Sections and Conditional Questions

Nobody enjoys scrolling past twelve questions that do not apply to them. Sections group related questions together, and conditions decide what an applicant actually sees.

Sections

A section is a titled block of questions inside a page. Give it a heading, optionally a description, and drag your questions into it.

They earn their keep in two ways. They break a wall of questions into something readable, and they let you hide a whole group with one condition instead of copying the same condition onto eight questions.

Sections carry through to review, so assessors see answers grouped under the same headings the applicant filled in.

One warning: deleting a section deletes the questions inside it. Drag anything you want to keep out first.

Conditions

Questions, sections and whole pages can each be given conditions.

What you can compare

Six operators: is, is not, greater than, less than, greater than or equal to, and less than or equal to. There is no "contains" and no "is empty", which occasionally means rephrasing a question so a condition can be written against it.

Conditions sit in groups. Inside a group they are joined one way, all or any, and the groups join to each other the other way. That handles "all of these, or all of those", which covers most real rules. You cannot nest a group inside a group. If you need that, it is usually a sign the rule wants splitting across two conditional elements.

Pages can only look backwards

A page can be shown or hidden based on answers from earlier pages only. Point a page condition at a question on the same page, or a later one, and it is ignored.

That is deliberate. A page hidden by a question it contains could never be shown, so the question could never be answered, so the page could never appear. Ignoring those conditions is what stops applicants getting stranded on a form they cannot finish.

Hidden does not mean blank

When a question is hidden it drops out entirely. It is not required, so a hidden mandatory question will not block submission. And its answer is not saved, so if an applicant answers something and a later change hides it, that answer goes away.

That second one surprises people, so it is worth saying twice. Hidden answers are discarded, not stored quietly in the background.

Deleting a question other conditions rely on

If you delete a question that other conditions point at, those conditions are treated as satisfied, and whatever they were hiding becomes visible to everybody. Nothing warns you about this.

Before deleting a question, have a quick look at whether anything is conditional on it.

Preview will not test your logic

Form preview shows layout, wording and page order. Every field in it is read-only, so nothing can be typed. No answers means no condition is ever met, so conditional content stays exactly as it starts and the review and submit steps never appear.

To actually test conditional logic, submit a test application through the real form. There is no shortcut here.