HubSpot Ideas

ayrtonwebs

Pre-populate certain fields

Under the contacts > forms > options there is an option to pre-populate fields with known values. As this is helpful in many ways, we encountered many times that the "message" textarea field also gets pre-populated with the same content as before. This could be a problem when you use the pre-populate function on a contact page for example.

My suggestion for a new feature is that you can pre-populate certain fields, or at least disable pre-populating for certain input/textarea fields instead of all. I think this function would not only benefit us, but a lot of companies that use the pre-populating feature across their forms.

39 Replies
twandeleijer
Participant

Yes, absolute agree. Some of the Hubspot forms we use are very likely to be used multiple times by the same customer/lead, but the values they'd enter in certain fields would be different every time.

 

This may also be achieved by allowing us to add fields to a form that don't map with fields in the CRM. A good example would be the Message field for a contact form. Now we have to store that in a CRM field. But this is not persistant data for a contact. The second time somebody fills out the contact form, the message field is overwritten. So, I'd rather see the message field in the contact's history, but not in the CRM. If that makes sense. Fields like these should then never be pre-populated.

Deborah
Contributor

This is a good idea! I have another application for just pre-populate certain fields. In Germany the legal situation is in respect to data protection, that the website visitor has to actively agree to the data protection regulations containted in the imprint page (by e.g. checking a check box). But if I pre-populate fields with known values, all fields will get pre-populated including the data protection check box, although this one should't be pre-filled.

Hope this feature gets soon into the standard.

JasonLackey
Member

Dear HS PMs,

 

We would love to be able to selectively disable data prepopulate on a form field. In this case we have a comments field used in many forms such as Contact forms and Demo request forms. We like being able to prefill forms, but prefilled comments can be creepy or out of place or both.

matt7621
Member

Agreed! For example, I don't need to see my comments in the Comments field from my last form submission every time I revisit a page with that form. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vtdfz9pe7tpvnfv/Screenshot%202017-08-11%2009.12.18.png?dl=0

hellenoti
Participant

Excellent idea. I was just thinking of this feature as well. I hope this gets implemented.

HG
Participant

Agree 100%

sebastianulbert
Contributor

100% agree. Also checkboxes (e.g. for consent) shouldn't be pre-populated.

Ashley22
Participant

Agreed! The option to select which fields to pre-populate and to not have to associate with a field for a one time submission that is maybe saved just in the activity/form submission copy. 

 

Additional requests related

1) Internal forms - essentially the ability to view or load a form as a contact to pre-populate with information already needed in order to trigger workflows on form submission and require specific fields for a more automated process.

2) Ability to select whether text field content is replaced or appended to any previous answers. 

stephendherrera
Participant

Yes this is so important. Would REALLY appreciate if this functionality was added (select which fields to prepopulate). 

 

In addition an update if blank function on forms would make hidden fields much more valuable. 

TanyaPaskewitz
Member

Has this feature been enabled yet? We'd love to have it as well. 

TJ_Price
Contributor

This is a great feature with many use cases! 

 

For us we'd like to see the option of keeping a contact's job title un-filled as our contacts' titles seem to continually change, if it is pre-populated, the changes made are rarely edited to update their new position/title.

 

peterrogov
Member

I believe it is absolutely necessary to have such configuration in place.

For those who embed Hubspot forms on external websites it is possible to leverage JavaScript's API to modify fields' contentens.

Here's some information about the API: https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/methods/forms/advanced_form_options

One can use onBeforeFormInit or onFormReady events to preprocess the form.

A clunky solution but at least something until Hubspot will roll this feature out officially.

hannalofving
Contributor | Platinum Partner

Any progress in this feature? 

cpalenshus
Member

This really should be a field-by-field choice. The free-text field on a contact us form should always be blank. No one wants to see what they asked you the last time the contacted you on the contact form. In fact, that's a little bit creepy.

RayHuang
Participant

As a workaround, I've created a new field, "Message - Disappearing" that I use on forms — not mapped to SFDC.

 

I then have a separate workflow to clear that field if that field changes. The submitted data is viewable in the form-fill email alert and the SFDC and HS activity log/history. So far it works as a semi-permanent hack (not holding my breath on HS Dev team, no offense).

Kellyt
Member

We also would find this necessary.  We currently have to turn the prepopulate feild off because it is more of a hinderance than helpful for our needs.

Granted1208
Member

I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking this would be an ideal implementation. 

 

We initially turned on the reCaptcha option for Hubspot forms and noticed a massive drop in form submissions. We know a lot of businesses that use our services, use virtual machines and since turning on reCaptcha, we've also had complaints that our forms are recognising them as potential robots. So we turned it off - and as expected, the spam started to come through again. 

 

Enter, the honeypot (and subsequently the need for a field specific auto-complete off option).

 

Adding a field to your Hubspot generated form and then assigning a value of "autocomplete=off" would mean we can then hide said input field from real users (using css or js) and allow them to continue filling out the form. If you could then add "rules" to fields then that would just be awesome.

  • If honeypot field (don't actually call it honeypot) is not empty, send submission to: xyz (email?)
  • Filling out a hidden from view field smells like bots to me... 

Until Hubspot offer the functionality, it might be worth creating a custom form and pushing the data to Hubspot using their API. But will likely need a little coding knowledge to get things up and running. Validation checks, recaptcha if you are keen on having it on there and so on. In essence you're looking at doing this:

  1. Create your form (with all the necessary input fields) in Hubspot and publish
  2. Setup the Custom HTML form on your website
  3. Using Hubspot's API doc mentioned above, you can link up your form fields with those on the Hubspot form

Setting a form up like this to push the data to Hubspot means you can have 100% control over how the form is validated, and how it asthetically looks, whilst still being able to push the data to the Contact list in your Hubspot account. 

 

Once the form sends data, you can look at creating the input field:

<input class="faxNumber" type="text" name="faxNumber" autocomplete="off">

<!-- you could probably use visiblity hidden and other means but the idea
is to encourage the bot to fill it out and I get the feeling it may ignore
the input if its set to display:none or similar. -->

<style>
.faxNumber {
position:absolute;
left:-999999;
}
</style>

Auto complete stops the field returning a value when it is hidden for a reason (and we expect it to be NULL).

<?php 

$honey = $_POST['faxNumber']

if ($honey == NULL) {
   // send data to normal location
} else {
   // send data to honey@example.com to be checked by a human (or discarded)
}

?>

 

I didn't set out to offer a temporary solution to this but as I had been racking my own brains trying to find a solution, I thought it worth mentioning in case it helps others. It may work for some spam, it may not - but I have to try right 🙂

Damotech
Participant

This is definitely a must!

BobBalm1
Contributor

Spent some time looking for where this option was today. Amazed it's not there. 

 

I have exactly the same use case as many others here: a free text area / message / comments field that shows the text entered the last time that field appeared on a form. This is a weird customer experience, as in our case, one 'message' field is used in multiple different contexts. 

 

Ideal solution: I am able to toggle prefilling on or off when building my form

Acceptable solution: I am able to toggle prefilling on or off when creating/editing my property

chris_e
Member

This would be a great feature.