The Safe / Unsafe setting for a person-scoped field determines how the field can be updated if an application in an active period exists for a record.

If a person-scoped field is configured as Safe, the field value is not updated by a safe source import or a safe form submission if the record has an application in an active period.

You can override the safe field behavior in the following ways:

By default, all forms (that are not application, application creation, or reader-scoped) and custom fields that are not application-scoped are treated as Safe, unless one of the three methods above is used to override this setting.

For data imports, any data mapped to application-scoped fields is always treated as Unsafe, and is always imported, regardless of the Safe or Unsafe setting on the import.

• Devices and relationship-scoped fields are safe.

• Tests and school-scoped fields are unsafe.

In most cases, custom fields should be configured as Safe. Remember, it is possible to override a field’s Safe setting when configuring a form, a source import, or even a specific mapped field destination.

There is no way to override the behavior of a field configured Unsafe (that is, an Unsafe field is always updated regardless of the conditions set on a form or import). Only set a field to be Unsafe if under every circumstance, the data in that field should be updated by a form submission or a source import (such as an SIS ID field).

Example Safe Fields Timeline

The following example describes the timeline for a Hispanic field that is configured as Safe: