Happy holidays! It must be all the seasonal cheer in the air, but it’s got us thinking about gift-giving. FormAssembly’s probably not on your friends’ and family’s holiday wish lists, but maybe it’s something you’ve been hoping to get for your department or office.

Here’s our FormAssembly Gift Guide, with a quick overview of each plan, how to know if it’s right for you, and some of the features you’re sure to use over and over. Whether you’re looking to purchase in December or any other time of the year, use this guide to help you buy smarter.

Check out our previous plan profiles as well:

• Enterprise
• Premier
• Professional

The Plan: Compliance Cloud

FormAssembly’s Compliance Cloud plan was built for companies in the healthcare industry, and other highly regulated industries such as financial services and government. This plan, featuring HIPAA Compliance and PCI DSS Level 1 Certification, offers peace of mind that your most sensitive data is being treated in a secure and compliant manner.

Whether you’re using forms in a healthcare setting, such as collecting new patient information, or at a financial consulting firm as you’re enrolling and onboarding new clients, your organization can benefit from the streamlined processes and centralized, secure data collection that the Compliance Cloud provides.

Who’s it perfect for?

• Large companies with a need for heightened security and control
• Healthcare companies
• Financial services companies
• Government entities
• Higher education institutions

What features will they love?

• HIPAA Compliance keeps PHI secure.
• PCI DSS Level 1 Certification means sensitive payment card data can be gathered in a safe, compliant way.
• High availability with a 99.9% SLA translates to dependable uptime so you can focus on running your businesses.
• All features of the Enterprise plan & more.*

Cost: Contact our Sales Team for More Info

* Some features only available in U.S.

The post FormAssembly “Gift Guide”: Compliance Cloud Plan appeared first on FormAssembly.

If you’re like a lot of people, you’ve probably made a New Year’s resolution for the new year, or you plan on making one.

Not to be the bearer of bad news, but the odds are you won’t keep it for very long. Why are we telling you this, and what does this have to do with web forms?

Here’s why: You can increase your chances of keeping a resolution 10 times if you know specifically what you want to achieve, and we’re here to give you six very clear, very achievable form resolutions for the New Year.

You don’t have to accomplish all of them, but if you commit to one and stick to it in 2018, you’ll be miles ahead of where you are now in just a year’s time.

1. Replace One Old Paper Process With a Form

As we ring in 2018, say goodbye to paper forms. Let’s be honest. No one likes them, and they’re wasting your time and resources.

Just about any paper form can be made into a web form, benefitting both you and your users. You’ll be able to cut out repetitive data entry, and your users will be able to complete a task much more easily than they would with a paper form.

Not to mention, web forms allow all sorts of cool things like prefilling of data, CRM and payment processor integrations, and easy branding and design.

Don’t be scared of change. Identify a web form that’s taking up valuable resources and transform it into a streamlined, sophisticated web form.

Read more: “8 Tips for Translating a Paper Process to a Web Form Process”

2. Move Beyond Boring Forms

If you’ve already embraced web forms as standard practice in your company, that’s great! Kudos to you! But are you really getting the most out of your form building tool or are you settling for blah forms with no design or branding? Generic forms will do the trick in some cases, but with all the possibilities for easy form design (no need to be a web developer), why would you want to stop there?

Web forms can function well and look great; you don’t need to choose between the two. In 2018, look at your forms and ask yourself if they’re contributing to brand recognition or whether they’re utterly forgettable. Are they designed to be pleasing to look at or do they look outdated and boring?

Your forms reflect on your brand, just like your website design does. If your form design isn’t where it needs to be, take steps to improve it in 2018.

Read more: “[eBook] The Ultimate Guide to Web Form Design”

3. Connect a Form to Salesforce and Say Hello to Better Processes

Does your organization use Salesforce? Chances are the answer is yes. Salesforce is an excellent software for storing information and streamlining communication for multiple industries, from higher ed and nonprofit to healthcare and financial services.

If you’re using Salesforce to store information, you also need the right form solution to get data into Salesforce (and make better use of it once it’s there). FormAssembly’s Salesforce Connectors are the perfect way to start connecting data to Salesforce. Start with one form, then give the Salesforce Prefill Connector a try, then before you know it, all of your forms will be Salesforce-connected, helping you rid your organization of manual data entry and data problems associated with human error.

Read more: “[eBook] Use FormAssembly With Salesforce to Streamline Processes and Optimize Data Collection”

4. Examine the Security and Compliance of Your Current Web Form Solution

Regardless of your industry, you want to know that the data collected by your forms is being handled in a secure manner, but there are certain industries and situations where extra protection or compliance is required.

If you need to collect sensitive data with your forms, look for things like HIPAA compliance and PCI DSS Level 1 Certification (both of which are included on our Compliance Cloud plan). These extra security measures help you ensure you’re conducting business in secure way and are compliant with important regulations.

Read more: “[eBook] The Healthcare CIO’s Guide to Revolutionary Data Collection With Web Forms”

5. Improve the Experience for Your Users, Whoever They May Be

If you’re in higher education, your form respondents might be students. If you work in financial services, they might be financial advising clients. If it’s healthcare, patients are likely filling out your forms. Whatever the audience, make a resolution this year to be user focused when it comes to your forms.

Make it simple for new clients, patients, prospective students and other to fill out forms by providing clean, one-column layouts, prefilling information when possible, and redirecting people to polite thank you pages upon submission.

Read more: “3 Web Form Design Pitfalls to Eliminate”

6. Take One Form That’s Not Converting Like You Think It Should Be, and Figure Out Why

Conversion isn’t just a marketing-centered goal or objective. If users aren’t filling out forms, whether it’s a donation form, application form, or anything else, you need to figure out why so you can move closer to your goals. Conversion optimization can be a daunting task, so start with just one form and analyze every aspect of it to find what’s tripping your users up.

Even if your forms are bringing in enough responses, you might be able to make them even more effective.

Try tactics like:

• Removing unnecessary form fields
• Not asking for information like phone numbers
• Doing a better job of explaining the value to the user of filling out your forms

Make strategic changes to your forms and test them out multiple times to find out what works and what doesn’t.

Read more: “4 Hacks to Increase Your Form Conversion Rate”

7. Only Use Forms in One Department? Explore Ways to Branch Out

Yes, you can capture leads with forms, but that’s far from the only way to use them. Web forms can be used in any department to streamline just about any process from vacation requests to marketing projects to customer feedback forms.

If you’re only using web forms for one department, make a resolution to branch out and use them in all areas of your company. At FormAssembly, we use our own web form tool to improve efficiency in HR, marketing, sales, customer service and more.

Read more: “8 Ways Our Marketing Team Uses FormAssembly”, “7 Ways Our Customer Support Team Uses FormAssembly”

8. If You’ve Outgrown the Form Solution You’re Using, Learn How to Level Up

If you’re on a Premier Plan or Professional Plan and feel like it’s time to make a change, consider our Enterprise or Compliance Cloud plans:

FormAssembly’s Enterprise offering includes:

• Multiple users
• Admin control
• Enterprise-level security

FormAssembly’s Compliance Cloud plan includes:

• HIPAA Compliance
• PCI DSS Level 1 Certification
• 99.9% SLA

Read more: Compliance Cloud features, Enterprise features

Face the new year with a renewed understanding of how to create amazing forms that improve productivity across your organization. When you’re ready, take the next step and check out our plans.

The post 7 Web Form Resolutions You Can Actually Keep appeared first on FormAssembly.

Do you use paper to collect information for your organization? Whether it’s paper surveys, paper sign-up sheets, or paper lead collection forms, you should know there’s a better way to collect information on-the-go. FormAssembly’s mobile app (available on the iTunes App Store) can help you collect data at events, in the field, at house calls, or anywhere else your work takes you. If that weren’t enough, you can also collect data offline and sync it to your FormAssembly account at a later time. In short, why use paper when FormAssembly can meet your remote data collection needs?

Paper Can Get Lost

When you use paper methods to collect information, you’re trusting in something very unreliable. Paper can be lost or damaged, written information can be undecipherable – you get the picture. Instead of collecting business cards at an event, gather lead information with FormAssembly. Instead of paper surveys on a clipboard, use our iOS app. That way, you’ll keep all of the information in one place and be able to access it easily later.

