CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Several clients have been caught out when setting up custom data fields to be 'required' when actually they only ever require them to be 'required' when used in a Profile.

I wonder if this could be avoided by including some 'help text' with the 'required' checkbox in the Custom Data Field display.

eg 'making a field required will mean that any time a display containing the field is 'edited', the field will be 'required'. If you only require the field to be 'required' when filling in a form such as during an Event, Membership, Donation or other data collection process, you can achieve this by making the field required when you include it in a Profile'

Not sure that quite states what I mean, but hopefully gives you the essence of what I am trying to make clear.

I think it is far too common that people think 'oh yes this should be required information' when they actually only want it to be required in a Profile.

Agreed - so if on the 'required' on the data field there was a 'help text' that perhaps says

"you can also set this field to be 'required' when Profile forms are being filled out, when you construct the Profile"