Customizing Additional Details on the Personal Background Page

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

The Custom Personal Background Page suitcase provides a starting point for migrating the standard PER page without starting from scratch. This article provides additional instructions for components within the suitcase that can be further customized, along with approaches for collecting data in ways that align with familiar standard PER page behavior.

Using a Location Block to Capture Birth Address Information

You can use a custom Address Block to map to multiple custom fields and store address related data. The following example will walk through creating and mapping custom birth location fields.

Creating Custom Address Fields

1. Click Database in the top navigation bar and select Fields.

2. Click New Field to begin creating a custom field.

3. Create three new custom fields to store this data.

   • The naming convention for these fields must all be consistent and use the same prefix.

   • Each field ID should be computer-friendly (no spaces, no capital letters, and no special characters other than an underscore)

   • These fields will need to collect city, country and region, so example field IDs for a set of birth location fields could be:

     birth_city

     birth_country

     birth_region

4. Set the appropriate Scope for the data being collected. For this example, birth location fields should be Person-scoped.

5. Set the appropriate Field Type for each field.

   • The City field should use a Field Type of Free Text.

   • The Country field should use a Field Type of Single Value, and select the pre-built country prompt.

   • The Region field should use a Field Type of Single Value, and select the pre-built state prompt.

Configuring the Address Block on a Form

1. Navigate to the Forms tool in the top navigation bar.

2. Create a new form or select an existing form.

3. Click Edit Form in the right-hand side menu.

4. Drag a Location widget onto the form from the form fields palette.

5. In the Type dropdown, select the appropriate type based on how much address data is being collected. For this example, we will select Location (No Postal Code) to collect city, country, and region.

6. Enter a name within the Label field, such as Birth Location.

7. Leave the System Field dropdown blank.

8. Within the Export Key setting, manually enter the export key to link the address widget with the new custom fields. For this example with person-scoped fields, the export key would be sys:field:birth . (For application-scoped fields, the export key would be sys:app:birth.)

9. Click Save.

Using Citizenship Data for Section Break Filtering

Conditional logic can be used on the Custom Personal Background page to display form fields based on responses to form questions. For example, specific visa-related questions can be shown depending on citizenship responses, and sections like Social Security or Race/Ethnicity can appear only when relevant. The following instructions are for these two specific scenarios, but can be applied to other areas in the application.

Adding filters defining domestic and international students in a section break rather than on individual form fields allows for the entire section to be displayed conditionally, and for sections to be updated and changed over time and have the same conditional logic apply.

⭐️ Tip

Visit the Custom Personal Background Page article and add the suitcase for a custom Personal Background page with the following conditional logic pre-built and ready to use or modify.

Steps to conditionally display SSN and race/ethnicity based on citizenship data

1. Add a section break above where Social Security Number and Race/Ethnicity are collected.

2. In the section break add citizenship filters in the affirmative for applicants who should see domestic questions:

   1. citizenship1 in United States

   2. citizenship2 in United States

   3. permanent resident in Yes

3. Add ‘or’ separators between each filter.

4. Surround all three filters with parentheses.

   1. This will ensure that if an applicant meets any one of these filters, the SSN and Race/Ethnicity sections will display below.

5. Add a second section break below Race/Ethnicity to close the section.

Steps to conditionally display Visa fields based on citizenship data

1. Add a section break above where the Visa field information will be collected.

2. In the section break add filters for international applicants. This filter criteria is the inverse of the filter criteria for domestic applicants:

   1. Form Field Exists - EXISTS sys:citizenship1

   2. NOT

   3. citizenship1 in United States

   4. citizenship2 in United States

   5. permanent resident in Yes

3. Add ‘or’ separators between each citizenship and permanent resident filter.

4. Surround all three filters mapping citizenship with parentheses.

5. Add a second section break to close the section or if you are displaying SSN and Race/Ethnicity (see steps above), that section break will close this one.