Data Entry is Time-Consuming

In most cases, information collected on paper needs to be transferred somewhere else, whether that’s a CRM such as Salesforce, an email marketing tool such as Mailchimp and the like, or a spreadsheet software such as Google Sheets. Manual data collection takes time; likely time you don’t have. The result of that is that data may never get transferred to the right location and used to its full potential; or, if it is transferred, you may run into issues with human error and data entry mistakes. With FormAssembly’s mobile app, you can use features such as our Salesforce Connectors and Google Sheets Connector to send data where it’s supposed to go.

Collect Data Online or Offline

If there’s a benefit to paper for data collection, it’s that you can take paper just about anywhere and don’t need WiFi to collect data. However, with offline data collection on our iOS app, you can achieve the same flexibility, plus the added benefits of collecting data with web forms. Collect data on-the-go, with internet or without, and sync it to your account when you have internet again.
Keep an eye out for the release of our mobile app eBook with info on setting up and using our mobile app. In the meantime, read more about ways to use the mobile app:

5 Ways to Use FormAssembly’s Mobile App

The post Why You Should Ditch Paper Forms for FormAssembly’s Mobile App appeared first on FormAssembly.

At FormAssembly, we love our many customers in industries ranging from financial services to healthcare to nonprofit. From the reviews that customers leave us around the web, it’s pretty clear they love us too. Here are a few excerpts from some of our favorite reviews from G2Crowd.

1. “…Tailored to your needs…”

“FormAssembly combines all of the usability of a drag-and-drop editor with the flexibility of custom development, to create forms that are tailored to your needs and incredibly powerful in their functionality. We use FormAssembly forms for just about everything, from our application process, to contact management, to post-event surveys. Because it allows you both to pull and push data to Salesforce seamlessly, it provides a quick tool for automating complex transactions with our Salesforce instance.”
(Read the entire review)
– Billy D.

2. “…Solid integration with Salesforce…”

“We love working with Form Assembly for our form integration tool with Salesforce. We are a consulting shop (www.cloudnerd.com) and have implemented Form Assembly for over 30 Salesforce organization. Great tool and very solid integration with Salesforce, especially with business rules and logic (order records are created, linking records together, creating multiple related records, etc..).”
(Read the entire review)
– Chris S.

3. “…Customer service is unbeatable…”

“The customer service is unbeatable. No matter how large or small the issue, they are there to walk you through and show you the ropes.”
(Read the entire review)
– Katie T.

4. “…Makes life easy…”

“The Salesforce prefill connector is a huge asset to how we [use] FormAssembly. We can create forms in places like Community Cloud and flows and prepopulate data from Salesforce records (such as contacts, leads and users) and have that readily available for our users to fill. Also a huge plus is the lookup and update logic that helps with preventing duplicate records from being created in our instance and makes life easy for our org.”
(Read the entire review)
– Medhanie H.

5. “…User friendly…”

“FormAssembly is a great product for those of us who are not considered techies, but still need to find our way around. It’s user friendly and has great articles and documentation which offer troubleshooting. Plus, their customer service team is always a click or an email away!”
(Read the entire review)
– Shannon S.

6. “…Saving time and ensuring accurate data entry…”

“The automation with Salesforce, Google Drive, and PayPal has been incredibly valuable in saving time and ensuring accurate data entry into our systems. The forms are also very user-friendly and can be used for a lot of different purposes, from evaluations to program applications.”
(Read the entire review)
– Nora D.

7. “…Allows us to automate (and improve) so many processes…”

“Form Assembly is a critical tool for us at Culture Amp and has been for me at previous companies as well. The ability to put data from forms directly into Salesforce allows us to automate (and improve) so many processes.”
(Read the entire review)
– Andy M.

8. “…Flexible, complex, and easy to use…”

“It is both flexible, complex, and easy to use, which I would have sworn could never happen all in combination! The admin interface is easy to use and allows some very complex options. Customer support has always been very helpful. The Salesforce integration is smooth.”
(Read the entire review)
– Marina S.

9. “…I don’t need any other form building products…”

“I can use FormAssembly for all my form needs. From a simple few questions to multiple forms connected together, it’s got it all! I don’t need any other form building products with FormAssembly. We have cancelled all our other subscriptions.”
(Read the entire review)
– Anthony K.

10. “…Brilliant…”

“We were looking for an easy way to leverage data in and out of salesforce, specifically dealing with a few marketing lead-gen use cases. The ability to create a form and connect it using the salesforce connector, then map and create literally any logic on how data can be viewed outside of salesforce, and in-turn send and stored within salesforce is brilliant.”
(Read the entire review)
– Sean R.

Do you have opinions you’d like to share about FormAssembly? Leave us a review!

The post 10 FormAssembly G2 Crowd Reviews We Love appeared first on FormAssembly.

Starting this week, the team at FormAssembly is launching a new blog series: How’d You Do That? A Salesforce-FormAssembly How-To Series. This set of posts is designed specifically with you and your team in mind. As the Salesforce connector is one of the most popular connectors available, users often have many great questions about the ins and outs of using it alongside FormAssembly. The goal of this new series is to propel you to the next level in designing web forms capable of powerful Salesforce integration techniques.

New blog posts will be published every other week on Wednesdays. The first post in the series goes live next week on January 24. There will be a total of 8 relevant and engaging tutorials, featuring members of the FormAssembly team, as well as some guest posts from Salesforce experts. With a wide variety of use cases, you’re bound to discover a surprising new tip or technique that helps you become a form-building all-star.

Topics will cover a number of different ways to use FormAssembly in conjunction with Salesforce. To give a small snapshot, these topics include:

• Creating a lead or updating a contact
• Capturing form response data in a notes field in Salesforce
• Connecting a contact’s lead source with an opportunity
• Creating client onboarding forms linked with Salesforce
• Prefilling Salesforce data for responses to view and edit

As always, our Customer Success team is ready and eager to help as you navigate new features. If a post piques your interest in a particular topic, or if you have trouble putting the how-to tips into practice, hop over to the Support page at any time.

Stay up-to-date with our new posts every other week on the FormAssembly blog page. You can also connect with us on Twitter to share thoughts and feedback by following @FormAssembly. If your team or organization has a unique use case, or if you’d like to share more about how the series is helping you grow, send us a message at marketing@formassembly.com.

The post New Series! How’d You Do That? A Salesforce-FormAssembly How-To Series appeared first on FormAssembly.

Do you collect data on the go? Does your job require you to work in locations without a reliable internet connection? Are you looking for a way to get even more out of your FormAssembly plan? Give the iOS mobile app a try! FormAssembly’s mobile app allows you to collect data with your FormAssembly forms, even without internet. You can learn all about the app in our new ebook – No WiFi Required: Your Quick & Simple Primer to the FormAssembly Mobile App.

In this eBook you’ll learn:

• The benefits of using the mobile app and its offline data collection abilities
• Mobile app use case ideas
• How some of our integrations work with the mobile app
• Answers to common questions about using the mobile app
• How to set up and begin using the FormAssembly app

Expand your FormAssembly use and download this new eBook today.

The post [eBook] No WiFi Required: Your Quick & Simple Primer to the FormAssembly Mobile App appeared first on FormAssembly.

We could talk about FormAssembly’s awesome features all day, but sometimes the best people to tell you about FormAssembly are the ones using it day in and day out for their organizations. In this blog post, hear from three Salesforce pros on what they love about our multi-featured form building solution. (Some features are so popular, you’ll see them mentioned more than once!) Who knows, you might just uncover your favorite new reason to use FormAssembly!

Gorav Seth

Salesforce Platform Manager, Ashoka – Innovators for the Public

Connectors, Connectors, Connectors

The top three things are the connectors, the connectors, the connectors – both the regular and pre-fill. I have not seen anything that compares. In fact they do some things that I don’t even understand how they pull it off (they don’t seem to trigger non-selective query errors, which is obscure but very challenging in large data environments, and we have other apps that do trigger those).

The Salesforce Prefill Connector provides a lot of flexibility for both internal and external use cases. We use it in our onboarding process to pull in information so managers do not have to enter it manually, and so they can submit without logging into Salesforce.

The Stripe Connector

The stripe connector is great for simple paid events or one-time transactions.

Pricing

I think it’s reasonable, especially as we are pretty heavy users. There is a nonprofit discount, and there are no limits on number of forms or number of responses. Most other form tools treat responses like razor blades. With FormAssembly, the blades are included. (See FormAssembly Pricing.)

