Have you ever needed to be able to update information in Salesforce without a license? For cost or security reasons or if you have temporary employees or interns, you may not want all your employees to have Salesforce access, but they still may need to update data.

With FormAssembly’s Salesforce Prefill and Submit Connectors, we can set up a form that approved employees in your company can use to review and/or update information from your Salesforce org. Since this use case deals with personally identifiable information (PII), we’ll show you how to put additional authentication in place to ensure that this form is only accessible to the people within your company that you want to have access to it.

In this example we’ll assume we have a data entry specialist that we would like to have work on our Account Record data from our Salesforce org but that we can’t give full Salesforce access to. We currently have lots of missing data on our Account records for the Industry field and we need someone look it up and update it.

Form Setup

*Note: this does require someone with a Salesforce license to set up and authenticate the mapping through the FormAssembly Salesforce Connector. Refer to our Knowledge Base articles on Salesforce Connector setup if you are not sure how the Salesforce Connectors work.

First, create a form and include the necessary Account Record fields from Salesforce:

• Name – text input
• Industry – drop down menu
• Account ID – hidden field

Next, set up Access Controls on the Account Name field so no one can edit the information prefilled into it. We only want to allow Industry to be updated on our records. Set up edit only on the Industry drop down field under the fields’ Access Controls settings. This is particularly important when we’re allowing a person to update information in Salesforce without a license because we want to limit their editing abilities to only the data we’re already limiting their access to.

Navigate to the Account Record field set up page in Salesforce and find the standard Industry picklist field.

Navigate to a print view of the list and then Copy and Paste the list of Industries from your Salesforce org into the ‘Edit Choices’ setup.

Salesforce Connector Setup

Salesforce Prefill Connector

In the Prefill Connector, set the look-up based on Industry, with a value from a text or formula that equals NULL. Review the picture below for details.

The criteria you set up here is important to test first when we’re allowing a person to access and update information in salesforce without a license. We want to be sure we are selecting the precise records we want them to view and or edit.

With this criteria, we will prefill only Account records without an Industry and map in the existing Account Name and ID.

In this example, we are prefilling and updating one record at a time, however, we can set up this form to prefill an unlimited or limited amount of records, instead of just one at a time, by setting the group our fields are in to be repeatable. Once we set this group to be repeatable, we can specify how many records we want prefilled each time this form loads for our data entry specialist.

We will go over this easy update in our testing section below, but sometimes one record at a time is enough!

Salesforce Submit Connector

In our Submit Connector, we’ll set up one step to ‘Update’ the Account object record we’ve pulled in to our form.

Set the first step to Update an Account object record and look it up using the Account ID field in SF from the hidden Account ID field in your form.

This step ensures that when we’re using the form to update Salesforce we map it back to the correct record prefilled in our previous steps.

If we have repeated fields for multiple records prefilling into our form we can leave the option as is to map to their respective records instead of merging them all together.

Test

Prefill One Salesforce Record

Upon visiting the public form URL we will see the most recently modified record prefilled with the Account Name field uneditable and the Industry drop down field ready to take a value.

Above, we’ve prefilled a test account and have selected an Industry to update it to with our form.

This is the record in Salesforce with the Industry field updated after our form submission.

Prefill Multiple SF Records

Now let’s update the form and the Salesforce Prefill Connector to look at more than one record at a time and run another test.

First, update the group of fields in the form builder.

Next, we’ll move to the connector to update the logic for finding multiple records to Repeat Fields (If applicable, which is it for this use case).

*Note: Make sure that you specify the group that repeats in the drop down menu, located in the Multiple Records Setting section. This appears after selecting ‘Repeat Fields (If applicable)’.

You can also adjust the way the records prefill when repeating entries into the form. For example, instead of prefilling based on Most Recently Modified records we could update it to prefill the Most Recently Created records.

Now we test!

Here we show multiple entries prefilled into our form.

This image shows the first Salesforce record updated.

And this image shows the second updated Salesforce record.

One thing to keep in mind is the loading time of your form. The more records you prefill and data you expose, the longer it will take to load. Test your form to gauge the load time depending on your needs for exposing the data.

Set Up Form Authentication

When users that don’t have a Salesforce license are updating Salesforce with FormAssembly forms, we’ll need to ensure that our users are still authenticated when accessing the form in some way, because technically, FormAssembly forms are publicly accessible unless restricted by your publishing method or some form of authentication like CAS, LDAP, SAML, or Salesforce.

In this example, we cannot setup Salesforce authentication because the person we’re allowing to access and update information in Salesforce without a license doesn’t have a license to begin with.

There are a number of authentication methods that can be enabled on your form to protect it from external users, most importantly, only allow internal and specific users access. Head on over to review the steps in our Knowledge Base to set up your specific authentication method. This may require working with your IT Team to obtain the necessary keys or data types.

Give this a shot and let us know how your testing goes! Reach out to our support team if you have questions along the way, and if you enjoyed this post, check out another tutorial: “How’d You Do That?!: Quickly Create a Form to Populate Any Salesforce Object”

The post Update Information in Salesforce Without a Salesforce License Using FormAssembly appeared first on FormAssembly.

New to FormAssembly? Form Building Pro? Somewhere in between? Wherever you are, it’s pretty likely you’ve needed the FormAssembly Salesforce Connector at some point or another. This popular, web-to-anything integration allows customers to update and create records in Salesforce (even custom objects), prefill forms, send attachments to Salesforce, and more.

To help you put the Salesforce Connector to good use, we’ve compiled several How’d You Do That? FormAssembly-Salesforce tutorials in this post. We’ll continue to post tutorials in this series, but wanted to round up the ones we’ve done so far for easy access. Work your way through all of them, or pick the one that fits your needs right now.

Happy Form Building!

Tutorial 1: Back Up Form Submissions Into Salesforce Notes

Backing up form submissions in notes in Salesforce is an easy way to keep information in one place for your team to view. It also makes it easy to check on a detail in the form submission without having to leave Salesforce and log into FormAssembly. Learn more.

Tutorial 2: Create Leads & Update Contacts if One Already Exists

This tutorial helps you set up your Salesforce Connector to both create new leads and update your contacts if you already have that information in Salesforce. This is a great way to avoid having duplicate records in your Salesforce instance. Learn more.

Tutorial 3: Set Up New Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities All at Once in Salesforce Using FormAssembly

Not only can you send data to all kinds of objects in FormAssembly, but you can send data simultaneously. This tutorial shows you how to set up a form that can create new accounts, contacts, and opportunities at the same time in Salesforce, saving you time and effort. Learn more.

Tutorial 4: Create Client Onboarding Forms Linked With Salesforce

This tutorial shows you how to set up a form to streamline the often drawn-out process of client onboarding. In a smart, Salesforce-connected form, you can prefill details about an opportunity and allow your client to enter their contact information. Learn more.

Tutorial 5: How to Collect Stories for Blog Posts

Our customers are nothing if not creative. In this guest post from Eric Dreshfield, Salesforce MVP and Advocacy Manager at Apptus, Eric outlines how he gathers information for a popular series on his blog through a FormAssembly form linked to Salesforce. Learn more.

