2017-17A: International App Bugs & Other Change Requests

Owned by Patricia Donohue
Last updated: Jun 06, 2017
2 min read
Request No. 2017-17A
Date of RequestApril 26, 2017 - June 5, 2017 
RequesterVarious Colleges 
Application(s)International App 
Section / Page

Various 

Steering Hearing DateJuly 19, 2017 
Proposed Change to Download FileTBD 
Proposed Change to Residency LogicNo 

Problem / Issue

1) All phone number fields throughout IA application are not formatting correctly for international phone numbers.  See screenshots.

2) Number of Colleges Attended - Not defaulting to "0" zero.

3) Parent Guardian Address Error Message problems

4) Agent Contact Information problems

5) OPT/CPT validation issues

Proposed Solution

 1) International Phone numbers - change all phone number input fields across Account (creation & edit account) and the International application to allow for any free-form numeric import they want, with a good parser implemented on the backside.  

The best approach for user experience is to let the user type in the phone number using the format they are most comfortable with. Don't break it into separate fields, don't force a mask, let it be typed freeform. Then, after the user has finished entering the field (by leaving the field for submitting the data), format the number into a standard format for your purposes.

Since you are talking about a Web site, you can do the format on the blur event using the Google libphonenumber http://code.google.com/p/libphonenumber/ project. This tool handles international phone numbers and a wide variety of formats. Here is an example in JavaScript:http://libphonenumber.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/javascript/i18n/phonenumbers/demo.html

The reason this approach is better for the user experience is that it allows the user's mental model to remain unchanged and allows them to say, "Don't Make Me Think." Masking and separate fields force a mental model of phone numbers onto users and requires more thinking.

See this page for some information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.123


2) Set default on "Colleges Attended" field to Zero.

3) 

Notes

 

Supporting Documentation