Christine Chapa

Salesforce Admin, Congregation Emanu-El

Time Savings from the Salesforce Connector

I love the FA/SFDC connector because it saves our users tons of time each week. In one click Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, Campaign Members, and other custom records are created, making it possible for staff to focus on more enjoyable projects instead of data entry.

For example, when preschool registration comes around, it typically takes one staff member a minimum of two weeks to process all the paper applications we receive. This year we’re implementing online registration with FormAssembly and couldn’t be more excited. It’s going to be smart! The Salesforce Connector enables us to prefill the form with data, thus reducing the amount of time parents spend submitting the form. Plus, I just discovered conditional notifications – these are a game-changer! With conditional notifications, I can now make sure the correct teacher receives the information they need as the form is submitted. #MindBlown!

Eliminating Human Error

While the Salesforce Connector saves our staff from manual data entry, it also makes my life easier by reducing the amount of “dirty data” in Salesforce. Since staff are no longer adding data into Salesforce, we’ve eliminated the risk of human error. And thanks to form validation rules and customizable skip/create record conditions in the Salesforce Connector, we have control over how and if data gets mapped into Salesforce. The response log and timeline provides a complete picture of how the Salesforce Connector creates records in the CRM.

Documentation

And lastly, as a solo admin, the documentation, free online webinars, and FA support have been invaluable. These resources have helped me learn the ins and outs of the FormAssembly/Salesforce integration and have come to the rescue when I’m stuck troubleshooting an issue. Even after using the tools for three years, I’m still discovering new features that save our Salesforce users time and create a more enjoyable online experience for our customers. Thanks FA!

Billy Daly

Systems Design Manager, Baltimore Corps

Custom Code and Calculations

Two often overlooked features that place FormAssembly head-and-shoulders above the other form solutions on the market are the ability to apply calculations to certain fields and to extend basic functionality with custom code. Through the combination of these features we’ve been able to build our entire fellowship application process around FormAssembly, creating dynamic links to different sections of the application, displaying information we want applicants to see but not edit, and changing or hiding certain certain content depending on their status. Without FormAssembly, we’d have to spend a lot more time and money developing a system to capture even part of the functionality provided by a few forms and some custom code. (Please note: FormAssembly does not offer support for custom code.)

Salesforce Connectors

It’s no exaggeration when I say that just about every aspect of Baltimore Corps’ internal and external systems depend on FormAssembly’s Salesforce Connectors. The ability to retrieve data from Salesforce, display and modify that data within a form, then send it back to update and create new records in our instance has completely transformed the way we recruit, select, and evaluate both our partners and our staff. Plus, the ability to do all of these things with a easy drag-and-drop interface allows me to spend less time debugging old solutions and more time designing new ones. I wouldn’t be nearly as effective in my role without FormAssembly.

Ready to try out these much-loved features?

The post 8 Things Salesforce Admins Love About FormAssembly appeared first on FormAssembly.

This post was written by Steven Watkins, FormAssembly’s Email Marketing Analyst.

Steven Watkins
Email Marketing Analyst, FormAssembly

Would you find it useful to backup full form submissions into Salesforce Notes? By backing up responses into a note and relating it to its proper object, you’ll be keeping Salesforce and information organized for all of your teams involved. Check on form submissions within Salesforce without having to grant access or retrieve a submission directly from FormAssembly. This could save you on FormAssembly licenses, unnecessary access sharing, and help maintain the proper access control and security for all of your users between both Salesforce and FormAssembly.

Before proceeding with this use case, you should have some previous knowledge of form building and the Salesforce Connector. Check out the linked Knowledge Base walkthroughs for a quick refresher before starting!

Prep Your Connector

We’ll get started with this use case using a simple contact form setup with a Salesforce connector to create a lead record in Salesforce and update and existing lead record if one already exists. (View this tutorial on how to “Create a New Salesforce Record” for more information on getting your connector ready for this use case).

Set up New Connector Step for Notes Object

When you’ve prepped your Salesforce Submit Connector, locate the final step in the Connector. In our example here, it is the first step updating a lead.

We will setup a new object dependent on this step. This will be our Notes object. It’s important to nest this into the last step as a dependent object or this Note object will be created out of order.

After selecting “Create object dependent on last step,” select Note in the drop down menu of Salesforce objects.

Set Up Logic for Creating or Updating Existing Note Records

Next we set the step to create a note every time or we can set it to lookup the note to see if it’s existing and update it by changing the drop down for the Note object. Here we have it set to create everytime so there is no need for a lookup or update type step. This step largely depends on how you map and name your Note record fields in future steps.

After setting the logic for this Note object, we’ll ignore the relationship box; we can map this directly.

Map Fields From Generic FormAssembly Aliases to Your Salesforce Note

Next we’ll start mapping our fields. Two fields, Parent ID and Title, are required. Parent ID will be the lead id from which we setup this object. Select “The ID of an object above” under “gets their value from” and set it to the Lead ID of the step you’re setting this note up for.

Title is where we can set our Note up to be found and updated, if you wish to do this you may just make it a standard name. Otherwise, it’s typically a good practice to set the title up to match your form name with the Submission Time/Date appended to it. For example, “Website Contact Form – %%Submitted_Date%%.” This will setup your notes to be easily readable on the Lead record level, as pictured below.

Our next field that we must set up is the “Body” field. Add a field to map and select it from the drop down menu.

In this field we’re going to set its value to be taken from a “Formula or text field.” Next we’ll set the field to be mapped with the alias %%Response%%.

This is the alias that will pull the entire response and the general form data such as submission time, form name, etc. Full list of aliases can be found here.

We’ve now got our Salesforce setup to create a note with the full response of our form and attach it to the lead record that is created when it is submitted.

Test and Preview Salesforce records

Here we can review the entire process from form fill to Salesforce record setup in a test. Always test your forms thoroughly before publishing to your website or other locations.

Explore and customize

Explore other fields and aliases in the Note object to further refine how your data is setup into that record when it’s created from submissions. You could customize the body of the note by picking and choosing your aliases if you don’t want to capture the full response every time.

Let us know on Twitter if you have ideas or a use case of your own like this that you would like to share! Liked this post? Read what the Salesforce-FormAssembly How-To Series all about, and keep an eye out for our next tutorial in two weeks!

Dive deeper into our Salesforce integration with our Salesforce eBook.

The post How’d You Do That? Back Up Form Submissions Into Salesforce Notes appeared first on FormAssembly.

Financial services clients are continually faced with evolving regulations, fierce market competition, and the need to safeguard sensitive customer data. There are many web form solutions available, and the need to make the right choice is critical to stakeholders and customers alike. Here are 10 reasons for financial services organizations to select FormAssembly as their preferred web form and data collection solution.

1. Feel Secure with PCI DSS Level 1 Certification

FormAssembly is the perfect solution if you need a powerful web form that also offers smart, safe payment collection options. With our PCI DSS Level 1 Certification available on the Compliance Cloud plan, you can rest assured that your customer’s payment information is protected and that your collection process is fully compliant.

In addition to offering peace of mind through certification, FormAssembly integrates seamlessly with connectors like PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net. Additionally, the Chargent integration opens an additional 20+ payment pathways.

2. Safely Store Sensitive Consumer Data

The financial services industry has a legal and ethical obligation to safeguard sensitive consumer data, particularly in an age in which data breaches and security lapses are all too common. The 2017 Thales Data Threat Report found that 49 percent of organizations in the financial services industry have experienced a breach, and nine out of 10 organizations feel that they are susceptible to security incidents.

In the digital age, protection of sensitive data cannot be left to chance. Financial services clients can ensure that data is not stored on FormAssembly servers by marking fields with our Sensitive Data Feature. Credit card numbers and CVV codes may be the tip of the iceberg in terms of what you need to protect. FormAssembly allows you to guarantee that your data is secure and stored where you want it.

3. Enjoy Administrative Oversight with Forms, Users, and Settings

If you’re part of a larger financial services corporation, you may need or want to delegate your form building to other members of your administrative or support team. FormAssembly’s Enterprise and Compliance Cloud plans allow for 3+ users on each account, while allowing you valuable administrative oversight over your web form activity.

The Admin Dashboard feature for Enterprise and Compliance Cloud users is easily accessible and provides the ability to carefully monitor all forms and templates that your organization uses to accomplish tasks like collecting tax documents, opening mortgage applications, and administering broker or client change request forms. Admins also have the ability to add, delete, or change users at any time, providing flexibility and oversight when it comes to important settings and permissions.

