Knowledge Base

Mandatory fields

Administrators can make some of the fields related to People records mandatory. That is, when mandatory the system will not accept a blank entry for those fields when creating or editing a person.

The fields that Administrators can choose to make mandatory for People records are:

  • Team
  • Role
  • Location


By default, none of the above fields are mandatory in Skills Base.


Setting fields as mandatory

To make a field mandatory you must hold the Administrator Security Group in Skills Base. You can the set the desired fields as mandatory in Admin -> Settings -> Customizations -> Mandatory fields.


How mandatory fields are applied throughout the system

Any field marked as mandatory will require a value to be entered when creating or editing a person. This includes:

  • When manually adding a person into the system
  • When inviting people
  • When editing or bulk-editing people
  • When a person is created via Single Sign On


Effect of mandatory fields on existing records

Setting a field as mandatory does not have any immediate effect on existing records. Any person that has the mandatory field blank will continue to maintain this state until their record is next edited. When their record is edited the person editing it will not be able to save the record until they specify a value for the mandatory field(s).

Note that you won't be able to delete a team, role or location that is assigned to people if that field is mandatory.


"This Skills Base instance is not yet ready" message

It's possible to get into a situation where people are unable to log in to your instance when using mandatory fields with Single Sign On. This can occur when:

  • You have set the Single Sign On default Team, Role or Location to "(Let the person choose)", and
  • You have also set that field as mandatory, and
  • There are no records in the system corresponding to that field


For example, if you have set the Single Sign On default Team to "(Let the person choose)", and have set the "Team" field as mandatory, but there are no teams in the system, a user signing in for the first time via SSO will receive the "instance is not yet ready" message. This is because the team field is mandatory however there are no teams in the system available for the person to choose from.

To solve this issue:

  • Add some teams/roles/locations (whichever you have made mandatory), or
  • Set the field as not mandatory