line items where "Field Updated" is "Value". The "Description" field displays information about which field was updated and where it lives within the form.

Submission Invalidation

In certain cases, you may encounter problematic submissions that cannot be corrected or were entered by mistake. These submissions may be processed without error but contain incorrect data that you do not wish to hold onto. In these cases, you may find it useful to invalidate the submission. Invalidating a submission is simple and can be undone later, if necessary.

Because of the inherent value in retaining a clear history of all form submissions, it is not possible to delete submissions but it is possible to invalidate them so they do not appear in the standard submission queries. 

In some cases, you may wish to retain certain information provided with a form you wish to invalidate. In such cases, it is advisable to input that data manually prior to invalidating the submission to ensure continuity.

To invalidate a submission, change the Processing Status to "Do Not Process" and the Submission Status to "N/A".