CBSubs Fields Tabs Protect issues

J1.5.23, CB 1.7, CB Subs 1.2.2

Scenario:
We have essentially three different plans in CB Subs covering US, Canada and International addresses. A printed magazine is mailed to members in each of these geographic areas. A problem exists in the registration process where if the state and country fields are left for members to fill, they put in all sorts of garbage that cannot be used for a mailing address and must it be manually cleaned.

The solution is to create separate drop-down state fields for US members, drop-down province and a pre-filled country field for Canada and either a text or drop-down country field and a text state/prov/territory field for International addresses.

1.) In theory and on initial tests this worked great. But on closer scrutiny there were many functional problems. For instance; the US plan is selected by default and if a Canadian or International registrant misses that, proceeds to the membership form and then returns to select the proper plan and returns to the form, all fields from every plan appear and must be completed before the registrant can continue. Note that these fields are required on their respective plans, but are hidden in plans where they are not required. Users will have to clear their browser cache to reset the form in order to proceed normally. They will not know they have to do that and most will not know how.

2.) Also, there are cases where after completion of the form and proceeding to the payment phase, the user is shown an error screen with the complete form including all of the additional fields from all plans and they must complete all fields - even those not pertaining to their chosen plan.

3.) If that weren't enough, when a current member tries to edit their profile and save, an error message comes up that states the unseen fields for other plans must be filled in. Example; for a US member, they will be forced to complete the Province, Country, Associate Member and International Country fields before a save can be completed. Keep in mind that they cannot see the fields they are being forced to complete.

All of the above occur on the front-end. In the back-end there are additional issues. All of the new fields now appear on every member's record. So, when we pull addresses for US or International members, the country field will show Canada since it is pre-filled.

Obviously, we've held off implementing this until a solution is found.

Set-up for field selection by plan seems to be fairly complicated and I most likely do not have it set properly, so here is what I have configured:

CB Field Manager - created new fields for country-canada (pre-filled), country-intnl (text), us-states (drop-down), canada-prov(drop-down) and an intnl-st/prov/terr (text) field. No need for a US country field.

In each of the above fields the following are set:

CBSubs Fields Tabs Protect: Field CB Subs preferences
A. Field availability by Owner's Subscriptions: Yes. CB subs control field access

A. Availability depending on profile Owner's subscriptions
1) For other viewers:
Owner Plans controlling field available in profile: canadian_ membership_plan

2) For Profile owner himself:
Still Available for Profile Owner himself: Yes: owner's field available for profile owner (tried Yes/No)

Owner Plans controlling field editable (none means not controlled):canadian_ membership_plan

3) For Moderators: Still Available for Moderators: Yes: field available for moderators

Still Editable for Moderators: Yes: moderators can edit field


B. Field visibility by Viewer's Subscriptions: Yes, viewer's CB subs control detailed visibility

B. Visibility depending on Viewer's subscriptions:

1) For other viewers: Viewer Plans controlling field visibility by viewer (none means not controlled): canadian_ membership_plan

Viewer Plans controlling field searchable (none means not controlled): canadian_ membership_plan

2) For Profile owner himself: Still Viewable for Profile Owner himself: Yes: profile owner can still view his own field (tried Yes/No)

3) For Moderators: Still Viewable for Moderators: Yes: moderators can still view field


CB Privacy: Field privacy preferences
Privacy configuration level: Normal CB settings
Front-end edit: Normal CB settings

CB Conditional: Field condition preferences
Display: Normal CB settings


Paid Subscriptions/Plans:
In each Plan/Workflows I have hidden unneeded fields.

Are incorrect settings causing the problems or is there another issue?
Is there a case study for such requirements?

I know this is a lot to chew on and I apologize, but any direction would be greatly appreciated.

wow - huge post.

If what you are trying to do is to get a correct address based on these countries, then perhaps you should utilize the CB Conditions plugin features combining the following fields:

country field (with drop-down values: USA, Canada, International)
if country = USA then show new USA State field drop-down
if country = Canada then show Canada equivalent drop-down field
if country = International then show perhaps a new country-text field (or you can add countries to first field list)

You do not need to use CBSubs protection to do this. You can also conditionally bind a CBSubs plan to only be shown if a specific value is selected on a CB field. Thus the Canadian plan can be configured (see the workflow tab of the plan) to only be proposed if the country field is Canada.

I think you get the idea.

I apologize for the length of this post, but I didn't know any other way to explain the situation.

Your approach is much simpler! The above mess worked (sort of), but protected fields would display when they should have been hidden. Using conditional fields will eliminate that issue.

I will reconfigure the test site with your configuration and report back.

Thank you for this change in direction!