CB substitutions - html format not displayed unless "show on profile" is Yes

Dear Support ,

For cb substitutions, it seems that I can call for the Raw Value of a field to be displayed regardless of whether the parameter "show on profile page" for the field in question is Yes or No, but I cannot do the same for the html format of the field - the html will not display as a cb substitution unless that field has the parameter "show on profile page" set to Yes. This is limiting.

e.g. I have a date field. I wish for the date to be displayed in a particular php format (e.g. MM-YYYY or whatever the case may be, which is duly set in the field's parameter setting). The only way for this to show up as MM-YYYY as a field substitution is to call the html of the field (not the raw field value). All good so far. Except, I can only get the html output to display IF the date field in question has the parameter “visible on profile” turned on. This is limiting, because some parameters you do not wish to show on the profile page. I am aware that you can place the date field in question in a “not shown in profile” tab position. But if I do this, the field can only be edited within that “hidden tab” and I wish the date field to be edited in another tab, to which it is more relevant. The upshot of all of this, is that allowing the html display of a cb_substitution to show irrepsective of the “displayed on profile page Y/N” parameter (similar to behaviour of raw value) would be very useful. Thank you for clarifying if this is doable.

Kind regards, Mark

Hi support,

just an update: I ended up circumventing the issue, by putting the date field inside a tab that was in a hidden module position after all. But there will still be use cases where it would be helpful to hide a field from its standard profile display position (on the basis of where you might want it to appear in edit or registration), yet to call it in another position (e.g. another tab) in the profile display using cb_substitution.

I can see that the benefit of having the html substitution display respond to the publish-ability status of the original field, is that when the original field is empty, for example, the html display within a substitution can disappear (assuming empty fields are set to hidden in global parameters) etc; ie it responds to whether the field is even publishable. But it would be good to have a parameter within the cb_substition call, that will allow the html display to be overridden and always presented (much like the raw value), regardless of the publish ability status of the original field. ta, m

Formatted substitutions always respect any display or access requirements of the field. The standard way to do this is to move the field to a not shown on profile tab position.

This may change a bit with CB 3.x as we might add a separate parameter to flag it has hidden, but still accessible. Ideally we'd like to provide a profile layout builder (similar to page builders) and these display parameters could just go away as display would be subject to whatever is setup in the layout, but that's just a "want to have" and may not make it into CB 3.x