Tutorial 6: How to Send out a Pre-filled Web Form with Salesforce

Knowing how to use the FormAssembly Salesforce Prefill Connector is a must-have use case. Prefilling information does some of the work for your form respondents, which makes for a better user experience. Learn more.

Tutorial 7: Quickly Create a Form to Populate Any Salesforce Object

Have you ever used FormAssembly’s Salesforce Import Tool? It’s not new, but it’s a super-useful tool to help you create a form to send data to any Salesforce object. Simply select an object, choose the fields you want in your form, and you’ve got a working form and connector. You may need a few more configuration steps to make sure everything works correctly, but this is a great way to quickly create simple, Salesforce-connected forms. Learn more.

Tutorial 8: Send Form Data to Pardot with the FormAssembly HTTP Connector

Setting up the FormAssembly-Pardot connection is quick and easy, and a great feature to have if you use Pardot to nurture the leads you collect through web forms. For enhanced marketing benefit, it’s also possible to send data to other Pardot instances than your own if you are lead-sharing for a co-marketing project. Learn more.

Tutorial 9: Update Information in Salesforce Without a Salesforce License Using FormAssembly

Have you ever needed to have someone on your team edit or add new records in Salesforce but they didn’t have a Salesforce license? Whether you’ve got a temporary intern or someone whose job doesn’t normally require the use of Salesforce, you might find it useful to be able to set up a FormAssembly form that allows a person to look up data in Salesforce and update it. Learn more.

Have a use case of your own? Let us know in the comments or email: marketing@formassembly.com.

The post How’d You Do That?: FormAssembly & Salesforce Tutorial Roundup appeared first on FormAssembly.

In talking to customers and asking what their favorite FormAssembly features are, one tool in particular comes up time and again: the FormAssembly Prefill Connector. Customers who have Premier plans or above can make use of this incredibly helpful feature in a variety of time-saving use cases.

With the Prefill Connector, you can use a single parameter in a prefill link and pull data dynamically from Salesforce to prefill your form. This easy setup doesn’t require long, unwieldy links, enables you to pull data from multiple Salesforce records, and results in up-to-date information being pulled into your FormAssembly form.

Stay in Touch With Customers Using the Prefill Connector

Here’s an example of how you could use the FormAssembly Prefill Connector to stay in touch with your Salesforce contacts. You could simply send a link to a form with no Prefill Connector and ask contacts to update their information, but that adds an extra step for your busy contact to have to re-enter information you may already have of theirs.

That’s where the Prefill Connector comes in. You can build the form however you like, since we support all kinds of fields. And the branding’s all yours.

Here’s how it works:

1. You email your Salesforce contacts with a link to a contact information update form with the Prefill Connector enabled.
2. A contact reads the email and clicks the link.
3. As your contact opens the form, her contact info from Salesforce is prefilled. Your contact sees her contact info and updates her mailing address.
4. She presses the “Submit” button, and the form automatically updates her contact info in Salesforce.

Getting Started

If you haven’t previously used the Prefill Connector, we encourage you to dive right in! Retrieving data from your Salesforce org has never been easier, and it may save you a considerable amount of time and effort. Remember, to get started you’ll need:

• A FormAssembly Premier, Enterprise, or Compliance Cloud Plan
• A prefilling link and a setup query parameter in your connector
• A handy step-by-step guide (with videos) to help you troubleshoot along the way

Ready to prefill through the URL? Head over to our help documentation to learn how to implement this feature. If you still need help, contact our Support team for more guidance.

The post FormAssembly’s Salesforce Prefill Connector: Prefill Forms with Salesforce Data appeared first on FormAssembly.

FormAssembly’s Form Builder 5.0 is here as the new default Form Builder! The new release include a fresh look and feel for the Form Builder, a redesigned theme editor with modern themes, improvements to Predefined Content, an enhanced outline view, and more. Overall this update gives you a faster and more streamlined form building experience.

“More intuitive and customizable, our new Form Builder 5.0 makes it even easier for customers to build branded forms that align with their organization’s look and feel. Form Builder 5.0 enhances the capabilities that make our technology such a valuable solution for enterprise data collection,” said FormAssembly’s CEO in a press release regarding Form Builder 5.0.

What’s New?

If you follow our Roadmap blog series, you may already be aware of some of the great changes in Form Builder 5.0.

New Form Builder Look and Feel

The enhanced Form Builder includes a faster and cleaner interface, with smart improvements, such as the ability to “pin” the Add Content menu, and the relocation of the “Form Properties” dropdown menu to the sidebar. The preview mode options are clearly visible in the top right corner of the screen and the save button indicates whether you have unsaved changes in your form.

Pin the “Add Content” menu

Completely Redesigned Theme Editor & Themes

If you’ve ever wanted sleeker, more modern themes for your FormAssembly forms, you’ll simply love the new Theme Editor. In addition to redesigned themes and the addition of Google Font options, the Theme Editor can be accessed directly in the Form Builder, making it possible to build and style forms in the same location.

The new Floating form theme

Drag-and-Drop Improvements

Continuing our reputation for offering a drag-and-drop Form Builder, we’re improving this ability with changes such as a handle that makes it easier to drag and drop content, a disappearing toolbar when you’re resizing fields, and the removal of the ability to drag and drop multiple choice questions, which makes it easier to move an entire question.

Predefined Content Improvements

Predefined Content is also seeing some improvements, including a new folder organization, ability to create descriptions for predefined content entries, and category autocomplete when you save predefined content.

Predefined Content Improvements

Other Improvements

• Manually enter label and input field widths and resize dropdown menu and multiselect list widths
• Expand Conditional Rules Editor to see a larger view
• Conditional Rules Editor improvements: See question labels for conditions you’ve set up as well as the selected choice when you’re editing a condition, can only create conditional rules for fields after the conditional trigger
• Enhanced outline view shows field aliases

Enhanced outline view

• List of user-defined variables for calculated fields shows field aliases
• Autosuggest now supports up to 20 columns
• Addition of column mapping
• Checkboxes are now toggles for field/form properties sidebar panels
• Information from properties sidebar panels moved to tooltips
• Automatically created columns and titles when you enable multi-columns in sections

Automatic titles/columns when multi-columns enabled

• See that Form Language has been applied in Preview
• Date/Calendar fields work in Preview
• Copy whole form pages
• Edit repeating link text in the form
• Choose image URLs in lieu of uploading a new image
• Placeholder text available for multiline text areas

Should I Expect Any Differences When I Upgrade Forms?

See more details on differences between Form Builder 5.0 and earlier Form Builder versions.

Aside from user experience changes and improved features, however, you should not see any changes to your existing forms when upgrading to Form Builder 5.0. We’ve worked to make sure that the transition is seamless and does not introduce any breaks to your form layout and functionality.

If you do notice any issues when upgrading your forms, please let us know through the “Open a support ticket” button in the Help menu when you’re logged into FormAssembly!

How Do I Access the New Form Builder?

To access the new form builder for new forms you’re creating, simply log into your FormAssembly account and create a new form. To upgrade old forms, open the form and select the option to upgrade to Form Builder 5.0.

Are There Additional Instructions If I’m an Enterprise Customer?

Yes! If you’re an Enterprise Cloud or Compliance Cloud customer, please reach out to your administrator to update the default Form Builder version to 5.0.0.

