Validation Errors

Validation errors are notifications you will get presented with if you fail to enter valid data into a Field, miss a Required Field entry or have Expression Errors (see the bottom of this article for more on Expression Errors). Validation errors prevent you from saving Records or any changes to them hence, you cannot successfully log out of your Softools site. These records will become pending until the validation issues are resolved. Fortunately, there are numerous ways to know if you have them; at the Field, Record and App level.

Field Level

Above are two examples of how you may be notified of a validation error at a Field level within a Record. As mentioned previously, the Time Field on the left presents an example of invalid data (as 26:00 is not a time that exists). Whereas comparatively, on the right, is an example of a missed Required Field.

Record Level

    This is a continuation of the missing, yet required Date Field above but shows how you may be notified at the Record level via the orange warning triangle at the bottom left of the screen. You will not be able to save the Record in question until the validation errors have been fixed.

App Level

Upon attempting to log out, if you have validation errors you will be confronted with this screen. Here you can see the 'Risk' app has five Records with validation errors. Hence...

Solving Validation Errors

If we work back through the discussed examples you can arm yourself with multiple ways of resolving validation errors. Firstly, you can resolve at the Field level within a record by ensuring that all flagged Fields have valid and complete data. However, if you have an app with many invalid Records or even various apps with validation errors in them it may be easier to fix these via the log out screen above.

Here you can choose to click through to the individual Records with errors or to bulk-clear all the invalid records with the 'Clear Unsaved Data' button. Alternatively still, if you wish to edit or clear select invalid Records within an app, you can click on the app name, in this case 'Risk' and you will be taken to the screen below.

From here you have the option on each Record to click the pencil to take you to the Record that requires amending, or simply the bin to once again clear that Record.

Once all outstanding validation errors have been resolved, either by amending invalid records or clearing them you will be able to save the records and log out respectively.

Expression Errors

These errors are not quite the same as Validation Errors as they are errors specific to incorrectly structured Expressions (learn more about Expressions and potentially how to fix broken ones here). However an Expression error does ultimately cause a Validation error which has all the associated problems as described above.