4. Simplify Internal Processes for Onboarding New Clients and Partners

In the realm of financial services, the need to have shareable and reliable information available in real-time is obvious. Whether you’re establishing a new client relationship or managing newly-hired employees, the onboarding process often presents a significant strain on time and resources for small and large companies alike.

Using FormAssembly, Dharma Merchant Services eliminated tiresome and time-consuming paper process in their new client onboarding system, trimming the pre-application process time by 78 percent and experiencing a noticeable uptick in data accuracy. With FormAssembly, you can create checklists for new clients to better engage with them in the earliest days of the relationship. Features like the Prefill Connector provide a way to save your clients time and work, eliminating the need to replicate data that may already be available in Salesforce.

5. Lookup, Create, and Reference Salesforce Information Inside Your Form

The Salesforce integration is one of the most pivotal reasons that financial services clients choose FormAssembly, according to Adam Frank, Salesforce Principal Solution Engineer (Financial Services). It’s no wonder! With the appropriate configuration settings, FormAssembly can rapidly send your data to the right locations in Salesforce.

As one of our most popular integrations, we’re always looking for ways to update and expand Salesforce features. In 2018, FormAssembly is releasing the new Salesforce v3 Connector. This update will provide easy drag-and-drop features, better branch logic, custom error messages, a user-friendly layout, and so much more!

6. Allow Business Areas to Accomplish More, Relying Less on IT Support

Web form solutions should be complex enough to meet the needs of a business, but simple enough that they don’t require constant oversight from a software developer or IT guru. FormAssembly provides the perfect solution for financial services clients looking to delegate the task of form-building and data collection to staff other than IT, a department that may already be overrun by other needs and projects.

A 2017 Udemy report found that nearly 60 percent of U.S. workers are stressed nearly all the time at work. Whether that stress branches from overwork or hard-to-understand business methods, leaders can take steps to implement better process that alleviate organizational burdens. When you have a web form solution that’s intuitive, well-designed, and simple enough for any team member to use, workplace bottlenecks and inefficiencies become things of the past.

The FormAssembly form builder allows users to choose themes, create conditional formatting options, apply validation rules, use our autosuggest feature, apply custom CSS and HTML, and so much more. The days of boring financial services forms are over, and the best part is that advanced technical knowledge isn’t required! With our time-saving options, free up your staff to complete the pressing tasks that allow your organization to stay ahead.

7. Tackle Customer Engagement with Better Data and Interactive Forms

According to FinanceMonthly, customer engagement is one of the top challenges facing the financial services field in 2018, as the industry must calculate “which insights to leverage within whatever time and budget constraints prevail.” FormAssembly provides an affordable and innovative solution for financial services clients looking to better understand their customer data.

Whether using client surveys or feedback forms, financial services clients can employ web forms to build better relationships with clients over the long term, while logging that information directly to CRM systems like Salesforce. Pairing surveys with the Salesforce connector even allows you to gain a quick snapshot on the health of each account, a critical feature in maintaining strong client relationships.

Using the Salesforce connector allows you to engage with new and existing customers by enrolling them directly into a Salesforce community. FormAssembly can help your organization achieve impressive results when it comes to maintaining account information and managing partner relationships.

8. Design Custom Thank You and Redirect Pages

Opting for a web form solution doesn’t mean sacrificing the personal touches your clients have come to expect. Adam Frank, Salesforce Principal Solution Engineer (Financial Services), shared how financial services clients can benefit from FormAssembly’s option to add custom thank you and redirect pages.

Once a form is submitted, users see a standard thank you page that confirms submission. FormAssembly provides the option to customize this page with a unique message, which can pull personalized data from the form itself. Redirect pages are another option, allowing you to send the user back to your company’s website or to another step in your form process.

To provide even greater customer engagement, FormAssembly features an email notification feature, allowing you to connect through a message post-submission. The email notification feature also enables the form administrator to receive updates as forms are submitted, providing an easy way to stay on top of information you need.

9. Upload Documents to Salesforce or Store in FormAssembly

Financial services professionals often need to collect files, attachments, and scanned documents directly from clients. With FormAssembly and Salesforce, there are multiple ways to uploads documents both small and large. Let’s dig a little deeper into what’s possible!

With FormAssembly you can upload files to Salesforce through your forms using either Files, Chatter, or other custom attachment objects. By creating a dependent attachment object, you can have attachments sent directly to your existing Salesforce objects. You can even store larger files within your FormAssembly account and save on space in Salesforce. (Please see FormAssembly’s documentation for information about Salesforce & FormAssembly file size limits.)

10. Streamline Work Across Multiple Financial Services Use Cases

A retail bank analysis from Deloitte reveals that with the addition of technology and reduction of paper use, “operating expenses in the processing divisions can be reduced by as much as 25 percent.” This statistic demonstrates the real financial savings possible from introducing technology like FormAssembly.

The financial services industry exists around forms and information, and although the nature of gathering such data may evolve, the need to collect that information remains strong in the digital age. FormAssembly helps a wide array of financial services clients address their everyday pain points. Whether your work involves collecting cumbersome mortgage documentation, reviewing detailed insurance claims, or processing private equity requests in banking, FormAssembly can help alleviate the strain of outdated processes and workflows.

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Web form automation with FormAssembly can save time and money, increase effectiveness, and ensure that your financial services processes are modernized.

Ready to learn more about Compliance Cloud for financial services? Check out the plan overview and talk to our sales team today.

The post 10 Reasons to Use FormAssembly: Financial Services appeared first on FormAssembly.

Do you collect leads through website forms and store that information in Salesforce? If so, there’s a chance you’re running into one of the most common issues related to Leads and Contacts in Salesforce.

What’s the issue, you ask?

Duplicate records.

This means your web forms are creating new records when that information is already stored in your Salesforce instance, whether as a lead or a contact. Duplicate records are redundant, clogging up your instance with unnecessary information.

For more accurate information and a tidier CRM, you can use FormAssembly’s Salesforce Connector to search Salesforce to see if a record already exists before taking the next step of creating a new Lead or updating a Contact’s information.

Here’s a walkthrough of how to set up this super-simple, super-useful Salesforce Connector tactic.

Update an Existing Contact

If a person fills out your content download form, event signup form, or some other form you’re using, and they’re already in your system as a contact, your form should recognize that and update their contact record with any new information. You can set this up in the Salesforce Submit Connector.

Once you’ve enabled your connector, create your first step in the connector and set it to Update a Contact record.

The connector needs to know what piece of information they should try to match to your system for the person filling out the form. Email addresses are a great choice for this because they are much more likely to be a unique value than, say, Last Name.

Set up your lookup as shown in the screenshot above. This means the email that a person enters into the form will be checked against all other records in your CRM instance.

Next, you need to select what should happen based on the results of your lookup. Here’s how to set up this step:

• If no matching record is found: Skip this object and any dependent. (This is a circumstance where we’d want to create a new Lead, which we’ll cover later in the article.)
• If one matching record is found: Update record. (This is the default option.)
• If more than one records are found: Create a new record. (This may be set up differently depending on your use case.)

Depending on what information you have in your form, you can also add the field mapping to tell the connector what information should go where in Salesforce when a Contact is updated.

Create a Lead When No Contact Exists

Moving on, we’ll set up the connector to create a new Lead if there isn’t a matching Contact found in the previous step.

The new step you set up will be to Lookup the Contact. Again, we’ll use the email address as the lookup value, but we’ll set up different conditions for the results of the lookup:

• If no matching record is found: Continue with dependent objects.
• If one matching record is found: Skip dependent objects.
• If more than one records are found: Skip dependent objects.

The last step is to add another object dependent on your contact lookup. This step will also use email to search for any existing leads. If there are no matches or if there are multiple matches, a new Lead will be created. If a Lead with that email already exists, it’ll be updated with any new information gathered in your forms.

Also in this object, you’ll need to complete the field mapping section so the right information is stored in your Lead record. Here’s our field mapping, complete with required Company and Last Name fields.

And that’s it! Hit “Save” and test your form to make sure everything works correctly, then start using it to update Contacts and collect Leads (without those pesky duplicates).

Like this post? Ready our previous How’d You Do That? post on Backing Up Form Submissions Into Salesforce Notes and stay tuned for our next How’d You Do That? post in two weeks!

Dive deeper into our Salesforce integration with our Salesforce eBook.

The post How’d You Do That? Create Leads & Update Contacts if One Already Exists appeared first on FormAssembly.

If you’re in financial services, you’ve got to try FormAssembly for your data collection needs. With our Salesforce Connectors you can send data to Salesforce to update records for standard and custom objects alike, prefill forms with Salesforce information, update multiple Salesforce instances with a single form, and more!

Need more reasons to use FormAssembly in your financial services organization? Salesforce’s Adam Frank, Principal Solution Engineer (Financial Services) shared some of his thoughts with us on why financial services organizations choose FormAssembly, and we turned that feedback into a blog post!

Key Features

Web to Anything Forms

FormAssembly allows you to create web to anything forms in minutes! That means sending data to any custom or standard object, any object from other AppExchange apps, and any Salesforce vertical cloud.

Simple Integration

The FormAssembly Salesforce Connector is something you have to try for yourself, but the abilities are truly impressive. In the connector you can create or update records, lookup Salesforce records to then conditionally update or create other records, create dependent steps and more.

“Stunning UI” Possibilities

Whether your form is internal or external facing, you want it to look amazing and provide a seamless experience for the user. With FormAssembly, all forms are mobile-friendly, and you can conditionally display questions to customize the form filling experience for the user, prefill information, and more. Additionally, you can use custom CSS to further personalize the look of your form.

Custom Thank You and Redirect Pages

The immediate follow-up to a form filling experience is just as important as the form itself. FormAssembly lets you create custom thank you pages or redirect your users to another page depending on your process.

Financial Services Industry Use Cases

Mortgage

You can use FormAssembly to gather and upload documents to Salesforce, such as for a mortgage application.

Insurance Companies

FormAssembly’s multiple page forms and save and resume feature make long or complex forms a breeze. You can use these features and others for application submission and claims submissions in the insurance industry.

Banks

Customer service, including listening and acting upon customer feedback, is more important now than ever for banking institutions. Prefill complaint questionnaires or customer feedback surveys with customer information from Salesforce so they can easily and seamlessly get in touch with you.

Private Equity Firms

FormAssembly is perfect for both complex and simple use cases where you need to send data to Salesforce. If you work at a private equity firm, use FormAssembly for an information request form for potential clients.

Conditional Logic

Lastly, in any of these organizations or any other financial services organization, you can harness the power of conditional logic, which allows you to customize the flow of your form and the questions that users see, based on their answers to other questions.

Want to see the Salesforce Connector yourself?

See how FormAssembly works and set up a demo!

The post FormAssembly + Financial Services = The Perfect Match appeared first on FormAssembly.

This is a guest post from John Mason, TheBestVPN.com.

At the start of 2015, data broker LeapLab suffered the repercussions of enabling millions of dollars to be stolen from consumer accounts.

After purchasing payday loan applications, LeapLab sold customer information to marketers with highly questionable reputations.

The information included names, addresses, bank account numbers, and even social security numbers.

Naturally, this was a recipe for disaster.

One or several of the companies that bought information from LeapLab used that information to heinous ends (surprise, surprise).

The result?

Millions of dollars taken from innocent consumer accounts.

Consumers are increasingly wary of entering their information into online forms, but things like this still happen.

Dubious businesses like LeapLab ruin all the fun for more reputable companies who relentlessly protect their customers’ information.

Unfortunately, your visitors can’t tell the difference.

To them, the reliable looks eerily similar to the shady. Many of them, for that reason, will only enter their private information into websites that they are well-acquainted with.

If you’re new to their eyes or look untrustworthy, you can say “hasta la vista” to connecting with that prospect.

Why People are More Wary of Online Forms than Ever Before

With every cybercriminal attack that hits the media, consumers lose trust for the digital world.

Each attack makes them a bit more cautious about entering their information into new websites.

Unfortunately, that means your website.

And it means lost prospects, lost customers, and lost leads.

Sadly, the cybercriminal trend isn’t slowing down; rather, it’s speeding up.

Cyber thieves are creating 230,000 new malware samples every single day. The annual cost for cyber criminal damages is around 100 billion dollars. And a hacker attacks an unsuspecting victim every 39 seconds, which affects one in three Americans each year.

Yikes.

Clearly, the problem is a real one.

Which means that consumer information concerns are not unfounded.

In fact, to further press the point that cybercriminals are on the rise, just consider that 2016 set the record for largest amount of money stolen from U.S. consumers through identity theft.

In 2015, $15.3 billion was stolen from U.S. consumers. In 2016, that number was a full $16 billion.

(Image Source)

Not only that, but the number of hacked websites increased by 32% from 2015 to 2016.

So, how, you wonder, are these cyber criminals stealing customer information?

A full 25.6% of identity theft happens through creating a new online account under someone else’s information.

(Image Source)

And, as you know, one of the best places for hackers to get all of that valuable customer information is during an unprotected data entry session.

In other words, when someone is filling out an online form with all of their private information and peering eyes are viewing that entry.

In fact, more records were exposed in 2016 than in any previous year.

(Image Source)

The point?

Customer information is constantly at risk, and lots of companies aren’t doing anything about it.

Which further means that consumers lack a serious degree of trust for the reputable and the un-reputable alike.

Just how bad is the trust among consumers?

Close your eyes if you don’t want to cry.

Because eight in ten people are worried about their online security.

This means that if you don’t do everything in your power to immediately build trust with the people who matter most — your prospects and customers — your business will suffer for it.

But, you might wonder, can’t you simply use WordPress to add safe contact forms without much difficulty?

No. No you cannot.

According to Sucuri, three WordPress plugins — RevSlider, Gravity Forms, and TimThumb — accounted for 25% of all site hacks. All three WordPress plugins were out of date.

It’s Time to Step Up Online Form Security

Consumers are putting their trust in your website, and that means a lot. If you’re not protecting their data, that’s a violation of trust that will be remembered, and you could take a serious hit.

No one wants that. So it’s time to step up the security of your online forms.

In our next article, we’ll take a look at how to do that.

Learn more about FormAssembly’s security practices.

The post Why People Want Safe Online Forms in 2018 appeared first on FormAssembly.

This post was written by Peter Bernardi, FormAssembly’s Channel Solutions Engineer.

Peter Bernardi
Channel Solutions Engineer

Client onboarding can be a long process of clunky forms and signatures — but it doesn’t have to be! With FormAssembly and Salesforce, this process can be completely automated and online. In this tutorial, we’ll focus on a generic post-sale process — use this as a starting point for your process! This is by no means the only way to be successful with this process, but we’ll highlight a lot of best practices.

For our use case, we’ll be sending this form to the client once a deal has closed. This will allow the client to provide contact information for all key employees so that we know who at our client we’ll need to contact in the future to support and possibly upsell.

Prerequisites

The only prerequisite for this use case is to have some architecture in Salesforce built to contain this information. This can be done in a number of ways, but we’ll use the Account, Contact, Opportunity, OpportunityLineItem, and OpportunityContactRole objects.

Form Setup

First, we’ll list all relevant Account Information. For us, that’s Account Name and Account Number in addition to a Hidden Field, Account ID.

For the next object, you can include any fields off the Opportunity object. For this demo, we’ll use the Opportunity Name and the Close Date.

In a Hidden Field, we’ll include the Opportunity ID.

We’ll also list the various products that are on the Opportunity. First, add a fieldset called Product Line Items then Insert two fields, Line Item and Amount, both with hidden labels:

Make sure that the Product Line Items fieldset is repeatable. Optionally, you can hide the border and label.

Moving on to the Contact information, insert a fieldset, make it repeatable and add a few fields. We’ll use First Name, Last Name, Mobile Phone, Email, Title, and Type:

At this point, we’re ready to move on to the Prefill and Submit Connectors!

Prefill Connector Setup

To begin, add a Salesforce Prefill connector. Once you’ve authenticated, we’ll add our first lookup, Opportunity. For the criteria, we’ll match Opportunity ID as an unsafe query parameter

Map the applicable fields, Opportunity ID, Account ID, Opportunity Name, and Close Date.

Next, we’ll move on to the Account object, dependent to the Opportunity. For the criteria, we’ll match the Account ID to the Account ID found in the Opportunity.

Map in the Account Name and the Account Number fields. We already have the Account ID from the Opportunity.

Now we get into the tricky part — the line items. We’ll start with a lookup dependent on the Opportunity, the OpportunityLineItem object.

Make sure to select the repeatable group Product Line Items. Map in the List Price to the Amount field and the Price Book Entry ID to the Line Item field. We’re doing this so that we can access this ID in our next step.

That next step is to lookup the PricebookEntry dependent to the OpportunityLineItem. The criteria is the Price Book Entry ID that we found in the previous step:

We’re ready to test! Give the form a test with any valid Opportunity ID that has products to make sure it’s prefilling properly. To test, set up the URL to prefill data from an existing Opp record ID from your Salesforce org as follows: www.tfaforms.com/12345?oppID=[Insert Your Salesforce Opportunity Record ID Here]

In order for the link to be sent, the email can be sent from Salesforce using a number of methods, such as the email template being triggered by the opp closing or manual setup by a sales rep that follows up. Email templates will hold the link and the link will utilize a merge field from the Opp ID record when an email is sent from the Opp record.

Submit Connector Setup

For the submit connector, we’ll ensure that the Contact is captured and then also link that Contact to the existing Opportunity through the OpportunityContactRole.

Let’s start with the Contact — we have the Account ID in a hidden field thanks to our prefill connector so we’ll use that and the Email to match against any existing Contact:

For the field mapping, we’ll simply map in all the fields that we created on the form:

Dependent on the Contact, we’ll create an OpportunityContactRole:

For the Primary checkbox, we can test against the “Type” to see if it’s been chosen as the primary Contact and then check that box if so.

Additionally, for the Role field, we’ll map it to the Type, but control how those Type selections map into Salesforce:

At this point you’re ready to test end-to-end! Prefill in an Opportunity and add some Contact information.

Let us know on Twitter if you have ideas or a use case of your own like this that you would like to share! Liked this post? Read what the Salesforce-FormAssembly How-To Series all about, and keep an eye out for our next tutorial in two weeks!

Dive deeper into our Salesforce integration with our Salesforce eBook.

The post How’d You Do That? Create Client Onboarding Forms Linked With Salesforce appeared first on FormAssembly.

Web forms are the holy grail in lead generation. They are great for capturing data, and to make them even more effective, you can provide incentives for leads to share their information. One method is to offer leads who fill out your form a direct path to connect with your team via online scheduling.

Online scheduling is an ideal method for engaging your leads when their interest is high. You can seamlessly integrate online scheduling with your web form and allow leads to choose when to be contacted upon submitting your form. Leads who schedule with you will essentially qualify themselves by showing you they are serious about their interest in your product or service.

Here are some of the top benefits of using online scheduling to engage leads who fill out your web forms.

Immediately Engage Top Leads

Asking the right questions on your web form helps you qualify your leads and identify your top prospects. Based on form submission, you can segment your leads and offer scheduling only to your top prospects. For example, you may want to offer scheduling only to leads from companies with at least 50 employees. This ensures that top leads will have direct access to your team. Leads who are offered online scheduling will be able to simply pick a time to speak with one of your team members, without providing any additional information.

Improve Contact Rates

Upon scheduling an appointment, leads receive an email confirmation and an event is added to their calendar. This ensures commitment from your leads, and that the meeting details will be readily available. Following this, the lead receives email and SMS reminders, eliminating no-shows and resulting in contact rates of up to 80%.

Sync With Your Lead Generation Processes

Scheduling is just one piece of your lead generation process. By integrating online scheduling with your CRM, your process will stay intact. Leads who fill out your web form will be created or updated in your CRM. The contact’s details are then passed to your scheduling page, allowing the lead to schedule without providing any information you already have. Upon scheduling, an activity is automatically created in the CRM record, ensuring that your CRM is up-to-date with booking activities.

Engaging your web form fillers with online scheduling can be a game changer for your lead generation activities. You will be able to better engage website visitors, accelerate time-to-engagement, and generate higher quality leads.

Interested in learning more? Watch this video on ScheduleOnce for lead generation, and signup for our webinar, co-hosted by ScheduleOnce and FormAssembly: “Engage Web Form Fillers With Online Scheduling”

This is guest post by ScheduleOnce. ScheduleOnce is an end-to-end solution for scheduling with prospects and customers through all phases of the customer lifecycle. We connect with all major calendar platforms and provide feature-rich integrations with CRMs, web conferencing systems, and other online channels. Regardless of business type or industry, ScheduleOnce allows prospects and customers to professionally engage with businesses at a time that works for everyone. Users report an up to 3x increase in conversion rates, up to 2x acceleration in time-to-engagement, and up to 50% time savings.

The post Generate Higher Quality Leads With Online Scheduling appeared first on FormAssembly.

I’m Eric Dreshfield. I’ve been a Salesforce user/customer since 2009. After a gentle push into the world of user groups by my manager, and taking one day each month to attend user group meetings in the Midwest, I started a local group in Southern Indiana in 2010. I wanted to attend Dreamforce that year, but my employer told me they didn’t have the budget to send me, so I started a regional conference for Salesforce users called Midwest Dreamin’ in 2011. I’ve been a Salesforce MVP since 2013, and became an Advocacy Manager at Apttus in early 2016.

Eric Dreshfield
Salesforce MVP Advocacy Manager, Apptus

I’ve been blogging since 2012. It started out as a very sporadic thing. I seemed to get inspiration when I was on an airplane flying somewhere for work. Something magical happened in the middle of 2015 – I had a conversation with Lori Witzel who told me that whenever she needed to know who to contact regarding something specific, and couldn’t figure out who to contact, she’d ask me. Somehow, I either knew who she needed or knew someone who knew who she needed. She said, “It’s like you’re Kevin Bacon – no more than 6 degrees of separation from everyone.” Something clicked that day, and my mind said: “Blog post series” – and then began my blog series: I’m the (Kevin) Bacon of the Salesforce Community. The goal of that series is simply to introduce community members to the community, because for me, the greatest strength of the Salesforce community is its people and the connections that are made and shared. Since that first post, about 45 posts in the series have been published. The past couple years haven’t seen many new posts – life got busy between my role at Apttus and my work on Midwest Dreamin’. But one thing that certainly helped with getting the blog series up was the use of FormAssembly!

Like many of us in the Salesforce ecosystem, we use Developer Orgs for a lot of different things. I use mine to manage my Bacon Blog, as I like to call it. I built a custom object called “Kevin Bacon” – I mean, what else would I call it? “Kevin” was used to collect all the data I needed to write the blog posts on all the people who wanted me to feature them. I collected the persons’ name, Twitter handle, Employer and Job Title, along with the answers to a few questions I chose to ask of everyone I was to feature on my blog. Here’s a look at the fields in the custom object:

With FormAssembly, I was able to quickly and easily create a form that people could fill out to share their details with me. It’s a pretty simple use case, collect some data, store it in Salesforce…but it’s a use case that many organizations and companies can use every day! Here’s a look at the web form I built:

One thing to note, not all fields are the same type. Most are a text field, free-form and virtually unlimited length where the person completing the form can type in whatever they want to. Technically there’s a limit to the number of characters, and it’s somewhere around 32,000. If you can’t answer a rather straightforward question in under 32,000 characters, I’m not sure I want to feature you in my blog post! Some fields, like First Name and Last Name, have a finite limit of 30 and 40 characters, respectively.The email address field actually expects the input to be an email address. And my favorite question: “Bacon or Sausage” is a radio button selection where you can only select one response. (I think I covered all the possibilities on that question, at least based on the responses I’ve gotten so far, no one has ever emailed me asking for another choice to be added.)

Once your form is built, it’s really easy to connect it to your Salesforce Org. You simply have to configure the connector, which starts by enabling it and giving it access to your Org using your login credentials and your security token.

Once you make that connection, all you have to do is map the fields in your Salesforce object to the fields on your FormAssembly form.

Finally, select the additional options and actions you want, and you are good to go!

The best part about FormAssembly, once you build your form and connect it to your Salesforce Org, all you have to do is sit back and watch the data come in! When someone completes the form – the data automatically moves into Salesforce, and from there, just like any other data in Salesforce, you can do with it as you need to.

For my blog, I simply track which ones have been posted and when. I’m hoping to take it to the next level soon, and develop some automation where the blog draft gets created for me, based on the data coming from FormAssembly to Salesforce.

There’s a lot more you can do with FormAssembly than just this simple use case, and if you get stuck on something, the customer support team is there to help you! So why not give FormAssembly a try! Like most apps on the AppExchange, they offer a free trial period. Once you get your first form competed, tweet me @ericdresh and let me know what you’re doing with FormAssembly!