Administrators can change the default Form Builder version in the Admin Dashboard > Settings > Application.

What if I Have Questions?

Our team is well-trained on Form Builder 5.0 and will be happy to answer any questions or concerns you have as you navigate the new form builder. You can contact them by emailing help@formassembly.com, by opening a ticket with this form, or through the chat button (if available) in your FormAssembly account.

Happy Form Building!

The post Announcing Form Builder 5.0: Redesigned Theme Editor, Predefined Content Improvements, More appeared first on FormAssembly.

Two years ago, we wrote a blog post about all the reasons our customers love FormAssembly. It wasn’t hard to come up with a ton of great reasons, 11 to be exact. Our Salesforce integration was an obvious choice. Tons of customers use our prefill and submit connectors to update and create records, prefill forms with information, and much more. We also covered our amazing support team and how their mix of kindness and advanced FormAssembly knowledge keeps organizations’ forms running smoothly day in and day out. Beyond that, there’s plenty more mention, including:

• Attention to data security
• Payment connectors
• Extensive resource center
• So much more

We’ve recently updated the content to match our evolving product and re-released that popular blog post as an infographic. Download it to see all the great reasons thousands of organizations around the world use FormAssembly to streamline processes and optimize data collection. Then when you’re ready, try FormAssembly for yourself.

The post [Infographic] 11 Reasons to Use FormAssembly to Collect and Manage Your Data appeared first on FormAssembly.

We’ve said it before, but we’ll say it again: we love getting your product feedback!

Your product feedback and feature requests help us understand what’s important to you and build out our product roadmap with improvements that make sense for our customers. Your feedback helps us understand how you use FormAssembly now and what it would take to make our product even better for you.

Now, to make it even easier for you to submit feedback, we’ve implemented a product feedback and feature request form so you can quickly submit your ideas in one easy to find location.

You can reach this form in three places on our Roadmap page: by clicking the link in the first paragraph of text, by clicking the Feedback tab on the left-hand side of the page, or by clicking the “Leave Feedback” button further down the page.

We will continue to publish articles, accessible from this same page, that go over features we’re working on. We encourage you to leave your thoughts on these articles, but to submit feature requests, you can use the feedback form instead of the blog comments section.

Let us know what you think of the new form, and when you’re ready, submit your first feature request!

The post New! Share Product Feedback With the Feature Request Form appeared first on FormAssembly.

No matter where you work, you navigate process, data, and organizational hurdles that interfere with achieving business goals every day. The good news is, there’s a solution that can save time, reduce manual data entry, and transfer information safely to the many different programs you use.

Introducing: FormAssembly, the #1 web form solution for Salesforce. It’s powerful enough to handle all of the form creation and data collection needs of companies with thousands of employees, while still flexible enough that you can personalize it to your exact situation. If you need more reasons to start streamlining processes and optimizing data collection with Formassembly, we’ve compiled 11 examples of why our customers love and use FormAssembly to improve their organization’s workflow on a daily basis.

1. Customers Love (Yes, Love) Our Support Team

It isn’t often that you hear people talk about how much they love technical support. But we frequently receive rave reviews on our support team on Twitter, at tradeshows, and by email. We have earned our positive reputation by providing prompt, friendly issue resolution for customers that use FormAssembly to power key workflows and business processes. The skill and speed of our support team allows large companies to avoid any lull in productivity and continue meeting their own internal deadlines and goals.

How do we create a support team that our customers love? It’s all about finding the right people and taking the time to train them. Our in-depth training process covers all aspects of FormAssembly and gives new employees experience on the backend and user side of our tool. On a daily basis, our support team stays in constant communication. This collaboration helps us find the best, fastest solutions to your questions.

At FormAssembly you won’t get generic support. You’ll get attentive, friendly assistance from a team who can help because they use our solution themselves—every day.

Here are a few quick facts about our support:

• We worked over 24,000 support cases in 2017
• Our average initial response time for email support tickets from January through May 2018 was 1.4 hours
• We’re currently maintaining a 97% customer satisfaction rate.

Customer Story:

Getting acclimated to FormAssembly was a fairly quick process for Spark Program, but Michael Kolodner, Director of Information Systems, shared that the Support team has always been available for quick responses and helpful answers. When a certain form field was giving him confusing results, he contacted FormAssembly Support for a solution.

“Support pounded away at it for several days, and we got there. I really appreciate that and was really pleased that I was able to get that level of support,” Kolodner said.

2. We’re Obsessed With Data Security

The reality of the need for increasingly sophisticated data security isn’t lost on us. Our customers use FormAssembly forms to collect a wide variety of data types, ranging from non-sensitive information to highly sensitive healthcare-related data. We take security very seriously and have multiple measures in place to ensure that we keep our customers, their stakeholders, and their data safe:

• Vendor Selection: We identify and work with trustworthy partners by adhering to a strict vendor evaluation process.
• Data Access: By default, we do not allow customer data access, and we avoid the possibility of a customer privacy breach by only allowing access to customer data on an as-needed basis and only with prior customer consent.
• Employee Training: Every new employee is trained on security and privacy and are required to sign security training completion statement. Training is ongoing, and we specifically stress secure coding practices for our developers.
• Third-Party Audits: We hire third-party auditors to audit our policies and procedures, and perform penetration tests.
  Software: We use sophisticated software that identifies potential vulnerabilities through static and dynamic source code analysis.
• GDPR/HIPAA Compliance, PCI DSS Level 1 Certification: Our robust security practices satisfy the requirements of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), HIPAA Compliance and PCI DSS Level 1 Certification (for certain Enterprise-level plans).
• Backup and Data Retention: All backups are encrypted with a strict retention policy.
• Dedicated ISO and Security Management Team: This team uses various automated tools and manual penetration and scanning tools to keep on top of vulnerability management and malicious activity. We also use a bug bounty program to keep abreast of any potential security vulnerabilities.

Customer Story:

Clients large and small trust FormAssembly and our excellent uptime (99.9% in 2017) to transmit their data securely. Adam Smeets, Director of University Information Systems for Dominican University, noted that our security gives them peace of mind that confidential information stays safe and secure:

“For example, students who want to apply to be teaching assistants in the classroom — that data needs to be secure. With FormAssembly, security is clearly defined and protected, specifically with the data we’re collecting and storing,” said Adam.

3. We Offer Unparalleled, Seamless Integration with Salesforce

Our Salesforce Connector is kind of like our signature dance move. This feature allows you to automatically send just about any information into Salesforce with a few quick setup steps. Think, Web to Anything. Adding leads? Yes, you can do that. Updating contacts? Yep, that too. Prefilling from Salesforce, attaching files to Salesforce records, and sending data to custom objects and fields as well as objects from your favorite AppExchange apps? Check, check, check.

With this connector, businesses reduce the need to manually add and update information in Salesforce, eliminating the stress of human error and duplicate information complications. With FormAssembly, data goes where it’s supposed to and can stay updated, with a few clicks in our Salesforce Connector.

Customer Story:

Many of our customers use the Salesforce Connector to power all kinds of processes. Maryville University uses the Salesforce Connector for student information requests, enrollment processes, admission decision forms and more. FormAssembly and the Salesforce Connector have simplified processes for staff at Maryville University while simultaneously improving the student experience.

