Using Form Actions

Form actions provide a means of dynamically changing a form based on events, such as field value changes. Form actions fire when one or more events occur and when one or more defined conditions are met.

The following table provides some basic examples of condition-driven dynamic behavior that you can implement using form actions. For more advanced examples, refer to Advanced Form Action Examples.

Event Condition Action
Value of Amount Due Employee field on an expense report form changes. If the value of the Amount Due Employee field is less than $500.00... Make the Approving Manager field read-only.
IT technician selects None in the Server field. If the value of the Server field is "None"... Hide the Server Version field.
Value of Age field for a customer-reported defect changes. If the value of the Age field is greater than or equal to 30... Set the value of the Escalate field to "Yes."
Customer types 5551212 in the Phone Number field. If the number of digits in the Phone Number field is less than 10... Display Area code is required message.
Employee selects the Vacation check box. If the Vacation check box is selected and the Time Remaining field is greater than or equal to 4 hours... Expand the Vacation section on the form.
Customer clicks the Gold button. If the value of the Customer Type field is "Gold" and the value of the Account Balance field is greater than $40,000.00... Set the value of the Rate Qualification Category drop-down list to "Premium."

No JavaScript programming is required with form actions, but JavaScripts can be specified in the dialog as a condition (such as "if a JavaScript evaluates to true or false"), and as an action (such as "execute a JavaScript").

Alternatively, you can add JavaScripts directly to a form to create dynamic behavior. For information about using JavaScript to add dynamic features to forms, see Using JavaScript.

Related Topics

Quick Forms or Custom Forms?

Creating Custom Forms