Let us know on Twitter if you have ideas or a use case of your own like this that you would like to share! Liked this post? Read what the Salesforce-FormAssembly How-To Series all about, and keep an eye out for our next tutorial in two weeks!

Dive deeper into our Salesforce integration with our Salesforce eBook.

The post How’d You Do That? How to Collect Stories for Blog Posts appeared first on FormAssembly.

Salesforce Native. You’ve probably seen this feature noted in an AppExchange listing or headline. But what does it actually mean, and beyond that, what does it mean if an app is non-native? We’ll dive into both definitions, the gray area for apps that profess to be native but really aren’t, and why a non-native app may be the best choice for your business after all.

Salesforce Native vs. Salesforce Non-Native

A 100% Native Salesforce app is built on the force.com platform and lives in Salesforce completely. Non-Native apps, in contrast, were not built with the Salesforce platform but still have integrations with Salesforce that allow organizations to enhance their use of Salesforce. There are plenty of blog posts that will tell you that Native apps are the only secure and reliable option for Salesforce apps, but this is not the case.

While Native apps may be the best choice some of the time, non-native apps can be just as secure, reliable, and flexible when it comes to integrating with other Salesforce apps, native and not. Many well-known and highly useful apps are non-native. In addition to FormAssembly, that group includes Box, DocuSign, and Conga Composer, to name just a few.

Gray Area

Just because an app says “Native” on the AppExchange doesn’t mean they are 100% native. Sometimes apps that were only partially built on the force.com platform are still marked as native. Because of this, you can’t rely on the “Native” designation alone to tell you whether an app is worth your time.

Why Is It Ideal That FormAssembly Isn’t Salesforce Native?

FormAssembly isn’t Salesforce Native, but we still have the #1 web form solution for Salesforce with an unmatched integration.

Why is it not a big deal that FormAssembly isn’t Native? First let’s look at some common reasons (read: myths) people say Native apps are the best choice. For each of these, we will offer the truth.

Myth: Only Native Apps Can Be Trusted With Your Data Both FormAssembly and Salesforce rely on the same infrastructure provider: Amazon Web Services. So saying that Salesforce is the only secure location for your data is simply untrue. FormAssembly takes security seriously, investing heavily in our people, processes, and software. As an authority on data collection, we cannot afford to skimp on data security.

Myth: Native Apps Are Always More Reliable Native apps may share Salesforce’s uptime, but that doesn’t mean that non-native apps have poor reliability. FormAssembly’s Compliance Cloud plan offers a 99.9% SLA, and we publish any service interruptions on our transparent status page. Additionally, with the same infrastructure provider, both Salesforce and FormAssembly rely on the same infrastructure for uptime.

Myth: All Native Apps Can More Easily Integrate With Other Native Apps With FormAssembly, integration with other AppExchange apps is no problem at all, due to our Web-to-Anything functionality. With our bi-directional Salesforce integration, you can send data to any standard or custom objects—even objects from your favorite AppExchange app.

In addition to these reasons, as an ISV Gold Partner, FormAssembly is devoted to our Salesforce Customer base, and we are continually working to improve the Salesforce integration for you (see a preview of our upcoming Salesforce Connector v. 3).

FormAssembly may not be 100% Native, but we’re 100% perfect for Salesforce users needing a full-featured web form and data collection solution. Download FormAssembly from the AppExchange today.

The post Salesforce Native? Here’s What It Really Means appeared first on FormAssembly.

One of the things customers love most about FormAssembly is the versatility of our product, and we’re always exploring new and creative ways to use form features. With the Salesforce New York City World Tour coming up on April 26, and with plenty of other events like Midwest Dreamin’ and Dreamforce 2018 on the horizon this year, we wanted to highlight how FormAssembly is the perfect event prep tool for your organization. Even our own sales and marketing teams love using FormAssembly to get ready for upcoming conferences! Learn more in our list of six ways to use FormAssembly for events.

1. Pardot Integration

FormAssembly’s Pardot Integration is one way to ensure that information about potential leads flows directly through your marketing automation system to Salesforce. The HTTP Connector allows form submissions to push to Pardot Form Handlers, in turn allowing data to flow seamlessly into Pardot. Prior to attending a conference, you can use this data to update lead fields and trigger automations, such as email or advertising campaigns. As prospects submit information through forms, the Pardot integration ensures that those leads are captured and sent to the appropriate lists or workflows. This information helps your event staff arrive prepared with the best data available.

If your organization uses Pardot to set up landing pages, you can also place FormAssembly forms directly to your Pardot page. This is a great way to collect information from potential attendees, schedule meet-up time slots, and even offer small incentives like downloads or pre-conference materials.

2. Prefill Connector

FormAssembly’s Prefill Connector is another great way to update your contacts as you’re sending emails about events. The Prefill Connector allows for shorter links and fresh, current data each time a form is populated, making it a great tool for lead-facing contact forms. As your team heads to an event, you may want to ensure that you know whether your contact’s job title or company has changed since the last time you connected. By sending out a simple contact form, the Prefill Connector saves time by preserving accurate information, and quickly updating outdated information directly to Salesforce. On the user-facing side, submissions become one-click and save ample time, while ensuring accurate data.

3. Mobile App

FormAssembly’s mobile app gives your team flexibility at any event by allowing you to quickly input information with or without an internet connection. This means no more paper sign-up sheets that can easily get lost, and no more second-guessing whether you wrote down the right information for an interested lead.

We know how important it is to stay professional and organized while you’re manning a busy expo booth or handing out swag at a conference table. Let the FormAssembly mobile app help you focus more on connecting with clients and promoting your brand, and worry less about how to easily record information on-the-go.

4. Multiple Publishing Options

FormAssembly gives you several different publishing options for getting your forms up and running to collect information before events. Based on your organization’s needs, you can completely customize how to publish and edit your forms once they’re live.

A FormAssembly form is easy and fast if you’re in a hurry, and the public link always directs respondents to the most updated form version. Alternatively, you can use embedded HTML to make very specific changes to your form, or you can use an iFrame to protect a form’s CSS from the CSS of a parent site. If your organization uses a WordPress plug-in, you can have your form appear as part of a page, and you don’t have to push updates, even if changes are made in the Form Builder.

With a variety of publishing options available, FormAssembly ensures that any member of your team can efficiently create well-designed and readily-accessible forms prior to events.

5. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Integration

FormAssembly offers the ExactTarget/Salesforce Marketing Cloud Connector. This feature provides the perfect means for creating new subscribers, a function that will boost and support your marketing needs. Once new records are in place, you can assign new users to customizable lists, while at the same time, sending data to your extensions.

With FormAssembly’s Marketing Cloud connector, you can also create, update, and prefill records in Salesforce straight from your forms. The Marketing Cloud integration provides a great benefit to marketing and and sales teams both before and after events, as they can easily connect or follow-up with new subscribers who come on board as a result of promotional materials.

6. Several Payment Options

Does your organization need to collect payment before or during an event? You might be offering a registration upgrade or selling merchandise and need to easily collect payment from program participants. FormAssembly makes the process easy with several different payment connectors to choose from, based on your needs and plan level. Payment information can easily be populated to Salesforce, and you can rest assured that your all payment data is secure and protected.

Are you headed to the Salesforce New York City World Tour on April 26? If so, our team would love to connect with you about FormAssembly’s unmatched integration features. Be sure to to let us know you’re attending, and we’ll set aside some premium swag for you at our booth.

The post 6 Ways to Use FormAssembly for Events appeared first on FormAssembly.

We regularly hear from customers who need to email a web form to a number of people, with some custom prefilled data. For instance, they may need to ask contacts to update some information they have on file or are following up with a lead to gather more information. Another example could be to send a satisfaction survey after closing a support request. In all these examples, they also need to be able to update their records once the new data is received.

In this post, we’re going to explain how you can accomplish this with FormAssembly and Salesforce. Salesforce holds the data we want to show and update. Salesforce also provides the email functionality we’ll need.

Use Case Summary

Here’s an overview of the process:

1. From Salesforce, you send out a customized email, based on a template you define. The email includes a link to your form (Note: While it’s tempting to try to embed the form directly in the email, it’s generally not a good idea. There’s no guarantee that the form will display correctly and be functional in your respondent’s email client. Learn more and get a method to emulate a multiple-choice question in an email that you can use to update Salesforce.)
2. The recipient opens the email and clicks on the link to load the form in a web browser.
3. The recipient can review any prefilled information before filling out the form and clicking submit.
4. FormAssembly processes the data and updates the matching record in Salesforce according to the instructions you defined in the Salesforce connector.