“We all know how important it is to keep CRM data clean, and FormAssembly has helped us in this effort. We’ve automated and standardized much of the data input into our CRM (Salesforce) through forms, while making the experience easier for our users and prospective students.” – Brian Heger, Associate Director of Communications, Office of Admissions, Maryville University

4. FormAssembly Helps You Get IT on Your Side

Which department is tasked keeping your company secure and compliant? Who has to fix the problems when your data collection practices are found to be lacking? The answer to both is IT.

With FormAssembly as a centralized data collection solution, IT can maintain much-needed oversight of the data collection process, and avoid the potential consequences of using multiple different methods (not all of them secure) of collecting and storing information.

Additionally, the sophistication of our security program and strength of our product allows IT to successfully conduct any security, legal or compliance-related reviews without a hitch.

5. Replace Paper Forms With Web Forms

Countless businesses spend time and resources using paper-based processes for hiring, evaluation, training, and more. Companies may find themselves stuck using PDF forms they have to print, have manually completed, and then spend time entering the data into any given system. The costs of paper, including printing, copying, and filing can add up over time, resulting in unnecessary, large sums of money spent by businesses.

For examples, paper costs only center per sheet, but the average employee uses 10,00 sheets a year. This, in addition to other costs for managing paper, amounts to a big spend for companies. (Printed forms cost U.S. companies more than $120 billion annually.)

FormAssembly allows companies and departments to escape the paper prison and move to a faster, simpler, more elegant form solution. Our forms are secure and easy to modify based on any specific business need. E-signature capabilities eliminate the need for a physical ink signature from form respondents.

6. FormAssembly’s Payment Integrations Make Online Transactions Simple

Every day we watch our customers innovate with FormAssembly, which is why we do our best to increase integrations, build partnerships, and highlight use cases surrounding the most popular opportunities. For instance, FormAssembly’s integrations with payment platforms like PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.Net make it a perfect system to help you collect payments.

With our payment integrations, you can collect donations for your organization, accept payment for events, implement an invoicing system, set-up recurring payments, or enable lightweight ecommerce. Like all of our integrations, the payment connectors are simple to set-up and use.

Customer Story:

CARDSITE, a digital business card company, uses FormAssembly forms to help power their business cards. In addition to other features, CARDSITE creator Adam Taylor, appreciates being able to use the PayPal connector to allow payments to be processed from people’s business cards. Read the full case study.

7. You Don’t Have to Be a Developer to Do a Lot With FormAssembly

FormAssembly isn’t just a simple form builder. Beyond our drag-and-drop user interface , we offer advanced usage opportunities, like forms that prefill your information, forms with multiple pages, forms with options that change based on your answers, and forms that respondents can save and continue editing later. These features (along with advanced branding abilities and brand new, modern theme options) allow users to make forms that do exactly what they want and maintain brand consistency.

Customer Story:

NPower, a nonprofit organization focused on creating “pathways to economic prosperity by launching digital careers for military veterans and young adults” shows the kind of complex forms that are possible by making use of the Conditional Logic features. NPower’s forms display questions and details conditionally depending on what program an applicant selects. If an applicant doesn’t fit the training program requirements, NPower can also halt the application and suggest other resources that may be more fitting.

8. Is Self-Service More Your Style? We’ve Got You Covered.

Many of our users like to solve their questions without assistance. To accommodate this self-service style, we offer a huge (and we mean HUGE) training and resource database filled with instructional articles and videos. The Resource Center is updated frequently and includes topics on all aspects of the Form Builder and our many connectors.

We have over 400 instructional articles and videos and our blog is full of helpful tips and examples of how to use FormAssembly in your organization.

“FormAssembly’s documentation is invaluable when it comes to creating and connecting forms because it is organized, up-to-date and extremely thorough. They have made it incredibly easy to find anything that you would need in their documentation library. I have been using FormAssembly for about 3 years now and I sometimes come across an obscure question and I can simply type the question in the search engine and find the exact resource I need.” – Kortney Cervantes, Certified Salesforce Consultant, Cloud Giants

9. We’re Nonprofit-Friendly

FormAssembly is sensitive to the budget constraints and needs of nonprofits, and we are proud to be able to serve many prominent organizations including Polaris, OneGoal, and Habitat for Humanity. We understand that you are out there changing the world—literally. That’s why we offer a 20% discount to all nonprofits, ensures that the vast capabilities of our Form Builder are available to all organizations.

Customer Story:

Polaris is a nonprofit that provides a variety of services aimed at fighting human trafficking around the world. They use FormAssembly in a number of ways, including streamlining the process for service provider applications, receiving product feedback on their Global Modern Slavery Directory, and gathering information on client needs.

10. You Can Improve Your Data Governance

Data governance continues to be a focus for businesses in 2018. According to a report from Redgate Software, nearly 80 percent of surveyed professionals had put a data governance plan in place or had plans to do so in a two-year timeframe.

As you work on building or improving upon your organization’s own data governance strategy, consider the benefits of using FormAssembly:

• Compliance/Security: FormAssembly is HIPAA compliant and PCI DSS Level 1 certified (on Compliance Cloud plans) and GDPR compliant.
• Data Quality: Built into our product are features such as in-form validation and smart Salesforce Connector logic that help to uphold data quality across the board. By ensuring your forms collect the right data in the right format, we head off frustrating and time consuming issues for your admins.
• Data Access: Newly released response search makes it even easier to find the data you need when you need it.
• Data Connection: Our unmatched Salesforce connector, helps your organization leverage data better by reducing silos and improving transparency.

11. The FormAssembly iOS App (Offline Capabilities, Anyone?)

It’s in our DNA to constantly grow and improve at FormAssembly: A better user experience, better (and increased!) features, better support—you name it. One of our latest developments is the FormAssembly iOS app, which lets you collect data in your forms from anywhere with or without an internet connection.

Our customers have responsibilities that span beyond their office walls, which often means limited access to WiFi or organizational systems. With the FormAssembly app, you can collect data on service calls, in the field, at events, or virtually anywhere else. When you have internet access again, you can easily sync the collected data to your account. How could you use offline data collection in your business? Download the app and level up your FormAssembly use today.

You don’t have to accept disorganization and clutter in your business. You don’t have to go through the frustration of another mile-long email chain just to complete a simple business process. You don’t have to spend hours entering simple information into Salesforce. FormAssembly simplifies and streamlines complex workflows, no matter how large a company is or how many people are involved in a process. All in all, FormAssembly is a smart choice for collecting critical business data and integrating it with other systems you rely on.

The truth is, there isn’t a lot that FormAssembly can’t do.

Start organizing and streamlining your work with web forms today.

The post 11 Reasons to Use FormAssembly to Collect and Manage Your Data appeared first on FormAssembly.

In this blog post, we’re going to show you how to connect your FormAssembly forms to the team communication platform Slack. This will allow you to route form submissions to any of your Slack channels so everyone on a team or project can stay updated with form responses.

Prerequisites

Before you get started, select or build the form that you want to connect to Slack, and identify the channel you want to send responses to.

Slack Set-Up

In your Slack account, navigate to your channel of choice and mouse up to the gear icon (Channel Settings) at the top of the screen. Select “Add an App” from the drop-down menu.

