I have a form with checkboxes.
How do I get the PDF check boxes to correspond with the whatever is checked in the form during the Fill Out PDF Fields workflow?
Is there a specific value that will enable the tick?
Yes, make sure that the PDF activity is setting a checkbox to checked. You can't assign values other than checked or unchecked to a checkbox and in the PDF activity it should be a dropdown only.
Additionally, on the last Fill out PDF activity, make sure the merge the field content into the image box is checked and the align field data is checked by clicking the cog wheel.
This, unfortunately, is a fairly common issue where PDF designers incorrectly use checkboxes for what should be a set of radio buttons to indicate that a single selection should be made. Furthermore, PDFs allow you to specify any values behind the scenes to indicate whether a checkbox should be checked.
Workflow tries to abstract that with "checked"/"unchecked" options and handle the most commonly used values for setting the box (true/false, 0/1, etc). That handling fails in the case of checkboxes used as radio buttons.
You can use the steps in this KB article to turn off Workflow's default behavior in order to see the actual PDF values. Set ClearStandardValues to True instead of False.
I would second Justin's suggestion of using radio buttons on your form. You can match the radio button's values with what the PDF expects for the checked state. In your Fill PDF activity, set all 3 checkboxes to the token generated from for the forms radio button field. Since only one value will match, the other 2 checkboxes will not be checked. You shouldn't need any conditional decisions.
Unfortunately not, the best way that we have come across to accomplish this is to have a conditional in Workflow that checks the value of the Forms checkbox, and then assigns the PDF checkbox to either checked or unchecked depending on the conditional decision. For checkboxes that can have multiple things checked, a series of conditional series seems to be what has worked best.
Is there a how-to on setting up the condition in workflows? I'm a noob at this.
The problem is that we're trying to create a onboarding/W4 form/workflow and the contractor that worked on this set the filing status as a dropdown (I suppose to prevent the applicant from checking off more than one box at a time). The dropdowns don't seem to produce variables even as I set values to them.
I would like to retain his dropboxes but I found with using form checkboxes, that does leave variables you can insert into the PDF checkboxes to enable them, but again that does leave the applicant able to check more than one box.
Of course, I can try radio buttons but like the dropdown, no variables appear in workflow.
Assigning variables to the drop down should work. I normally do this by assigning them numbers (i.e. 1-5) and then the conditional would be something along the lines of RetreiveBusinessProcessVariables_Dropdown equals (1-5). Then for each value (1-5) a branch in the conditional would set the checkbox value.
Am I doing this correctly? It doesn't seem to work.
Yes, make sure that the PDF activity is setting a checkbox to checked. You can't assign values other than checked or unchecked to a checkbox and in the PDF activity it should be a dropdown only.
Additionally, on the last Fill out PDF activity, make sure the merge the field content into the image box is checked and the align field data is checked by clicking the cog wheel.