Saving SharePoint list item as draft without required fields - sharepoint

Question

E.g. there is a list with gazillion required fields and I want the users to be able to fill out whatever they can and save as a draft until they have full info? Is there a simple solution for this? Tia!

Answer 1

Option 1: Multiple Content Types
One approach is to have two different Content Types on your list: one for draft items and one for submitted ones.
Content types on the same list can have different settings for the same columns. This means you can make the fields optional on the "draft" content type while making them required on the "submitted" content type.
The downside is that it may not be intuitive for end users if they're required to manually change the "Content Type" field in order to publish their draft.
Option 2: List Validation Settings
Another approach is to use List Validation settings instead of making fields required.
List validation lets you specify an Excel like formula (from which you can reference column values) which must evaluate to true in order for the validation to succeed. If it evaluates to false, a validation error message is displayed instead (you can specify the text of that message) and the item cannot be saved.
Simplified Scenario: One Field
Suppose you have a field called First Field that you don't necessarily need to be filled out right away, and you also have a choice field called Status Field that's used to indicate whether an item is a draft version or is submitted (displaying either "Draft" or "Submitted").
You can set up a list validation formula that requires First Field to be filled in whenever the Status Field is changed to "Submitted".
The formula would look like this:
=If([Status Field]="Submitted",NOT(ISBLANK([First Field])),TRUE)
In plain English, that formula is saying:
If Status Field is equal to Submitted...
...Then the form is valid only if First Field is not blank.
Otherwise, the form is valid.
More Complex Scenario: Multiple Fields
To make that work for multiple fields, you can join conditions together using the OR() and AND() functions, in the format of OR(condtion1,condition2)
So instead of ISBLANK([First Field]) to check whether a field is blank, you'd have something like OR(ISBLANK([First Field]),ISBLANK([SecondField])) to check whether either of two fields is blank. (Replacing First Field and Second Field with your field titles as appropriate.
The formula would now look like this:
=If([Status Field]="Submitted",NOT( OR(ISBLANK([First Field]),ISBLANK([Second Field]))),TRUE)
Note that you can nest multiple OR() conditions together arbitrarily, in the format of OR(condition1, OR(condition2, OR(condition3, condition4))) (and so on indefinitely).
Offloading Formula Complexity to Calculated Columns
If you run into limits with the formula length, you can offload some of your condition calculations into their own calculated columns, then just refer to those column values from your validation formula.
This can also help keep your formula from looking so complex.
For example, for every field that you want to be required, you can create a calculated column with a formula of =NOT(ISBLANK([Column Name])) and name it something like "{Column Name} Is Valid". Then you can refer to those columns in your validation formula:
=If([Status Field]="Submitted",AND([Field1 Is Valid],AND([Field2 Is Valid],[Field3 Is Valid])),TRUE)