Selecting this option will take you to the Slack App Directory where you can search for “email.”

Once you’re on the email page, click “Add Configuration.”

Select your channel of choice from the dropdown menu.

Add details, such as description, name, and integration logo, on the following page.

Also, copy the email address shown at the top of the page; we’ll use that for the FormAssembly side of the setup.

FormAssembly Set-Up

The FormAssembly part of this tutorial just requires a few clicks. Go to the Notifications of the form you’re using and simply paste the email address you coped above into the “Email responses to” box.

Seeing it in Action

Send a test response in your form to make sure the integration works.

If everything was set up correctly, you’ll see the form submission appear as a new post in your slack channel.

Click on the message and you’ll see the entire form submission, right in Slack.

Want more FormAssembly tutorials? Check out this 10-article roundup of Salesforce-FormAssembly how-tos. If you have any questions on this or any of our tutorials, feel free to leave us a comment or contact our support team.

Need a FormAssembly account? Sign up today!

The post Tutorial: Connect Your FormAssembly Forms With Slack appeared first on FormAssembly.

When you choose FormAssembly as your web form solution, there’s always a way to get the help you need. Sometimes you may just need a quick conversation with our outstanding support team, but other times you may need a little more assistance. Maybe you’re a new customer and you need help getting your project off to a great start. Maybe you’ve been with FormAssembly for a while, but your forms and processes could use a refresh. Whatever your situation is, Implementation Services can help.

What is Implementation Services?

Implementation Services offers professional help on your forms for everything from onboarding help to form building to group training. Wherever you’re at with FormAssembly, Implementation Services aims to help you create the forms and get the information you need to reach your unique goals.

What Kind of Packages Are Available?

Form Building

Need to focus on other parts of your business? We’ll do what we do best and handle the complex tasks of setting up forms and connectors and getting other integrations in place so you can have your forms and focus on your business, too.

Project Based

Receive personalized instruction on connectors, form building, and more, and take your form knowledge to the next level through calls with our knowledgeable customer success team.

Form Review

New customer or established, an expert review on one of your forms can be invaluable. Our team will review and test your form then provide actionable feedback in a 1-hour call.

Onboarding Implementation

New to FormAssembly? Get going in a flash with help from Implementation Services. We’ll walk you through creating your organization’s first forms so you get the most out of FormAssembly right out of the gate.

Group Training

All together now! Group training delivers the vital information you need to the people on your team who need to know it.

How Can It Help You Succeed?

Enlisting our expert help can benefit your organization in numerous ways:

• Feel more secure that your projects will go smoothly
• Free up more of your time for other projects
• Received targeted support on topics you care about
• Start off your FormAssembly account right, and fast

What’s next?

Be on the lookout for more case studies and content showing you how other companies have achieved big goals with implementation services—and how your organization can, too!

Ready to learn more? Check out our implementation services page.

The post Getting Started: How FormAssembly Implementation Services Can Help You Succeed appeared first on FormAssembly.

Intro

In this blog post, we are going to expand upon a previous tutorial to look at how to implement multiple-criteria search of Salesforce records using FormAssembly. Implementing this search functionality makes locating the right record in Salesforce a much easier task for form respondents, and creates cleaner and better flowing forms.

In the example below, we’ll be working with the Opportunity object. Our two search criteria are the Opportunity name and its amount.

Note: this is somewhat advanced use of FormAssembly. If you’re not comfortable editing custom code, you might want to build up those skills before attempting this tutorial. Here is some information from our documentation to get you started. Please note that our Success Team does not support custom code help, however we do work with a number of partners who may be able to assist you, please email us at partners@formassembly.com.

Prerequisites

Before we start, we need to create three forms and give them names. For simplicity purposes the forms in this tutorial are called “Multiple-Criteria Search – Part 1/2/3”. Note: You’ll need to use the URL for form three in the setup for form two.

First Form Setup

The first form is just an interface to enter the criteria for our search. Go ahead and add two fields to the form as shown in the screenshot below:

Second Form Setup

For this form, we need a way to show the results of our search. We’ll do that by creating a repeatable fieldset with the records we get from Salesforce.

The first step is to create a new fieldset and make it repeatable. Recreate the following:

To create the “Select” hyperlink, follow these steps:

1. Add a new Text element on the page

2. Click on HTML in the menu above the new Text element:

3. Paste the following into the pop-up:

<a class=”htmlContent” href=”LINK”>Select</a>

4. Click “Save HTML” and “Done”

Once you are done with the Text field, navigate to Properties -> Custom Code and insert the following:

<script src=”https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.2.0.min.js” integrity=”sha256-JAW99MJVpJBGcbzEuXk4Az05s/XyDdBomFqNlM3ic+I=” crossorigin=”anonymous”>

</script>

This will give us access to use jQuery framework, which makes manipulating HTML elements a lot easier.

Once we have jQuery available to us, add the following AFTER the previous script. Replace tfa_XXX with the alias of the ID field, YOUR_INSTANCE with your instance name and THIRD_FORM_URL with the URL of the form we’re about to create!

<script>

$(document).ready(() => {

 const htmlArr = $(‘.htmlContent > a’);

 const linkArr = $(‘input[id^=tfa_XXX]’);

 for (var i=0; i<htmlArr.length; i++) {

      htmlArr[i].href = ‘https://YOUR_INSTANCE.tfaforms.net/THIRD_FORM_URL?id=’+linkArr[i].value;        

 }

});

</script>

This code snippet will modify where each “select” link on the page takes us.

Third Form Setup

This setup is completely up to you! We’re only using this form to display the Opportunity information that users select in the second form.

Example:

Hint: Use the Salesforce Import Tool to speed up this process and automatically configure the Salesforce Connector.

Setting Up Connectors

There are no connectors on the first form.

For the second form, we are going to use the Salesforce Prefill Connector. (Learn more about our Salesforce Prefill Connector.) Once the Prefill Connector is created, we need to enable it and set it up.

The setup is very simple! Since we have two search terms, we need to pass them both to the connector.

Notice that we are using LIKE operator for the first parameter and GREATER THAN for the second.

Since we need a way to display multiple Opportunity records in a repeatable section, we need to setup the multiple records setting.

Lastly, we need to map the fields.

The third form will also have a simple Salesforce Prefill Connector. We are going to prefill the form based on the id of the record. Your mappings might vary here.

Passing Data Between Forms

Next we’ll be using form redirects to pass the search terms from the first form to the second.

1. Go to the Notifications page for our first form.

2. In the second field of acknowledgment section, put the following:

https://YOUR_INSTANCE.tfaforms.net/SECOND_FORM_ID?name=%25%%tfa_NAME%%%25&amount=%%tfa_AMOUNT%%

3. Replace YOUR_INSTANCE with your instance name, SECOND_FORM_ID with the id of the second form, tfa_NAME with the opportunity name search term field and tfa_AMOUNT with the other field on the first form. Notice that we’re using %25 around the first parameter – that is because LIKE operator in Salesforce expects % around the term. We need to encode, hence %25 represents %.

4. Click Apply.

The Results

Once you’ve completed the setup, you should test your forms. The flow should go like so:

Enter a search term and a “greater than” figure for the amount field.

