Have you used Workflow yet? Whether you’re already deep into FormAssembly’s new process-building solution or you haven’t found the time to try it out, we’re here to help you out with all the info you need on top features and use cases. In this article, we’ll be discussing the time-saving capabilities of form-to-form prefilling and three ways to use it in your workflows.
If you’d like a quick overview of the Workflow Builder before you dive into individual features, you can visit our Workflow Setup documentation.
What is form-to-form prefilling?
We’ve all been there—being required to fill out the same information over and over again is tiresome and time-consuming. Luckily, prefill abilities are built into Workflow. This means you can prefill the forms in your workflow with data pulled from Salesforce, and you can also use the form-to-form prefilling features within a Workflow to prevent your respondents from needing to enter the same data multiple times. Not only can you prefill text fields, but you can also prefill hidden fields, radio buttons, and more.
Beyond form-to-form prefiling, you can leverage data submitted through your workflow forms at multiple other points and locations in your workflow, including autoresponders, thank you pages, and thank you messages. Overall, being able to prefill forms within workflows drastically improves the user experience for respondents and makes life easier for staff.
Three ways to use form-to-form prefilling
Once you start using form-to-form prefilling, we’re certain you’ll find countless ways to put this feature to use in your workflow. To get your imagination running, we’ve compiled three use cases for form-to-form prefilling below.
1. Seamless account signup and ordering
Everyone knows the feeling: you’re all set to order a new online course, outfit, meal delivery plan, whatever it may be. After creating an account and entering all your information, you’re required to enter much of the same information all over again. Long, complicated checkout processes like these are what lead to 20% of online shoppers abandoning their carts. However, form-to-form prefilling can get rid of this kind of duplicate work. Here’s how it works.
Create a workflow that begins with an account sign-up form. Then, take the customer’s mailing address fields to prefill into a second form where the customer can purchase a product. This saves the customer from having to fill out the mailing address information twice.
2. Pair form calculations with form-to-form prefilling
Your FormAssembly forms can do the math for you, so you can focus on other things. For forms that involve calculations—such as total price across multiple forms—you can use form-to-form prefilling to calculate part of an equation on each form, and then complete the equation on the last form. This will make your form calculation easier to break down, less complex to write, and leave less room to make errors.
3. Prefill forms using dynamic formulas (super-aliases)
Prefilling your forms using dynamic formulas allows you to make your forms even more dynamic. Using a form field source type is fitting when you simply want to prefill information gathered in a previous step, but with a formula source type, you can create formulas to dynamically prefill fields based on various conditions.
Here’s one example:
@IF(%%step_7!tfa_5%%=””,”test@formassemblycom“,%%step_7!tfa_5%%)
Using a formula like this in a prefilling configuration would allow your form to prefill alternate values if the first field you wanted to prefill from was empty.
Here’s another example:
In this example we are collecting entry, badge, and donation fees. We are calculating the “Entry Fee & Badge Total” (tfa_8) in a previous step and adding in the “Please make a donation amount here” (tfa_9).
Here is how your dynamic formula will look:
@COMPUTE(%%step_2!tfa_8%%+%%step_2!tfa_9%%)
Next steps
Now that you’ve learned about form-to-form prefilling, it’s time to put it to use in your own workflows. Workflow is available to all new Enterprise, Compliance Cloud, and Government Cloud customers and is being progressively rolled out to customers on these plans. If you’re not already a FormAssembly customer, explore how Workflow could benefit your organization, then reach out to us for a demo.