Step-by-Step Guide

That’s the set-up we’re looking to create in a nutshell. Follow these instructions to put this into practice.

1. Build Your Form

First, we’re going to build a form in FormAssembly. We won’t go into too much details here, but if you need a refresher, refer to this video: “Form Building in 8 Minutes.”

For this tutorial, we’ll use a simple form that prefills a person’s information and address and invites them to update their address.

Note that you often need to keep track of some unique identifiers that will let you link the submitted response back to the original record in Salesforce. Sometimes an email address can serve this purpose, but it’s often better to rely on a more unique identifier, like Salesforce’s internal record IDs. Those IDs are long and meaningless to the recipient and don’t need to be visible in the form, so for the form in this tutorial, we’ll add a hidden field to store the Contact ID for the recipient from Salesforce.

2. Configure the Salesforce Connector

This is how the form will “close the loop” and update records in Salesforce. The hidden field we defined in step 1 will store the record’s unique ID, we will configure the connector to look-up which record to update based on this field value.

Here’s how the connector setup will look:

Prefill Connector Setup

After connecting and enabling the connector, set-up your first lookup.

In this screenshot, we’re telling the connector to look up a contact by the contact ID, then to prefill the form with that contact’s information.

You’ll also need to map fields to specify which Salesforce fields match with which fields in your form.

We’re prefilling some pretty basic information here, but depending on your use case you can also prefill virtually any other information you need from Salesforce. You can also add other fields to gather survey feedback, questions, or other information.

Submit Connector Setup

When your users submit the form, you want any information they’ve changed to be updated in your Salesforce account.

Here’s how we’ll set that up.

Create an Update Contact step for the contact in question, using the Contact ID that’s been prefilled into the hidden field for your lookup.

Then, map your fields.

3. Send Your Prefilled Link Through Salesforce

Once you have set up your form, you are ready to set up your email template in Salesforce where you can compose your letter using the Salesforce merge fields to customize your template.

To compose your email, you will need to know how to craft the link to your form. For this example we set an unsafe query parameter in the prefill connector that we can use in the prefill link. This parameter is “cid”. With Salesforce merge fields added to the form link in our email, our prefill link will look like this.

https://[your-form-link]?cid={!Contact.ID}

When someone clicks on the link you email them, their information will be prefilled, and they can make any updates to their address that they like. After they hit submit, those changes will be synced with your Salesforce account.

Hopefully, this will give you an overview and some understanding of the whole process. If you get stuck at any point while trying this out, we’ll be happy to help!

Let us know on Twitter if you have ideas or a use case of your own like this that you would like to share! Liked this post? Check out another tutorial in the How’d You Do That? Series: “How to Collect Stories for Blog Posts.”

The post How’d You Do That?: How to Send out a Pre-filled Web Form with Salesforce appeared first on FormAssembly.

Did you know you can create a form, link it to Salesforce, and have it up and running in under five minutes? You may have noticed an option in the left sidebar of your FormAssembly account called Import > Import from Salesforce. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to use the Salesforce Import Tool to create a Salesforce form more quickly and easily than you’ve ever done before.

Get Setup

First, log into FormAssembly. On the Form List page, click “Import”, then “Import from Salesforce”.

You’ll be asked to authorize Salesforce access using either an existing authorization or a new account.

Complete Salesforce Import

The next screen will contain a list of all the Objects defined in your Salesforce account. Once you’ve selected the object you’d like to update or create with your form, you’ll see a list of the available fields. Click to select the fields you would like your users to complete.

A preview will appear below the lists. Clicking a field a second time will deselect it and remove it from your form.

Just as when you manually map a form to Salesforce, you can use multiple different Object types with the Salesforce Import Tool. If you choose to do this, you will need to go through additional setup steps in Salesforce Connector after setting up the form. This is a best practice measure to review and ensure your objects and fields map according to their relationship in your Salesforce account.

Once you’ve chosen the fields you would like to have on your form, click “Save.” You’ll then have the option to either test the form or edit the connector settings. For this tutorial, we’ll assume you want to adjust the connector settings, so click the “Edit Salesforce connector settings” button.

Edit Salesforce Connector Settings

If you included fields from different objects (such as Contact and Account), you will need to set up that relationship in the Salesforce Connector.

To do that, go to the second and any following objects you’ve created and map a new field for the parent ID (this may be a differently named field depending on the objects you’re using).

After setting up the connector, you may also want to change the form title, which, by default, would be “Imported Form (date time)”, and you can also change the form titles, and other details in the form builder.

Test Form

Once you’re happy with your modifications, save the form and exit the connector set-up. Now you’re ready to send a test submission.

Once you’ve submitted the form, you should immediately see a new record created in Salesforce. If you don’t, go back to Connector page for your form. There, click “Logs” If your form is successfully connected to Salesforce, you’ll see a green entry that says “Created [Object name] record” followed by the record’s ID.

If you get a red entry instead of a green entry in the log, this means an error occurred. In that case, learn more about common Salesforce errors and what they mean. If the error persists, open a support request. We’re happy to help!

Let us know on Twitter if you have ideas or a use case of your own like this that you would like to share! Liked this post? Check out another tutorial in the How’d You Do That? Series: “How to Send out a Pre-filled Web Form with Salesforce”

The post How’d You Do That?!: Quickly Create a Form to Populate Any Salesforce Object appeared first on FormAssembly.

Have you ever conducted a co-marketing campaign with business partners and needed a way to easily share leads with all parties in return for their contribution to the project? If so, you may have resorted to methods of lead sharing, such as emailing spreadsheets and manually adding data to your CRM.

With FormAssembly, there’s a simpler, more seamless way to funnel leads from marketing campaigns directly into your Pardot instance and your marketing partner’s Pardot instance. Learn how to send form data to Pardot using FormAssembly’s HTTP Connector and Pardot form handlers.

Create a FormAssembly Form

Before you can set up your form to send data to a Pardot instance, you have to create that form. For this use case, we’ll use a simple, lead collection form that asks for some basic data.

Create a Form Handler in Pardot

Next, you’ll want to specify where the leads being collected will be sent to in Pardot. If you are engaging in mutual lead-sharing with another organization, you will set up a form handler in Pardot to receive their leads from their form, and they will do the same in their Pardot instance for the leads from your form

When you’re in your Pardot account, navigate to Marketing > Forms > Form Handlers, and click “Add Form Handler.” Next create a descriptive name, choose a folder and campaign, and leave the Success Location and Error Location as the default “Referring URL.” Add any other information depending on your use case.

The only other section you will need to fill in will be the “Form Fields.” Here, add each field from your form, in addition to a short external field name. You will use this information when you set up the FormAssembly HTTP Connector. When you’re finished, save the Form Handler, and make note of the Endpoint URL.

Use FormAssembly’s HTTP Connector to Set Up  a Connection With Pardot

Now, you’re ready to set up your HTTP Connector, which allow you to send form data to Pardot. To start, add an HTTP Connector in the After Form Submitted step on the Connectors page. (This means you can avoid showing any connector-related errors to the form respondent.)

For this step, you will need information from your partner’s Pardot Form Handler, including the Endpoint URL and the field mapping information.

Grab your partner’s Pardot Endpoint URL and paste that link in the FormAssembly HTTP Connector in the field called “Remote Script URL.”

Next, ensure the that the proper mapping is set up for the send-as values in the FormAssembly HTTP connector based on what your partner sends you for your Pardot form Handler.

Make sure the connector is enabled and test the set up before pushing the form public on a landing page.

To complete the lead-sharing, send your partner the endpoint URL and field mapping information from your Pardot instance and have them set it up in the same way you just set up your FormAssembly HTTP Connector.

*Note: If you want to send form data to Pardot and only have it go into your own Pardot instance, simply use the endpoint URL and mapping information from one of your own Form Handlers in the HTTP Connector for one of your FormAssembly forms. Read more about our Pardot integration.

Now you’re ready to start collecting leads for your marketing campaign and lead-sharing with your partner. Let us know on Twitter if you have ideas or a use case of your own that you would like to share! Liked this post? Check out another tutorial in the How’d You Do That? Series: “Quickly Create a Form to Populate Any Salesforce Object”

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