Profile Completeness: Mandatory vs Optional Fields
By Andy on Saturday, 27 September 2014
Posted in Tips & Tricks (Not Supported)
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I think the Profile Completeness indicator (very nice prompt for people) is calculated based on ALL fields.... whether mandatory or not.

Any support for my thinking it should be based on just the mandatory fields?

I can see a point of view that using ALL fields helps show the extent to which users could fill out their profile, but the issue with that is people will decide on the optional fields... and where they opt not to complete them, they will just be constantly annoyed by a message telling them their profile is incomplete.

Could / Should it be changed then to look only at the completion of mandatory fields... so if I've completed 3 out of 3 mandatory fields, but not completed 2 optional fields, my indicator would be 100% and not pester me anymore.

If I'm in the minority with this thinking, I'll add to VOICES as a request for an admin option to pick between ALL and just MANDATORY fields?
Mandatory fields are mandatory, right? So the profile validator would not allow you to save without filling out those fields. However I assume this has more to do with mandatory fields that did not display during registration. In that case I would agree with you completely. After all, optional fields are optional hence just being bonus data that says extra about you. In other words I agree that it's silly to have that message display when all the mandatory fields are filled out. The intention after all is to get users to fill out the rest of the important data.
Josh Lewis
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Saturday, 27 September 2014 09:38
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Josh. Thank you. Correcting my stupidity. Boy do I feel silly

I'm tempted to delete the thread and hope you'll keep a secret.... but I guess it might help anyone else who thinks to ask make such a silly point.

Oh dear. Maybe the moderators should have buttons to rate the intelligence of questions asked.
Andy
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Saturday, 27 September 2014 09:50
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I had profile completeness disabled, I enabled it just now to see how it operates with this "issue". Right now it appears to only check mandatory fields which is what we want right? Your message indicated to me that you wanted it to check mandatory fields only which is a good thing. So unless I'm mistaken, the main mistake you made was not verifying how it calculates the percentage/message.
Josh Lewis
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Saturday, 27 September 2014 10:47
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I was hoping it would check Mandatory fields only (and whilst I thought I was being stupid, you can have mandatory fields in a quick registration and still have mandatory fields left after that when you next edit your profile... so it would serve a good purpose to be telling you "Hey Buddy, you did all the mandatory stuff in your easy registration, but you've got more to do")

However in my case I clearly have completed every available mandatory field and I'm still getting a 72% complete message - so it looks like it's including my optional fields....

Admin super-hero needed to confirm what's supposed to happen I think!
Andy
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Saturday, 27 September 2014 12:08
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Thanks for sharing Josh
Mark
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Saturday, 27 September 2014 15:40
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Turns out profile completeness checks all the fields instead of the mandatory ones. I would think it is better practice to check the mandatory ones only. Or perhaps a admin option should be in place asking which fields to check against (as in "required only" or "all").
Josh Lewis
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Sunday, 28 September 2014 06:16
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Hey that's where this thread began!!! But you convinced me at the time I'd gone mad! Now I understand what I originally said does make sense after all! Thanks for thinking it through again!
Andy
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Sunday, 28 September 2014 06:29
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Keep in mind in my original post I did finish by saying "After all, optional fields are optional hence just being bonus data that says extra about you. In other words I agree that it's silly to have that message display when all the mandatory fields are filled out".
Josh Lewis
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Sunday, 28 September 2014 06:49
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I agree with this, is there a quick way to change the profile completeness to check only the mandatory fields?
Marco
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Sunday, 28 September 2014 08:11
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Hi,

Currently this feature checks against all fields. We will see if can change this behaviour in the future.

Part of the reason was because, you won't be able to save your profile without filling all the required fields. Hence if the feature only checks against required fields, that makes it a bit redundant.
Jason Rey
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Monday, 29 September 2014 11:40
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Not if people use quick registration.
Josh Lewis
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Monday, 29 September 2014 14:09
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Do you guys need this badly? If yes, I'll see what I can do with it
Ken
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Monday, 29 September 2014 14:36
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No Gary. I'd rank this near the bottom of the requests I've made here. This is more about using the best practices.
Josh Lewis
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Monday, 29 September 2014 14:50
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Hi all,

Added a switch in the next version.
Jason Rey
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Monday, 29 September 2014 18:16
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Thanks for this Jason
Marco
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Monday, 29 September 2014 20:38
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Thats great jason. is this going to be 1.3.7?
Goodwin mankomba
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Monday, 29 September 2014 21:17
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Yes, we'll try to include this on 1.3.7
Mark
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Tuesday, 30 September 2014 00:28
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For those who are wondering why I called Ken "Gary", it's because of his avatar. Anyways, great to hear the option is added. Again, this was low on my list but I defended it because it seemed to be more practical for the ES community.
Josh Lewis
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Tuesday, 30 September 2014 02:40
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Thanks Jason Rey!
Ken
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Tuesday, 30 September 2014 07:26
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Welcome guys.
Jason Rey
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Tuesday, 30 September 2014 10:40
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