Making Changes in a Live Account: Edits, Authorizations, and Question Management

Builder gives you full control over your organization's forms — from the questions participants see to the authorizations they sign. This guide covers three key areas of form management: making edits when you have active profiles, updating authorizations, and deactivating or archiving questions you no longer need.

In This Article

• Making Edits When You Have Active Profiles
• Updating an Authorization
• Deactivating and Archiving Questions

 

---

Making Edits When You Have Active Profiles

We encourage all organizations to finalize form changes during the review process before participants become active. However, we understand that unanticipated changes sometimes happen mid-season.

Making edits to an account with active profiles requires extra care. If a participant has reached 100% completion and a change suddenly marks them as "Incomplete," it can cause confusion and notification fatigue. This guide helps you navigate those changes safely.

 

Step 1: Determine the Impact of the Change

Before making an edit, identify whether it will revert "Complete" participants back to "Incomplete."

Changes That WILL Affect Completion Status:

• Editing or Adding Authorizations: You cannot edit an authorization once it has been signed. You must create a copy, make your changes, and deactivate the old one. This requires participants to provide a new signature.
• Adding Required Questions or Uploads: Any new mandatory field will mark profiles as incomplete until answered.
  • NOTE: If a template is included in an Upload field, the template can be updated without impacting completion percentages.
• Changing Select/Drop-down Options: Adjusting the wording of an existing option will reset any profile that selected the previous version.
• Expanding Restrictions: If you change age or group restrictions to show a previously hidden required question, affected profiles will become incomplete.

Changes That Will NOT Affect Completion Status

• Instructional Text: Adding or editing "Read Only" text.
• Optional Questions: Adding a question that is not marked as Required.
• Adding or Removing Select/Drop-down Options: Adding a new choice to a dropdown (without modifying existing ones) will not break current selections. Additionally, If no profile has selected a particular option, it can be safely removed.
• Downloadable Documents: Updating an existing downloadable file or adding a new downloadable file (without any required question).

 

Step 2: Prepare Your Account (The Pre-Edit Checklist)

Complete these steps before touching your forms to ensure you have a safety net.

Check Completion Status

• Go to List Builder and add the condition: Completion Status > is > Complete.
• Note the total number of participants at 100% completion. You will use this as your benchmark after applying changes.
• Run a Standard Report > Completion Summary and export it. Keep this as a reference of who had completed their forms before the change.

 

 

Turn Off Notifications

• Go to Settings > General > Notifications.
• Note your current Reminder Frequency, then set it to "Off" and click Save.
• This prevents participants from receiving automated emails while you are testing or mid-edit.
   

 

Set Reviews to Sticky (Optional)

If your organization uses Reviews and has already begun the process of marking profiles as reviewed, complete the following steps. If your reviews are currently set to "Not Sticky," making a change in the forms that impacts completion percentages will reset the review status to "No." We recommend temporarily switching to “Sticky" before making any edits so your internal staff does not lose progress on reviewed profiles.

• Go to Settings > General > Profiles > Reviews.
• Ensure reviews are set to Sticky.

This ensures that if a profile becomes incomplete after your edits, the Reviewed status your staff already applied stays locked and does not reset.
 

 

Step 3: Make Your Edits Safely Using Draftset Preview

All form edits are made inside Builder. Depending on the type of change you need to make, see the relevant articles below for step-by-step instructions:

• Adding or Editing Questions
• Updating an Authorization
• Adding Required Uploads
• Adjusting Group or Age Restrictions

Review Your Edits in Draftset Preview

Once you have made your changes in Builder, use Draftset Preview to confirm everything looks and behaves correctly before going live. Preview is a safe sandbox — anything you fill in or sign will not be saved to your database or affect your reports.

For a full walkthrough of Draftset Preview, see: Testing Your Forms: Builder Draftset Preview Mode.

 

Step 4. Communicate with Participants

• We recommend reaching out to these participants to give them a heads-up that a new required field or authorization needs their attention.
• Use the Send Message tool to reach out to your 100% complete participants and let them know that a new required field or authorization will need their attention.

 

Step 5: Verify and Publish Your Changes

After making your edits, click Apply Draftset.

NOTE: Clicking Apply Draftset is permanent. It immediately pushes changes to your live forms. Always preview your Draftset before applying.

 

Step 6: Review & Restore

Check Your Impact

• Immediately return to List Builder and check your 100% Complete count against the benchmark you recorded in Step 2.
• If the count has dropped, run a Standard Report > Completion Summary and compare it to your earlier export to identify which participants are now incomplete.
   