2. You should see all records that match those search terms displayed on the next form.

3. When you choose a record by clicking on Select, you should be taken to the third form.

4. The third form will show additional information about the selected opportunity.

If you liked this Salesforce & FormAssembly tutorial, we have plenty more on our blog. Check out this tutorial on updating information in Salesforce without a license.

Don’t have a FormAssembly account? Sign up today!

The post How To: Display and Select Salesforce Opportunity Records Based on Multiple Criteria Search appeared first on FormAssembly.

The post Announcement: Older Form Builder Versions to Be Retired November 30, 2018 appeared first on FormAssembly.

Are you using Salesforce Lightning List Emails and need a way to allow your recipients to unsubscribe? An unsubscribe option isn’t automatically included in Salesforce email templates, but you can achieve a simple, streamlined unsubscribe process using FormAssembly and the FormAssembly Salesforce Prefill and Submit Connectors.

FormAssembly partner SalesPath came up with this solution to provide a way to make Salesforce List emails, which are great for less formal email sends, that much more useful. If you’re already using FormAssembly, this is a great way to expand your use. If you have yet to sign up, this is is just one more great example of the innovative ways you can use FormAssembly.

The Process

The FormAssembly solution put together by SalesPath allows you to add an unsubscribe link to the bottom of a Salesforce Lightning email template. Here’s an example of how that could look:

Clicking on the link would take your email recipient to a page where they can unsubscribe with one click of a button. Though the page may not look like it at first glance, it’s actually a FormAssembly form. This page can be further customized to fit your organization’s branding.

Clicking on the unsubscribe button activates the Salesforce Connector and checks the Salesforce Lead or Contact Opt-Out checkbox in your Salesforce instance. On the front-end, recipients see a message that confirms their removal from your email list.

Next Steps

The setup uses the Salesforce Prefill & Submit Connectors, and requires a FormAssembly Premier or above account, and a Salesforce Lighting Sales Cloud instance.

To learn more about SalesPath and this use case, visit their website.

The post SalesPath Use Case: Create a Salesforce Lightning List Email Opt-Out Flow With FormAssembly appeared first on FormAssembly.

The post 100 FormAssembly Use Cases: Submit Your Forms! appeared first on FormAssembly.

You can pick between 12 different preloaded fonts in our Theme Editor, but you’re not just confined to those options. If you want to use a specific font to achieve a unique look, you can easily do that using custom code.

1. Pick Your Font

There’s a wealth of webfonts out there. Some resources include Google Fonts and Adobe Edge Web Fonts, both of which offer options ranging from formal to whimsical to edgy.

For this example we’re going to use Abril Fatface, available on Google Fonts.

2. Grab the Embed Code

Google Webfonts makes it easy to generate a ready-to-use embed code. For these purposes, we’ll copy the standard code link.

3. Add the Code to FormAssembly

Open your form in the Form Builder. For this example, we created a simple newsletter signup form. This form uses the Sky theme from the Theme Editor, with a few customizations to the color pallette and title size.

As is, the form is attractive, but basic.

To change the title of the form to Abril Fatface, go to Properties > Custom Code.

Paste the stylesheet code into the Custom Code box. This is the code we used for Abril Fatface.

<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Abril+Fatface" rel="stylesheet">

Then copy and paste this bit, too:

<style type="text/css">
.wForm, .wFormTitle {
font-family: 'Abril Fatface', cursive; }
</style>

If you picked a different font, change Abril Fatface to the name of your font. Keep the cursive—it tells the browser to show the default cursive font if something goes awry. Click outside of the code box to apply the change, and click save if you’re happy with how it looks.

As a final step, we chose to change the other fonts in the form using the available options in the Theme Editor. We opted for Open Sans because the sans serif font pairs nicely with the whimsical, serif style of Abril Fatface.

Here’s how those fonts look together in our updated form.

CSS allows you to do a lot of creative and useful things with your forms. Read up on other common custom code scenarios in our knowledge base.

The post Tutorial: Fun with Custom Fonts appeared first on FormAssembly.

Do you need to be able to get data collected in Google Sheets into your Salesforce instance? With FormAssembly, you can send data to Google Sheets where multiple people on your team can access it, but you can also streamline the process of sending that Google Sheets data to Salesforce, using FormAssembly, Google Sheets formulas, and prefill links. This tutorial will show you how to accomplish this.

The traditional method to get Google Sheets data into Salesforce would be to use Data Loader, but this comes with downsides. Data Loader does not allow you to push data to multiple standard and custom objects, and you cannot dedupe or perform lookups.

In this post we’ll look at a few things:

• How to utilize FormAssembly forms to send data through the Google Sheet connector to a shared Google Sheet
• Utilizing Google Sheet formulas and URLs to prefill FormAssembly forms
• Submitting data sourced from a Google Sheet into any Salesforce object and field with a Salesforce submit connector on our form

This will require the following knowledge:

• Building and prefilling FormAssembly forms through a URL
• Setting up a Salesforce Connector on your FormAssembly form
• Google Sheets and Salesforce administrative access

We will have two forms, and two Google Sheets through this use case. Our shared form and shared Google Sheet, then our transition form and transition Google Sheet.

In this use case, we’re going to essentially use formulas in our Google Sheet to build a URL that will combine the data we copy from a shared Google Sheet, placed by our shared form, into a prefilled form link. We’re building a dynamic form link in Google Sheets that leads to a FormAssembly form with a Salesforce connector on it.

It will require some initial setup in Google Sheets but once we have one row in place for our transition, we can copy it to the rest with a simple drag and drop routine method.

First, we’ll set up our shared form so we have the data we’ll be sharing pushing to our first Google Sheet, which is also shared. Well call these our “shared form” and “shared Google Sheet” during this tutorial. Check out our form example below, which asks for some basic contact information, for an idea on how to start a test.

Then configure the Google connector and share that Google Sheet you’ve either created or selected as needed with whomever you’re planning on sharing submissions to this form with. This will be our main shared data channel that all parties will pull from in future steps.

Next, confirm that our shared form is set up and the shared Google Sheet it’s pushing data to is in place and taking data by testing it.

Once we have our shared form and shared Google Sheet in place, we’ll want to create our transition form. This form will be prefilled and accessed with a URL built from our next Google Sheet, the transition Google Sheet. We will need the aliases for the fields from this transition form to build our transition Google Sheet so it must come first.

As you can partially see in the image below, this form will have the same fields as the previous form, but it has a different title, and we will set up different connectors for it.

Next, set up the Salesforce connector for this form however you would want new leads to come into your Salesforce instance, as we will use the prefilled data from the Google Sheet to populate it and send to Salesforce when we submit. In this example, we are adding a Salesforce Submit Connector to the “After Form Submitted” connector section, and configuring it to create a new lead upon form submission.

After our transition form is set up to push our shared Google Sheet data to Salesforce, we need to create the second Google Sheet that is our transition sheet. This transition sheet will be the middle-sheet between the shared Google Sheet and our second transition form that pushes the shared data to our Salesforce system. It will contain the complex formulas and mapping to prefill our transition form through a hyperlink that will submit data to Salesforce. The pictures below will show you the columns and the data values we will put within them for this example.

