Automatically hide and show phases/steps based on the Institute

This guide will help you with creating an automation to show/hide phases/steps based on the Institute. 

Before you start

In order to be able to access the Automation Engine, you should first enable beta features in your Settings tab. Go to the 'Settings' tab, 'Study' sub-tab , Scroll down to the section 'Other'. For the field 'Enable beta features', select 'Yes' and  click 'Save changes'. After refreshing the page, the 'Automations' sub-tab will appear under the 'Study' tab.

Hide step works very similarly to hide phase, so this case can be used as an example for hide phase as well (simply just change the hide step action to hide phase). 

It is important to know that hiding phases or steps is possible in study and report forms, but not in surveys.

Create Automation to hide phases/steps

1. First create (or move*) the questions that you want to be answered according to the Institute to separate steps. 

*If the questions already exist but they are all in the same step, you can move them to their ‘new step’ going to “Forms” > “Study” > select the phase and step they are currently in > click on the ‘cross arrows’ icon:

Then move them to their destination step using the dropdown.

2. Once you have placed the questions on separate steps, it is time to add the calculation field that will automatically identify from which Institute is the user when they are completing the study data. 

We recommend adding the calculation field on the first step of the first phase of the study because the system will only be able to use the calculation to identify the Institute when the user opens the steps that it is in. Therefore, the system will only hide the steps for the user from other Institutes once the calculation field is triggered, otherwise they will keep visible.

When creating the calculation field, you will need to write on the “Calculation template” exactly “{castorInstituteName}” as shown in the example below. This formula is the trigger to identify the user Institute. 

As you can see, we created the calculation field on the first phase and step of the study and placed it at the top. 

3. Go to “Settings”, on the left side menu and then > “Automation” > Add automation.

4. Set the automation to “Study field value updated” > select the ‘Calculation field’. For this example, we named the calculation field “Researcher institute”.

5. When defining a condition, select “Record institute”

6. Then select one of the Institutes and save. 

7. Go to “Action to be triggered”. On “Select action” choose the option “Show/hide step”.

8. Select the step you want to hide from the Institute you selected on the previous step:

9. Click on “Select” and then, save your automation.

10. Repeat this task to each one of the different institutes. 

11. Once you finish, your automation should be ready as the example below. Only Institute B questions are visible, step with the Institute A questions is hidden: