📚 Part of the series Application Building Phase II: The Slate-hosted Application

Application logic, including hard and soft fails, ensure applicants enter all necessary data prior to submitting an application.

Try a Slate example 💼

Use Suitcase to import the example in this article (and others in this section) into your institution's database. These examples are also featured in the Clean Slate Showcase environment.

Using testing queries

Before you commit to using the application logic records, try a testing query by importing the Suitcase link in the second tab. These queries recreate the application logic records, taking advantage of the Query Builder's Preview Results function to ensure the records that should be receiving the hard or soft fails appear. If you only use the application logic records, you'll only see the number of records affected.

Application logic Suitcase ID (hard fail library)

082d8112-e41b-4fc5-aef5-9c7beef46969:slate-admissions-showcase

  Testing queries Suitcase ID

a04770f5-349d-4e95-a9c0-0c5d0b1ba3b0:slate-examples

Require a custom field

This example hard fail prevents the submission of an applicant when missing an application-scoped academic program or major, but could also be repurposed to search for Entry Term, student type, or any application-scoped field.

⭐ Best practice

Be specific: sometimes multiple fields can be combined and referred to in a single submission requirement on the application without confusing applicants. However, when combining many items on a page with many fields, it is often helpful to specify particular missing fields.

• Type: Submission Requirement

• Section: Select the application page that includes the custom field.

• Name: Provide the text that will display when the applicant is missing information.

• Warning: Hard Fail

• Base: Configurable Joins: Application

• Filters: Create a Subquery Filter (Aggregate: Exists) for each field that should have a value saved.

  

Two applications have the same program & entry term

This requirement prevents submission when the current applicant has submitted other applications with the same entry term. If you allow multiple applications in a single round but don't want applicants applying to the same program multiple times, you can use this hard fail to prevent that.

To access data from all applications, you’ll create a subquery filter that joins from the current application to the applicant’s record, then to all of their existing applications.

Nested comparison filters between Application and All Applications determine that the overall filter looks for instances where a different, submitted application exists on the person's record, for the same entry term, with the same program selected.

• Type: Submission Requirement

• Section: Select the application page that includes the custom field.

• Name: Provide the text that will display when the applicant is missing information.

• Warning: Hard Fail

• Base: Configurable Joins: Application

• Filters: Configure the following:

  1. Create a Subquery Filter (Aggregate: Exists)

  2. Join to Person.

  3. Join to Applications. Name this join All Applications to distinguish it from the direct filter base Applications, which includes only the current application.

  4. Create a Subquery Filter (Aggregate: Comparison) to return a record if the All Applications GUID export does not equal the Applications GUID export.

  5. Create a Subquery Filter (Aggregate: Comparison) to return a record if the All Applications Entry Term export equals the Applications Entry Term export.

  6. Create a Subquery Filter (Aggregate: Comparison) to return a record if the All Applications Major export equals the Applications Major export.

  7. Create a filter for All Applications Submitted Status = Submitted.

Require program deadlines

Prevent the application submission if the applicant selected a program for which its special deadline has passed.

In this example, Biology applicants accessing the Review page after 01/05/2021 at 11:59:59 PM will receive a message that reads, "The deadline for this program as passed."

• Type: Submission Requirement

• Section: Select the page that displays the custom application field.

• Name: Provide the text that will display when the applicant is missing information.

• Warning: Hard Fail

• Base: Configurable Joins: Application

• Filters: Select a date using the Current Date filter in combination with each field that should have a value saved.

Best practices

• Use the deadline on your application rounds whenever possible. If only some of your programs have different deadlines, you may decide to make submission requirements to accomplish this.

• Be sure to include all program-specific deadline information in your application instructions, so applicants know which programs are available.

• Program-specific deadlines should never occur after the application round deadline. The deadline on the round restricts all external access to the application after that date.

📖 Configuring application deadlines