Element administrators can prevent users from submitting an application using custom criteria with the application submission prevention feature. While users are already prevented from submitting applications if they do not fill out required fields or have already submitted an application for the same term and major combination, for instance, this feature allows further customization of these rules.

For example, application submission prevention can prevent an out-of-state student from submitting an in-state application or to prevent current students from submitting an application, among other use cases.

To set up a submission prevention rule, navigate to your global applications settings via Applications > Application > Application Settings and select "Submission Prevention Rules."

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Click the "+" symbol to create a new rule and customize your settings for the rule in the following menu.

📙 Note: If using the "prevent starting application" toggle, you must ensure that the conditions for the rule are determined separately from the application. In other words, users cannot be prevented from starting an application only based on the response to a question in the application itself.

For example, if you wanted to create a rule to prevent out-of-state applicants from submitting an in-state application to an institution located in New York State, you could set the conditional logic of the rule to a user segment with the following properties:

Address > Address (All Properties) DOES NOT HAVE State > is > New York.

This would create a filter of any person profile that does not have a New York State address.

To add an application submission prevention rule to an application, navigate to the specific application via Applications > Applications > All Applications and select the application.

On the following page, select "Submission Prevention Rules" under "Content" and choose the submission prevention rule you created to add this to the application. Click "Save" to make the rule active.
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