Requiring a ticket attachment if a particular dropdown option is selected

Update from Community Team: jQuery has removed in v2 themes and this tip doesn't work without jQuery.

 

How to require an attachment in a ticket if a particular dropdown option is selected

We needed to require an attachment if a certain dropdown option was selected by the user when they are filling out a certain form to submit a ticket. Without being able to require the attachment, extra time would need to be spent by the agent to contact the user and ask for the additional document. 

Solution Overview

This was done by creating a custom checkbox field that is set to be required, and adding the checkbox to the form, hiding the checkbox via CSS, then programatically selecting or clearing the checkbox according to the dropdown option selected and the number of attachments present.

Limitations 

• This solution detects that an attachment has been uploaded, but doesn't verify that the attachment is the particular document that needs to be attached.
• This solution uses MutationObserver (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MutationObserver/MutationObserver), which is not supported in some older browser versions
• A user could get around the requirement to upload an attachment by using the DOM inspector to show the checkbox, and then selecting it manually. 

Steps

Add the custom checkbox field

Create the custom checkbox field

1. Navigate to the Ticket Fields page
2. Click Add field
3. Select Checkbox type
4. Under Permissions, select Editable for end users
5. Enter whatever title you would like, in Title shown to agents and Title shown to end users. I used the title 'Attachment'
6. Select the Required to submit a request option.
7. Click Save to create the field
8. Note the field ID shown in the list of ticket fields for the new ticket field

Add the custom checkbox field to the form

1. Navigate to the Ticket Fields page
2. Locate the form for which you need to require the attachment, and click it
3. Drag the new field from the list of fields on the right to the list of fields in the form. Make sure that it is the last field in the form (because you want the error notification that appears if an attachment is required but not uploaded, to appear above the attachment upload box).
4. Click Save form to save the change.

Hide the checkbox field

Add the following to style.css to hide the field label and the field (replace the custom field ID in this code with your custom field ID). You have to hide the field label and field individually instead of hiding the <div> that contains them, because if there is an error notification that an attachment wasn't uploaded, it is inside the <div>.

#request_custom_fields_360017775731_label,
#request_custom_fields_360017775731 {
display: none;
}

Set the checkbox according to the attachments and dropdown

1) Determine the field ID of the dropdown. You can do this from the Ticket Fields page or with the DOM inspector by opening the form in your Zendesk, and then inspecting the dropdown. The screenshot below shows the dropdown on the web page, and the element inspector portion that shows the field ID

2) Add the following code in script.js inside the document ready function, e.g.after $(document).ready(function () { :  and before the ending line }); [You have to adjust the field IDs in attachmentCheckboxField and formDropdownClass to match your field IDs, and adjust the option checked in function isFormAttachmentRequired to match the particular option in your case]:

// Function to start observing node for mutations
var startObserveMutations = function (nodeSelector, options, callbackFunction) {
var node = document.querySelector(nodeSelector);
if (node) {
   var observer = new MutationObserver(callbackFunction);
   observer.observe(node, options);
  return observer;
  }
};

// Callback function to execute when mutations in form attachments or dropdown are observed: 
// clear or select Attachment checkbox according to dropdown
var mutationObservedForm = function (mutationsList) {
  mutationsList.forEach(function (mutation) {
    if (mutation.type == 'childList') {
      setFormAttachmentCheckbox();
    }
  });
};

// Define some variables for requiring form attachments
var attachmentCheckboxField = 'request_custom_fields_360017775731';
var attachmentCheckboxId = '#' + attachmentCheckboxField;
var attachmentErrorNotification = 'Report must be attached';
var formDropdownClass = '.request_custom_fields_360017548611';
var formObserveMutationOptions = { childList: true, subtree: true };

// Clear or select checkbox according to dropdown and attachments:
// Set Attachment checkbox if no attachments required, or if attachments are required and at least one is uploaded, otherwise clear it
function setFormAttachmentCheckbox() {
  if (isFormAttachmentRequired()) {
    if ($('#request-attachments-pool .upload-item').length) {
      selectCheckbox(attachmentCheckboxId);
    }
    else {
      clearCheckbox(attachmentCheckboxId);
    }
  }
  else {
    selectCheckbox(attachmentCheckboxId);
  }
}

// Return true if dropdown option 'ABCD' is selected
function isFormAttachmentRequired() {
  return $(formDropdownClass + ' a.nesty-input').attr('aria-expanded') &&
         $(formDropdownClass + ' a.nesty-input').text() === 'ABCD';
}

// Select checkbox
function selectCheckbox(eltselector) {
  $(eltselector).prop('checked', true);
}

// Clear checkbox
function clearCheckbox(eltselector) {
  $(eltselector).prop('checked', false);
}

// If attachment checkbox field exists:
//   Select the checkbox if attachment is not required
//   Watch for changes to attachments and dropdown
if ($(attachmentCheckboxId).length) {
  if (!isFormAttachmentRequired()) {
    selectCheckbox(attachmentCheckboxId);
  }
  startObserveMutations('#request-attachments-pool', formObserveMutationOptions, mutationObservedForm);
  startObserveMutations(formDropdownClass, formObserveMutationOptions, mutationObservedForm);
}

// Adjust attachment error notification
var attachmentErrorElt = $('.' + attachmentCheckboxField + ' .notification-error');
if (attachmentErrorElt.length) {
  attachmentErrorElt.text(attachmentErrorNotification);
}

Note: The code that detects changes to the attachments and dropdown uses MutationObserver (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MutationObserver/MutationObserver), as mentioned above. Basically you create an observer instance and pass it a callback function to execute when changes are observed. Then you start the observer, passing it the target node and options specifying what changes to observe.

When the above steps are done, and style.css and script.js are changed as shown above, then you will see that if you open the form and select the dropdown option that requires an attachment, and then click Submit, an error notification is displayed:

Hope this helps somebody!