Form submissions: Fields

Matches the data in your form submission with the database fields.

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Once you have set up a Subject identifier you can match up its fields with our database fields.

When you process a form submission in the E-mail screen, the information will be extracted from the form submission and added into the main database (or, if the contact already exists, the relevant records will be updated).

Note You will find it useful to have one of your form submission e-mails open while you set it up. To do this, go into the E-mail screen and right-click on a form submission e-mail, and choose View source. Notepad will open showing the message part of your e-mail, and you will be able to copy the field names from it exactly.

An overview

Form submissions generally have the same format, where each line is made up of a field name followed by the value (whatever the user typed into the field on your web page). These two things are separated by a delimiter such as an equals sign or colon (which you can set in the Preferences section).

We process form submissions by matching your field names with our database field names, so in a simple example; if a line in your form submission e-mail reads:

SubscriberName = Jennifer Cox

then you can match SubscriberName to our Contact Name field, and then when you process this form submission a new contact called Jennifer Cox will be created.

Duplicates
In situations where you might receive several form submissions from the same person, you can assign a key field (such as e-mail address) that the web-user enters on every form submission that they make, and we then search on that key field when you process the form submission to see if the person already exists.

Rules
For each field you can set rules so that if a user enters something unexpected in the form, you can flag it or correct it automatically when you process the form submission.

For example, you can detect that an e-mail address field contains an @ symbol, has no spaces, and so on.

An example

Here is an example of the message part of a form submission e-mail

posteddate = 8/1/02 13:34
from = automation@centralperk.com
SubscriberName = Jennifer Cox
Title_DropList = Miss
EMail_Address = jennifercox@friendlymail.com
Query = Send me a sales brochure

The HTML code within your web page that produced this form submission might be something like this:

Copying from an existing Subject identifier

If you are setting up a form submission that is very similar to an existing one, you can copy the properties in one go. This includes all the field match-ups, rules and preferences.

Click the

Copy from button

Choose the Subject identifier you want to copy from

Confirm that you want to replace any existing match-ups

Note This button will only be available if you have more than one Subject identifier.

To match up a field

When you add a new field, don't include the delimiter (such as equals or colon) as part of the field name. Instead, select the relevant delimiter from the Preferences page.

Click the

Add button

Type over New form field with the field name that exactly matches the field name in your form submission e-mails.
Eg. SubscriberName

Choose a field from the database
Eg. Contact name

As well as Contact and Company fields, you can also match fields up to Event fields. In this case, an Attachment Event will be created in the contact's folder, in the same way that a phonecall is created and stored.

Annotation
This field denotes what will appear as the event message. In your form submission this might be a Comment box or Suggestion box.

Authored by
This is an internal user ID. If you have published part of the database to the internet you can include the  tag in a form submission so that a user can choose themselves from a drop-list as part of a form submission. In this case, the Attachment event will be recorded as having been created by the selected user.
Eg. UserID matched to Authored by

Target folder
If you have published part of the database to the internet you can include the  tag in a form submission so that the Attachment event will be created in a specific folder.
Eg. FilingRef matched to Target folder

Note You can match the same field name to more than one database field if you want. For example, you could match SubscriberName to the Contact Name field, and also the User-defined 6 field, by adding SubscriberName twice.

To delete a field

Select the field that you want to delete

Click the

Delete button

To rename a field

Select the field that you want to rename

Type over the field name

To set rules for a field

Select the field that you want to set rules for

Click the

Rules button

Click here for details on setting rules

Searching for duplicates

You will want to avoid creating duplicates in your database, which can happen if the same person submits your web-form several times.

For example, if your form is intended for people to make suggestions, then the same person might submit several ideas.

In this case, you would search on a particular field (called a key field) to see if the person already exists in the database, and if a match is found you would offer them as a likely target instead of creating a new contact each time. It's important that the key field will be unique for each user.

Typical examples of key fields are:

E-mail address

Post code

Account number

Choose which database field to search on
(It must be a field that you are matching against one of your form submission fields)

Choose which index to search within

Eg. Search for E-mail in the Phone/Fax/E-mail index