Restore Notifications

• Once you have verified the impact and are ready for participants to return to the site, go to Settings > General > Notifications.
• Set your Reminder Frequency back to its original setting and click Save.

[Return to Top]

---

 

Updating an Authorization

Once a participant signs an authorization, the document becomes locked for legal reasons — what was signed cannot be altered. To update the language of an existing authorization, you must create a new version and deactivate the original.

NOTE: Creating a new authorization means any active participant who was at 100% completion will receive a notification that their profile is now incomplete. We strongly recommend completing the Pre-Edit Checklist in Step 2 above before proceeding.
 

Step 1: Create a New Version

• Log in to your Provider Portal.
• Navigate to Settings > Builder.
• Select an existing Draftset or create a new one. Always preview the Draftset before applying changes.
• In the Questions Overview section (right-hand panel), select the Authorization Title.
• Check the box next to the specific authorization you want to update.
• Click Copy in the menu, then click Paste Under.
• Click the Edit button on the new copy.
• Type or paste your new authorization language into the text box. You can use Markdown to add bolding, italics, or bulleted lists.

• Click Save.

Step 2: Deactivate the Old Version

• Locate the old authorization in the center column, and click the edit icon next to the old authorization.
  Tip: To determine which authorization is the old one, the previous version will not be editable since it has already been signed.
• In the right-side panel, click Deactivate. NOTE: To edit a specific authorization or field under a Step, click the edit icon for that item before proceeding.
• Use the Preview Draftset feature to ensure that only the updated authorization is visible and functions as intended.

 

Deactivating and Archiving Questions

When you no longer need a question or authorization in your forms, you have two options, depending on whether you may need it again in the future.
 

Deactivating Questions

Deactivating is the equivalent of archiving a question. Deactivated questions can be recovered; however, any conditional nesting and ordering will be removed. Deactivating is best if you no longer plan to use a question. If there is a good chance you will need a question in the future, you may want to use subgroup restrictions to temporarily hide the question from your profile forms.
 

What to know before you deactivate:

• If you deactivate a leading question that has nested child questions, you will be prompted to deactivate those child questions as well.
• Data entered into a deactivated question can be recovered by reactivating the question. Reports cannot be run on data stored in deactivated questions until they are reactivated.
• Deactivating questions removes their ordering and nesting. If you reactivate them later, you will need to manually rebuild their order and structure in the form.

 

How to Deactivate a Question

1. Navigate to Settings > Builder and open your active Draftset (or create a new one if needed).
2. In the center column, locate the question you want to deactivate, and select the ‘edit’ icon.
3. In the Question Metadata column (which appears on the right) select the question and click Deactivate.
4. If the question has nested child questions, confirm whether you want to deactivate those as well.
5. Click Apply Draftset to push the changes to your live forms.

 

How to Reactivate a Question

1. Navigate to Settings > Builder and open your active Draftset (or create a new one if needed).
2. At the top of the page, locate the Active Questions toggle and toggle it off to view the Deactivated Questions list.
3. Select the question you want to restore, check the box in the corresponding right column, and click Reactivate.
4. Manually reposition the question in the correct order, in the Questions Overview on the right-hand side.
5. Rebuild any nesting or conditional logic as needed.
6. Click Apply Draftset to push the changes to your live forms.

 

Archiving Questions Using the Z-Archive Group

If you have a larger set of questions that you want to hide from participants but may need to bring back in the future, using subgroup restrictions to archive the questions is a better option than deactivating. Archiving (using subgroup restrictions) preserves the ordering, nesting, and formatting of your questions exactly as they are.

 

Archiving works by restricting questions to a placeholder subgroup — typically named "Z-Archive" — that no participants are registered to. Because no one is assigned to this group, the restricted questions will not appear in your live forms.

 

NOTE: The Z-Archive group is not available by default. Contact your Client Success team to have one added to your account.

 

How to Archive a Question or Section

1. Navigate to Settings > Builder and open your active Draftset.
2. Locate the question or section you want to archive.
3. Click Edit on the question or section.
4. Go to Restrictions and apply a Subgroup Restriction, selecting the Z-Archive group.
5. Click Save.
6. Click Apply Draftset to push the changes to your live forms.

 

Because the questions are only restricted rather than removed, you can restore them at any time by updating the Subgroup Restriction to include your active participant groups.