I am trying to find a workaround to the following issue: replacement of contact info everytime a contact fills out a form using the same email but with different name and last name (many companies have one unique common email used by more employees).
As I know that there is no possibility to avoid it, I am trying to find a workflow that send me a notification when an existing contact has been updated after a form submission, so that I can double check it immediately. Any other suggestions are welcome.
If the most pressing concern is finding out when this is happening, being notified when a contact has a name change, that can be easily achieved with a contact-based workflow.
Re-enroll contacts when “First name is known”, then use the “Send internal email notification” to notify yourself. (HubSpot interprets re-enrollment for “is known” criteria as “has changed”.)
In terms of preventing the issue at the source, you’re correct, this is currently not possible. The only option would be to have each field twice: First name and First name (for use in forms), Last name and Last name (for use in forms) etc.
You could then use a contact-based workflow to copy from the “(for use in forms)” property into the actual property when the actual property is empty. It’s not elegant and creates overhead but is the only way to prevent fields from being updated directly.
Thank you @karstenkoehler! About your suggestion to create a “(for use in forms)” property: I believe it could be a great idea especially for the field “note”.
In our “request form”, our clients can always add any special requirement in the field “note”. It means that, in case their should submit more than once the “request form” in their customer lifetime, the latest special requirements would replace the oldest ones.
Do you think that when the workflow copies the “(for use in forms)” property into the actual property, the text will be appended to the existing text or it will replace the existing text in the actual property?
That depends on how you’d like it to behave, both is possible. Using the “Copy property value” action it will be overwritten. Using the “Set property value” action and a personalization token, you can append it and almost create a log, including a date stamp of notes, if you want. Let me know if I should elaborate.
Hi @FBertasi,
I agree with Karsten’s solutions and I would like to add another tip to help you.
In your form, you can use the “logic” function in a form property and select “Replace with queued progressive field”.
In this way, if a contact try to fill out the form again, those fields will not be displayed.
(Of course, it will only work if the contact is recognized by HubSpot’s cookies)
Progressive fields are risky, especially when contacts are being overwritten, as this feature requires the “Always create contact for new email address” to be disabled. Using progressive fields actually increases the likelihood of contacts being updated incorrectly even more.
Just to add further context to Karstens point, progressive fields always require the browser cookie to already be associated with that contact record. So if the visitor is on a different browser or has cleared their cookies they will be recognised as a new visitor and the progressive fields will not function, if they then enter the same email they will be recognised as the same contact and all fields will be updated in the existing contact record.
Ciao @ed_exelab, grazie per il tuo consiglio! Actually, I think it might not be ideal for our case, because the problem arises when a different contact from the same company asks for a product demo. In this case we would totally lose the information of the new contact person to contact for the new sale, and therefore we would risk always contacting the ‘old’ contact, who punctually does not know that his colleague has requested a demo for a product, losing the possibility of a sale.
Am I right or you have a special solution for this case too?
Ciao @FBertasi,
grazie per il tuo messaggio.
Progressive Field is just an additional and partial help for certain submission cases, it can be an additional feature to be tested.
It can assist you (by hiding some properties in form) only if users are using the same PC with the same browser where the cookies are cached and HubSpot can recognize the contact, or HubSpot can recognize the same cookie token.
If not, this feature will obviously have no effect, and the form will be fully visible by contacts.
As Karsten said, sometimes it can be a bit risky, if many contacts fill out the form with different emails on the same pc (with the same browser), because it can merge filled data in the same contact.
Unfortunately, in forms, there isn’t an ideal solution for you, but in Workflows, you can follow Karsten’s instructions to adjust your data and send notifications.
Best,
Eddy
