Question

Duplicate Form Submissions

Forms Laserfiche Workflow

Updated March 22, 2023

asked on February 15, 2023

Is there a way to stop someone from completing a form more than once?

This is a form for students to submit a commencement form for graduation. The admissions office has asked if I could make it where a student is not submitting multiple forms.

Trying to figure out the easiest way to go about this.

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replied on February 15, 2023

Couple ideas:

I have one form process that after the initial form is submitted, it runs a workflow that checks a database of existing forms, and if the record is found, it updates a form field with some warning text. Then the form process assigns it back to the initiator as a new task. The form field with the warning text is set in Field Rules to only be shown when there is text in the field. And that particular task only has an outflow to an end event. So it acts as a confirmation of rejection, but prevents the form from processing.

I have another process. On this one I set-up a simple View on the LFForms database to show some details of instances of this process. On the form, it does a lookup of the view for any matching account numbers. So it fills in some fields showing prior submissions for that account. Field rules are set to show some messages about prior submissions when the lookup returned anything. In this case, I do let them submit again, as sometimes it is needed, but the warning is good about letting them know something is already in progress and they need to verify that before starting the new one.

Both of these have served me rather well.

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replied on March 22, 2023

Thanks for your reply. Do you have a screenshot of your process? Your first process is similar to what I had in mind, however I wasn't sure which entries in the toolbox to use to make this happen. Currently I have the Retrieve Business Process Variables with "student email" and "student ID". And created a table in SQL to that will store that data.

Newbie here so appreciate your help!

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replied on March 22, 2023

It's going to look something like this:

You get the values from the form submission and use them to see if the record already exists in your custom database table.

If the record already exists (if results found = true) then we're going to do an update of the form to populate that error message into the field (the other piece of this is a Field Rule on the form in LFForms that says if that error field is blank it should be hidden, but if it is not blank it should be shown).

If no record already exists, we're going to add the record to the database now.

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replied on February 23, 2023

I would probably has a SQL table created with the current students flagged for graduation (If this is marked in your SIS). On the table put the Student ID, First name, Last Name, date of birth and an additional field named Confirmation or Confirmed. Automatically fill the confirmation field with a "no". Your SQL Administrator should be able to create a job that automatically updates this table so you don't have to keep up with it.

Create a form with those fields. When they enter their student ID and and date of birth have their first and last name populate with a lookup and the confirmation field populate with a "yes" or "no". If they submit the form have it write to the table to change the confirmation field from a "no" to a "yes".

If a student goes to fill the form our again have the form designed so that if the confirmation field returns a "yes" a message pops up saying "You have already completed this form. No further action is needed" or something along those lines. If possible have the submit button disappear if the confirmation field returns a "yes" as well.

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Duplicate Form Submissions

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