We’ll have a few different types of headers for our columns in this sheet, and it’s important for us to identify them correctly so the cells and data are easier to use when combining into a prefilled form URL. In the pictures below, our shared data resides in the blue columns, our columns holding and combining all the form URL and sheet information is in green, and our column holding the aliases for the form that we’re prefilling information into are in gray.

First, we’ll set up a section of column headers for our data from our shared Google Sheet.

After the column headers for the shared data are set up, we’ll place the column headers for our master prefill form URL, the form URL itself with a ‘?’ at the end to start the query of a parameter, and lastly a column for the ampersand that we can use to place the ‘&’ value into our master prefill form URL between each field we’re prefilling and parameter we’re filling it with.

Lastly, we’ll set up our columns to hold the form aliases for the fields that we’re pushing all of this data into. This will allow us to tell the master prefill column, building our URL, what fields to push the shared data to. It’s going to build us the prefill URL link with a query set to these aliases, and parameters of the shared data. You can find these aliases by following the link at the bottom of the Notifications page for your form.

Using a formula similar to the one below, you can map the other columns into the prefilled transition form column to build a full prefilled form URL. Here is an example using the field names instead of cell labels that will help clarify how the prefilled URL will be structured. Replace the values below with the respective cells in your transition sheet.

=HYPERLINK(CONCATENATE(FORMurlHEREwww.tfaforms.net/1234?,FIRSTNAME,ALIAS,AMPERSANDCOLUMN,LASTNAME,ALIAS,AMPERSANDCOLUMN,EMAIL,ALIAS,AMPERSANDCOLUMN,COMPANY,ALIAS,AMPERSANDCOLUMN,COUNTRY,ALIAS,AMPERSANDCOLUMN,ADDRESS,ALIAS,AMPERSANDCOLUMN,CITY,ALIAS,AMPERSANDCOLUMN,STATE,Alias,AMPERSANDCOLUMN,ZIP,Alias,AMPERSANDCOLUMN,PHONE,ALIAS,AMPERSANDCOLUMN,INDUSTRY,ALIAS,AMPERSANDCOLUMN,LEADSOURCE,ALIAS))

Once you have your columns properly in place and your formulas building your prefilled URL to your transition form. Give it a test with your test entry as pictured below.

Now moving forward, all you need to do is access the shared Google Sheet, copy the rows and paste them into your transition sheet. Once you have loaded the left-most columns for your recipient data from the shared sheet, you can then drag down previous rows to complete the rest of the columns that will use that copied data and produce your prefilled transition form link.

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Want more Salesforce-FormAssembly tutorials? Check out this one on how to set up a multiple criteria search of Salesforce using FormAssembly.

The post Pushing Google Sheets Data to Salesforce Through FormAssembly Forms appeared first on FormAssembly.

Ever wished you could speed up your workflow in the Form Builder?

Here are a few ways to get things done faster!

1. Drag & Drop Fields from the Add Content Menu

Clicking the field types will always add the field to the bottom of the page. To place a field somewhere else, just drag it from the menu and drop it where you need it.

2. Sort Choices Automatically in Alphabetical Order

Need to get your multiple choice options in alphabetical order quickly? Select the multiple-choice field you want to sort, click Edit Choices, and click sort above the choices. Presto! They’ll be sorted instantly.

3. Copy and Paste Text Without Formatting

By default, the Form Builder will preserve some of the original formatting whenever you copy and paste content. If you’d rather not keep the original formatting, use the “Paste and Match Style” keyboard shortcut associated with your browser and operating system:

4. Use Predefined Content

Have fields and sections that you use frequently? Take a look at predefined content. You can use existing predefined content options such as US states or countries, or create your own.

5. Copy Forms

Have a form that you want to replicate with a few tweaks? Simply clone it, update the name, and make any changes you need. Copying forms also copies connectors, which is useful when you have a complicated connector setup that you need to reuse.

Got any tips to share? Wanna tell us how these shortcuts are working for you? Just leave a comment here, drop a line, or tweet @FormAssembly. Don’t have a FormAssembly account to try out these tips? Try us out for free today.

Join Now

The post Form Builder Tips: 5 Shortcuts to Save Time appeared first on FormAssembly.

Do you need to process payments for memberships, events, donations, merchandise or some other reason?

You can easily create PayPal order forms with FormAssembly by:

1. Selecting and organizing the text and fields you want in our drag-and-drop form builder
2. Styling your form in the theme editor
3. Setting up a PayPal Connector to allow your users to process PayPal payments

Let’s walk through the process of setting up a connector after you’ve already built and styled your form.

Example Form

For this example, we’re going to use an order form for bouquets. We have three different bouquet options at three different prices.

This form uses simple calculations to total the whole amount due at the bottom of the form.

After setting up our form, we’ll move over to the PayPal Connector to set up the integration that charges customers for the bouquet they choose.

Set Up the Connector

Navigate to the Connectors page first, add a PayPal Connector into the Form Submitted section of the connector, and click Configure.

When the PayPal Connector loads, hit the “Enable” button and fill out the required information to link your PayPal account into Step 1 of 4: “PayPal Account Information.”

In Step 2 of 4 “Item(s) for Sale” add in the first of the bouquets. This is also where you’ll enter the Item Name, Item Code, Unit Price, and Quantity Ordered.

Here’s what our finished setup looks like. Note, for the price, we only entered the price for the roses and left the others blank. We’ll repeat the same process for the other two bouquets, each time only entering in the price for the bouquet in question and leaving the others blank.

For Step 3 “Shipping Information” we will select the option that lets PayPal handle the shipping information.

In Step 4 – “Pay Now Page,” provide your customers with a “Please click here to pay by PayPal” message to be displayed when they order. Then, click save.

That’s all there is to it! When buyer fills out your form and hits submit, they will be directed to a page displaying the “Pay Now” message you wrote and the paypal button to complete your order on the paypal site.

Join now to start creating order forms today!

The post Create PayPal Order Forms With FormAssembly appeared first on FormAssembly.

Let’s be honest: low form conversion rates can create disappointment and confusion. You work hard on a donation form, feedback form, or survey, only to have a small fraction of your audience fill it out. So what’s the problem? Why aren’t people filling out your forms?

Unfortunately, there’s not a simple answer to that question. Everyone has their own reasons for not making it to the end of a form, and some of the reasons might have nothing to do with how well your form is designed. (Although you should always make sure you’re following best practices when it comes to design and function.)

While you can’t read the minds of your respondents, there are a few things you can do to increase the chance that they’ll complete your web forms.

1. Decrease the Number of Form Fields Strategically

It seems like a no-brainer, right? Trimming the amount of fields in your form makes it easier to fill out, which results in higher conversion rates. Not only is this step logical, but there’s plenty of data to back it up. Here are a few examples:

• Hubspot’s Dan Zarella looked at more than 40,000 landing page results and found that as text areas (text form fields that are sized for larger amounts of text) increase, there is an associated drop in conversion rates. Zarella found that using one text area led to a conversion rate of about 20%, but using up to five text areas dropped conversion to below 10%. Using numerous drop-down fields may also contribute to decreased conversion.
• Eloqua conducted research on the connection between the number of form fields and landing page conversion rates. In an analysis of 1,500 landing pages, they found that fewer form fields leads to higher return.
  
