New! Add real-time validation to fields on your form

Learning Administration

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/300424#Comment_300424

Hi @Caroline Sheldon - I have "Contact list - multi select - no values" and do see the option to enable email validation; however, when I open the intake form and type more than one email separated by a comma, I get a "Invalid email" message. This occurs as soon as I input the comma.

Other than that, it works great.

Caroline Sheldon

Comma separation is not a valid input method. If you enter a valid email and press ENTER on your keyboard, it will save that email and display it in a gray 'pill'. You can then begin typing the next valid email and press ENTER again. There is a limit of 20 contacts in this field because the cell can only accept 20 contacts.

Learning Administration

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/300816#Comment_300816

Hi Caroline - sorry if I wasn't clear in my original post. For me, pressing ENTER only works in a sheet. I was originally talking about email validation when filling out a form. Pressing ENTER on the form doesn't do anything. I provided a screenshot for reference.

Caroline Sheldon

@Learning Administration Hi there, thanks for including the screenshots of what you were referring to. Unfortunately we only allow email validation on the following:

1. Text field
2. Contact list - single select - with values
3. Contact list - single select - no values

Multi-select contact fields do not have the email validation option.

Andrée Starå

Thanks, @Caroline Sheldon & the Smartsheet team.

This is a fantastic addition to Forms.

japalo

Is there any plan to allow phone number extensions? Currently I can't use the phone validation to collect a desk phone/landline number that has an extension.

Jules Petitjean

This is a great feature, thank you!

Can it next be applied to the update request form? It's easy to use data validation on user-created forms using this new feature, but when responding to an update request, people can still type "on schedule" for example in % complete columns.

Caroline Sheldon

@Jules Petitjean We have big plans for update requests to match the functionality of our current intake forms. More on this next year :)

Matt Rasmussen

Hi @Caroline Sheldon - along with the email validation on a Contact List on the form, is there a way to open the same Smartsheet Contacts List that's available on the sheet for the same column? The email validation requires the user to type a valid email address format but it doesn't verify that the email address actually exists. Also, for users within our company, picking from a list is a lot faster than typing email addresses.

Here's a screenshot the Smartsheet Contacts List on the sheet. Notice the top row has an email address for Michael Jordan that was entered on the form. I guarantee you Michael Jordan doesn't work at my company. 😜 Any way to get this list to work on the form?

Caroline Sheldon

@Matt Rasmussen If you want contacts to appear in a contact dropdown, you need to add those as values in the contact field in order for them to appear on the form that people fill out. We do not automatically populate the contact field with every contact in your Smartsheet account for security reasons - we wouldn't want someone to gt their hands on your entire email list :)

However, we are currently exploring upgrades to the contact picker so that it can reference a group. In addition, we are in the process of updating some back end processes that I believe will take the email someone inserts into the email field on a form and transform it into a contact in the sheet. We do not have plans at the moment to do validation to ensure that email is part of your company. Again, the best way to do that is to add those contacts in the values list.

Matt Rasmussen

@Caroline Sheldon Thanks so much for your answer! I think a process to take the entry from the form and transform it into a contact on the sheet would be ideal, particularly with forms that sit within the company firewall and aren't public-facing. It would provide a better UX for the form user and give the benefit of using a contact in the sheet for automation and reporting. Thanks again, happy holidays.

Jeff Reisman

@Caroline Sheldon

This is good functionality, however ideally we would be able to specify character length, number of digits, patterns of characters/digits, etc. Custom pattern validation would be key! As it stands, the Numbers Only validation does not work for us:

In my organization, we have warehouse admins scan a Bill of Lading number bar code that is 8 digits into an entry form; a smudged scanner lens or poorly printed bar code sometimes results in misreads, causing numbers to be replaced with special characters or letters. To test validation with the scanner, I turned on "Numbers Only" validation for a Text/Number field and created two test bar codes, one with 8 digits and the other containing 8 character: 6 numeric plus an exclamation point and a letter H interspersed. Scanning the 8 digit bar code worked fine; for the other, the system simply ignored the non-numeric characters and only collected the 6 numbers. An admin working quickly might not even notice that digits were missed and would submit the entry with missing digits, thereby making validation useless.

If the Numbers Only validation had an option to collect the non-numeric characters and display a validation error, then this functionality would be useful in our process. It's like this validation is currently too "smart" for its own good.

VictorAguiar

Thanks a lot for this update.

I am currently using the Phone Number validation for Canada.

When I go into the form, the USA flag shows up.

Can that be fixed?

I appreciate your support!

Caroline Sheldon

@VictorAguiar

Hi Victor,

When you are in the form builder, you can click on the American flag and change the phone number format to any of the other supported countries. This sets the default country that the phone number is selected in when the user of your form opens it, but they can still change the format on the form they fill out by clicking on the flag and changing to another country. This is important because we want you as the form builder to set the default as the most commonly used phone number format, but also have the respondent have flexibility to change it if their phone number is out of that country.

coeptis

Hi @Caroline Sheldon,

This works for all countries, except Canada. For some reason, it still shows the US flag when selecting it. Any idea?

I think it might be because it's the same country code and its defaulting to the US, even though we select Canada...? Not a huge deal, but it's bugging me as well : )

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/318097#Comment_318097