If you manage registration or health forms, you know that form requirements can change mid-season. In CampDoc and SchoolDoc, a Select question provides a drop-down menu where participants can choose exactly one answer from a predefined list.
While editing these questions in a live account is possible, both removing an option and editing its wording can reset existing participant answers and cause reporting to show outdated information. Because of this, we strongly encourage providers to finalize their Select options before the season goes live, rather than editing them once families have started submitting forms. This article explains how these edits affect live data and outlines best practices to avoid discrepancies.
In this article:
How Edits Affect Live Accounts
Editing or Removing an Existing Select Question
Whether you remove an option or edit its wording, the impact on the provider portal, reporting, and the participant experience is the same:
- Participant View: The answer field will appear completely blank the next time the participant opens that page, and the participant must re-answer the question.
- Completion Status: The system does not automatically flag a profile as incomplete or notify participants when an option is changed or removed. Profiles retain their "100% Complete" status to avoid registration disruptions.
- Provider View & Reports: The provider portal and exported reports will still display the original answer until the participant updates their response.
Best Practice: Before removing or editing an option, run and save a report of everyone who selected it. Also check if any follow-up questions depend on that option. Those follow-up questions may stop working correctly once the option changes. Once you've made the edit, use the Send Message feature with your report to notify affected participants and ask them to update their answers.
Given all this, the best approach is to lock in your Select options at the start of the season. Editing them once live isn't dangerous, but it does create cleanup work every time, so minimizing changes mid-season is the easiest way to keep your data and reporting clean.
Adding a New Option or a New Select Question
Adding new items works differently than removing or editing existing ones. It will not disrupt existing participant data:
- Live Impact: Adding a brand-new option to an existing drop-down list, or adding a completely new Select question to a live form, will not disrupt existing data.
- Completion Status: Adding a new option to an existing Select question will not change a participant's completion percentage or lock them out of a completed profile. Existing answers remain intact. However, if you add an entirely new required question to a live form, any participant previously marked "100% Complete" will see their completion percentage drop until they log in and answer the new required field.
Best Practice: Add new options to the bottom of the list. This keeps the order consistent for participants who have already made a selection and avoids confusion if the list is sorted in a specific order.
Best Practices for Formatting Select Questions
To ensure clean data collection and a smooth user experience, keep these configuration rules in mind when building or updating forms.
Avoid Commas within values in the Select Question
When creating options for a Select question, you separate choices using commas (e.g., Small, Medium, Large).
- The Rule: The system reads commas strictly as separators.
- The Risk: Do not use commas within the name of a single option (e.g., June 1, 2026). Writing an option this way causes the system to split the phrase into two separate choices: June 1 and 2026.
Preview Select Question Values:
Use the Preview Choices button to confirm each value appears on a separate line, as indicated:
Building "Select All That Apply" Configurations
Select questions only allow a participant to pick one answer. If you need a multi-select, use the following approach:
- Series of Yes/No Questions: Instead of a single drop-down menu, create individual Yes/No questions for each option. For example, instead of a drop-down for dietary preferences, create separate questions for "Gluten-Free? (Yes/No)" and "Dairy-Free? (Yes/No)."
Utilizing Preset Lists
Save time by utilizing built-in preset lists for common data fields. The values of the lists can be edited after selection.
- Geographic: States, States/Provinces, Countries
- Demographic & Identity: Race/Ethnicity, Marital Status, Relationships
- Logistics & Admin: Grades (K-12), Clothing Sizes, Phone Types
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Scales: Numeric Scale (0-5), Agreement Scale (Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree)
Optional: The Race/Ethnicity preset includes 17 options, including "Other." If you use a list that contains an "Other" option, always create a conditional text question directly below it (e.g., "If Other, please specify") to collect accurate data.