Rule Builder

Introduction

The Rule Builder allows you to create dynamic forms that will follow logic that you’ve specified to perform certain actions like showing and hiding fields, skipping certain pages or emailing specific individuals based on the selections the user makes while filling out your Wufoo forms.

Requirements

First things first, in order to use the Rule Builder, you’ll first need to create a form. You can do this from the Form Builder. Each type of rule has its own specific requirements to use them. You learn more about these requirements in the related material on Field Rules, Page Rules and Form Rules.

If you have a Free account, you are allowed to only create Field and Page rules. Form Rules are only available to paid plans. Additionally, if you are on a Free account, you can only create 3 rules total for each form (across Field and Page rules). You can see the number of rules you have left at the bottom of the Rule Builder. If you are on a Paid plan, you can create 50 field rules, 50 page rules and 50 form rules.

Interface Overview

Rules are really easy to understand in Wufoo. Our Rule Builder was designed to make adding and understanding the logic you want to apply to your forms as easy as creating sentences. If you’ve ever created rules for your email, then you’ll be really comfortable with our interface.

Navigating the rule builder is easy. To get to the Rule Builder click on the “Rules” link from the Form Manager. The Rule Builder is organized into three parts (Field Rules, Page Rules, Form Rules) accessed by tabs at the top of the page.

The first time you save your rules on a form, they will be automatically enabled. You can toggle this setting by checking the “Enable Rules” checkbox in the top right corner of the builder. With the rules disabled your users will follow the standard form path.

To make selecting values easier we’ve added a new style dropdown. It works just like a standard drop down. Click a drop down in the rule builder and a list appears with the selected option highlighted. Field drop downs also include the field type to make choosing your fields easier.

Adding and Removing Rules

If you don’t have any rules for a form, you can create a new one by clicking on the create rule button at the bottom of the interface.

You can create additional rules by clicking on the big plus sign to the right of any rule. This will duplicate the existing rule for your convenience.

To delete a rule, click on the red minus button to the right of the rule. To save your changes click the “Save Rules” button at the bottom of your tab. If you delete all your rules the builder will automatically saves your changes.

After adding your rules save them by clicking the “Save Rules” button at the bottom of your tab. Each tab has its own “Save Rules” button and must be clicked to save the rules for that tab.

Anatomy of a Rule

Because we’ve designed the Rule Builder to create logic based on natural sentence structures, understanding the different parts of the rule and how it can be manipulated is pretty intuitive.

Every rule in Wufoo is composed of two major components: The Condition and The Action. The Condition allows you to specify the field you need to base the your rule off of and how you want us to evaluate that field. The Action tells us what you want Wufoo to do if the Condition is true.

Conditions

Conditions in Wufoo are made up of three parts: the Subject, the Value and the Comparison

• Subject - This is the field you want the rule to be based off of. It is almost always a field in your form. It cannot be a File Upload Field, Section Break or Page Break.

• Value - This is the choice or data the user must select or type into the form in order to make the Condition true. The possible values that can be used are dependent on the field type of the Subject. For example, if the rule is based on a date field, a date picker will be provided for your convenience.

• Comparison - This tells us how you want to evaluate the Subject’s value to make the condition true. You can compare the relationship between the Subject and Value in lots of different ways and the types of comparisons that can be used is also dependent on the field type of the Subject.

Here is a list of the different comparisons available for each field type:

• Number and Price : is equal to, is greater than, is less than

• Date : is on, is before than, is after than

• Time : is at, is before than, is after than

• All Others : is, is not, contains, does not contain, begins with, ends with

Multiple Conditions

At the end of each condition, you should see a gray + button that allows you to add multiple conditions for each rule. This means you can use AND/OR operators to condense what used to take multiple rules for the same action into one single rule.

When you click on the gray + button to the right of the first condition, this will add a logical operator dropdown with the ability to state whether the rule requires all of the conditions to be true (AND) or at least one of the conditions to be true (OR) before the action will be executed. When in doubt, just read the rule as if it were a sentence to help you understand what Wufoo will do with the rule.

Please note that when you change the operator between AND and OR on a rule with more than two conditions that we will change all of the operators associated within that rule to match that selection. Either all of the conditions have to be connected with ANDs or all are evaluated as ORs. You can’t mix and match those operators within a single rule. When you play around with it, you’ll see what we mean. Different rules, however, can use different logical operators.

The multiple conditions can be use on any rule type. That means you can optimize and condense the show and hide actions in Field Rules, the skipping actions in Page Rules and also the routing actions in Form Rules. This allows you to get more out of the Rule Builder with a lot less interface clutter.

The ability to add multiple conditions for your rules is limited to 50 conditions per rule and is availble to all users on all plans.

Actions

The second part of every rule tells Wufoo what action to perform if the Condition is satisfied in the first part of the rule. Each rule type actions.

• Field Rules let you perform two actions on another field if a condition is true. You can either SHOW a field to the user or HIDE a field from the user. You can also SHOW/HIDE Section Breaks, which is useful for displaying extended instructions for how to fill out your form.

• Page Rules let you SKIP pages on a form if the condition you’ve created is true. You can either skip to a specific page, skip the payment page or skip straight to your confirmation page. You can skip the user forward or backwards on a form.

• Form Rules let you specify 3 types of actions for Wufoo to do after the form is submitted. You can have Wufoo **Redirect

After your form’s been submitted you’ll be able to decide if your users should see a custom message or redirect to another web page. You’ll have the flexibility of choosing between the two based on what’s been entered on your form. You’ll also be able to create smart notifications with send email rules. Your form can send a notification email to sales or customer service depending on who your user would like to contact.

What is the format for date condition values?

The standard format for date based conditions is MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY depending on the format of the field chosen in the Form Builder. Date fields also allow flexible formats like today, tomorrow, +1 week or last thursday.

What is the format for time condition values?

The standard format for the value of time based conditions is HH:MM:SS AM/PM. You can enter a partial time value. If you do not enter AM or PM forms will assume an AM time.

What happens if I have two rules that conflict?

The Rule Builder highlights rules that are in conflict. If two rules conflict you’ll receive a warning on save. This means at least one rule is overriding another.

Rules are evaluated from top to bottom. If rule one hides an email field based on a text field and rule two hides the same email field based on a radio field only one can decide whether or not the email field displays. Since rule two is evaluated after rule one, rule two is always used to hide or show the email field.