• Imagescape saw a 120% jump in conversion after eliminating 8 form fields and bringing the total down to just 4 fields.

So why talk about a form conversion technique that’s fairly common knowledge? Because there’s a catch to it. While fewer fields generally appear to perform better, there’s also evidence to the contrary, which shows that in some circumstances, decreasing the number of fields in a forms can actually drive down conversions.

It may seem crazy, but in certain instances it appears to be true. Unbounce’s Michael Aagaard removed 3 fields from a form (one-third of the total), which led to a 14% conversion rate drop. Why? As reported by ConversionXL, Aagard admitted that he, “removed all the fields that people actually want to interact with and only left the crappy ones they don’t want to interact with.”

Even if it’s an isolated example, the moral is that you can’t just cut out any field and expect conversion rates to drop. You need to strategically plan which fields to eliminate based on how respondents may interact with the form’s required information.

2. Remove the Right Fields

If you take a look at your longest web form, you’ll probably notice several fields that are nice to have but in reality, aren’t truly needed to get the job done. (If you’re creating a complex form that absolutely must have certain fields, there are still ways to make it easier to fill out. We’ll cover that below.) These are the fields you should critically review in order to decide what matters more: having that piece of information or giving your users an easier form-filling experience.

If you’re not sure which fields to chop first, here are a few suggestions:

• Non-essential info: If you’re capturing lead information, you probably don’t need an address field. The same rule applies for telephone, age, and birthday fields. In fact, one study shows that phone number fields decrease conversion by as much as 48%. If possible, remove these and any other non-essential pieces of information.
• Confusing fields: A confusing field is any field that makes the respondent question what information is needed. If you have fields that require more explanation, UX Planet suggests adding accompanying or explanatory text to help the respondent understand precisely what they need to provide.
  
• Non-required fields: Are you only noting which fields are required? That may not be as helpful as you would think.  Research from the Baymard Institute suggests that a better option is to clearly delineate which fields are optional while also noting which fields are required. Taking the time to define both types of fields helps users progress through forms with ease, thus converting at a higher rate. The research shows that this is especially true in the realm of e-commerce forms.

3. Focus on the Form’s Value to Your Audience

Asking someone to fill out a form can be a tall order. Even though it may only take a few minutes to enter some personal information and leave a few comments, you’re still asking something of people you probably don’t know very well. Unfortunately, many users are also leery of sharing their personal information. Because of these factors, you need to offer your audience something of value in return for their time and information.

With just about any form, there’s a benefit to the user if they choose to finish and submit it. The key is to communicate that value up front, and even reassure them that their data is secure. Let’s look at a few examples that deliver value to form respondents:

• Nonprofit Donation Forms: Although you’re asking for donations, people rarely donate because they feel forced into it. On the contrary, they donate because they believe in the cause.
  
• Job Applications: Too often, job applications are painfully long and tedious, but they don’t have to be. Eliminate stress by creating a simple process for applicants that reflects your company’s brand and mission.
• Lead Forms: The idea of exchange is a well-known tenet of content marketing. You give your users something of value in the form of helpful content such as a downloadable eBook), and in return, they give you their information.

4. Make Forms Easy to Fill Out

Although the ideal form might be short and sweet, there are plenty of use cases that necessitate longer forms. Job applications, certification processes, and admissions applications may necessitate extensive form fields that can take more than 30 minutes to complete. While there’s often nothing you can do in these unique cases, there are several ways you can leverage FormAssembly to help eliminate drop-off rates.

• Prefilling: Already have a form user’s information in your CRM? Use a prefill function to enter certain information so they don’t have to.
• Multi-Page Forms: If your form involves multiple sections and lot of scrolling, consider breaking it up between multiple pages.
• Save & Resume: Some forms are just too long or complicated to finish in one sitting. Allow them to save their progress and continue filling out the form when they’re ready.

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If you’re not seeing as many form submissions as you’d like, whether it’s a sudden drop-off or a slow decline, try some of these practices to optimize your form conversion rates.

To see our team of expert form builders review actual customer forms for their effectiveness and design, watch this recording of our Form Review webinar.

The post 4 Hacks to Increase Your Form Conversion Rate appeared first on FormAssembly.

At FormAssembly, we know that choosing your perfect web form solution is a big deal. The right tools can make your business or organization run more effectively and put valuable time and resources back in your hands. As our team interacts with customers every day, they often receive similar questions about everything FormAssembly can do. Keep reading for a roundup of commonly asked form questions and how we tackle them.

Is it possible to change the orientation of form elements (such as radio buttons) to a different horizontal layout?

It is possible to change the presentation or layout of several field types, including the radio button fields. To make this change, a user would need to select the Horizontal option from the Presentation > Choice Layout menu after clicking the radio button field.

For a live look at how to make changes to a form’s field layout, check out our help documents, where you can see a preview of how to make this easy change within the form builder.

Can I automate a survey based on a case being closed in Salesforce?

This capability is available to FormAssembly users but should be set up within the user’s Salesforce instance. Through the Prefill Connector, FormAssembly offers a practical and fast way to load data from Salesforce into a web form (or into a survey set up in as web form).

Additionally, users can utilize a trigger or automatic workflow as a representative closes a case and sets a record to a specific value. Setting up the Salesforce automation is the overarching requirement, and your FormAssembly form can simply fall into an email template that is prefilled with merge fields and a link.

Since the form link lives in an email template, any Salesforce user could send an email 1:1 from the ‘Send Email’ button and select the same email template that is used in the automated process mentioned in the previous example.

If so, can I select when I want the survey to be sent manually from Salesforce?

In addition to the above options, FormAssembly users also have the choice to send emails from Salesforce manually or automatically. The email for who the survey engagement is sent to should be captured by the original case as a requirement for replying back. From there, the message can be tucked into the respective object in order to become part of the automation process.

Utilizing Salesforce communities is another way to allow a form to be sent to a respondent based on the case or record status in the org at the time of a change.

What are the limitations for forms, responses, etc.?

By far, this is one of our favorite questions to answer. When prospective clients want to know the cap on how many forms they can create, how many respondents they can poll, or how many answers they can collect, we’ve got an easy answer: there are no limits. FormAssembly offers unlimited form creation and response collection. All that’s left for you to worry about is which plan works best for your organization.

Does FormAssembly offer any benefits for nonprofit customers?

Absolutely! We recognize that the important work of nonprofits is often carried out on a tight budget, but that doesn’t mean you should have to sacrifice efficiency or productivity. If you’re a prospective nonprofit customer, don’t miss out on the opportunity to receive a 30% discount on annual subscriptions or a 20% discount on month-to-month Professional and Premier subscriptions.

My team needs a web form solution, but we need help with form creation. Do I have any options for enhanced support?

Yes! We’re committed to providing the right path for you to get started, no matter what kind of experience you have with using web forms. FormAssembly Implementation Services can come to the rescue at any stage in your journey. Our expert team can help you build and create forms quickly, while offering project-based group training and support.

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Ready to take the next step to find out what FormAssembly is all about? Sign up for your free demo today!

The post Commonly Asked Form Questions: What Prospects Want to Know appeared first on FormAssembly.

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