Making mandatory vs optional fields in a widget

Hello!

The feature you are looking for is a conditional field, which is available with the Enterprise service plan.

The basic plan is to tie the visibility of the field to the value in the Check box

Conditional fields can be created with either Text Tags, Acrobat Forms or the in-app Authoring tools.

The images below are from the Authoring environment:

The first thing you need to know is the name of the check box you want to trigger the email field with.

Double click the check box to open the field properties

The Field name is at the top, and is editable if you want to assign meaningful names to your fields (purely optional, but helpful when running reports)

Next, you want to place a TEXT field, not an EMAIL field.

Place the field where you need it, and the open the properties.

There are (at least) three values you want to set:

• Flag the field as Required
• Set the field validation to Email Address
• Set the Condition to be  Show this field when the {Checkbox Name} is Checked

(Again, It is recommended that you rename the field to something meaningful to make reading reports easier)

Click OK and save the field.

Worth Noting: Widgets require an EMAIL field for any signer. Using a Text field does not satisfy this requirement, even if you are validating the content as an email address. Adobe Sign only views a TEXT field  as a string of content, and cannot make the assumption that this is the valid email address for the signature verification.  That is (one of) the purpose of the EMAIL Field.

Adobe Sign requires that a widget signer supply their email address in an EMAIL field, and that makes it tempting to use an EMAIL field instead of a TEXT field. 

However, in this use case, the conditionally visible EMAIL field is effectively "optional", so it does not satisfy the (widget based) requirement for an EMAIL field. Meaning you would still need to place another EMAIL field for the purpose of the Signature verification.

Using an EMAIL field will work for the purpose of capturing an email value, but the Text option allows the signer to customize their on-going experience.