Lead Capture Tools

kathla
Participant

How to connect collected forms fields to contact properties

SOLVE

I'd like to populate some custom contact fields with the data I receive from a connected form on my website. The form has been recognized successfully by HubSpot and the form created a new contact with the "Name," "Organization," "Phone," and "Email" fields. I have 7 other text fields that match existing contact properties that I've created, but all data from the form goes into a timeline entry that says that the person submitted the form and that there were "14 updated properties."

 

For example, I have a "Project Name" field. The collected form timeline entry noted the updated property called "leadin_project_name_8e3a42158ee70b67cf55b33e2789a9e5". Did this property go into a new contact property somewhere (I can't find any) or is there some way that I can map the collected field data to the existing contact property of "Project Name"?

 

Another, slightly different puzzle is the company identification. This was recognized by HubSpot from the email domain, but the "Company Name" property for the individual contact is not populated with the company information that appears in the Company section of the Contact entry.

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1 Accepted solution
MayPascaud
Solution
HubSpot Alumni
HubSpot Alumni

How to connect collected forms fields to contact properties

SOLVE

Hi @kathla, thank you for your questions!

 

As of now, fields on collected forms do not map directly to existing contact properties, aside from the default properties you mentioned (Email, First Name, Last Name and Phone Number). For any other field on the form (Company Name for example), we create a new Company Name text property to store this information in.

 

The internal name will look something along the lines of 'leadin_company_name_{encoded-name}'. This is currently the case as Leadin cannot efficiently map to all different field types (number, date, dropdown, etc), so in order to store the submission, it creates sandboxed properties.

 

Custom property mapping is something that the team will be working on in the future. However, at this time, there is no way to map the collected field data onto existing properties; the only way to accomplish this goal would be to leverage the Forms API on your external form, in order to fully populate their data into existing HubSpot properties.

 

On your second point: indeed, the Company Name contact property is entirely seperate for the Name company property (always a struggle to phrase this properly...) Contact/Company associations are, as you mentioned, created via the "automatically associate Contacts with Companies via their domain name" setting; however, this association does not include the Company Name contact property. This property is purely a textbox field, which is not dynamic and can be populated with any information. There is a way to populate this field based ojn Company associations with the Workflows tool in our Marketing software, but this is not yet possible using just the CRM.

 

I hope this helps; please let me know if you have any questions on the above, and have a great rest of your day.

 

May 

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6 Replies 6
MayPascaud
Solution
HubSpot Alumni
HubSpot Alumni

How to connect collected forms fields to contact properties

SOLVE

Hi @kathla, thank you for your questions!

 

As of now, fields on collected forms do not map directly to existing contact properties, aside from the default properties you mentioned (Email, First Name, Last Name and Phone Number). For any other field on the form (Company Name for example), we create a new Company Name text property to store this information in.

 

The internal name will look something along the lines of 'leadin_company_name_{encoded-name}'. This is currently the case as Leadin cannot efficiently map to all different field types (number, date, dropdown, etc), so in order to store the submission, it creates sandboxed properties.

 

Custom property mapping is something that the team will be working on in the future. However, at this time, there is no way to map the collected field data onto existing properties; the only way to accomplish this goal would be to leverage the Forms API on your external form, in order to fully populate their data into existing HubSpot properties.

 

On your second point: indeed, the Company Name contact property is entirely seperate for the Name company property (always a struggle to phrase this properly...) Contact/Company associations are, as you mentioned, created via the "automatically associate Contacts with Companies via their domain name" setting; however, this association does not include the Company Name contact property. This property is purely a textbox field, which is not dynamic and can be populated with any information. There is a way to populate this field based ojn Company associations with the Workflows tool in our Marketing software, but this is not yet possible using just the CRM.

 

I hope this helps; please let me know if you have any questions on the above, and have a great rest of your day.

 

May 

cristianneely
Member

How to connect collected forms fields to contact properties

SOLVE

Thank you for the information.

I am receiving information from a collected form in an automatically created field called "message" and the field type is single line text. Can I do something to make this a multi-line text instead?

thanks 

0 Upvotes
kathla
Participant

How to connect collected forms fields to contact properties

SOLVE

May,

Thank you! This is immensely helpful. I will see if any of our staff have the expertise to work with the Forms API.

 

When doing a second test, I used a different email account than my first test, but obviously from my same computer. It overwrote the information on my first created record (e.g., email, phone, name) rather than creating a new record. Is there a cookie that allowed that to happen or some other mechanism? I'd like to make sure we don't lose data when people submit something about a new project.

 

Or should I start a new topic on this question? Thanks!

0 Upvotes
MayPascaud
HubSpot Alumni
HubSpot Alumni

How to connect collected forms fields to contact properties

SOLVE

@kathla of course! For any further questions a new topic would be best, but I'll answer your followup here Smiley Happy

 

You're entirely correct: your contact was overwritten because you filled out a form from a browser that had already been cookied by the tool. 

 

This article gives a great description of the inner workings of the Collected Forms tool. In sum:

 

As soon as a submission has occurred, HubSpot stores the submission information in a cookie on the visitors browser. This cookie is called li_formsub. The purpose of this cookie is to ensure that HubSpot can process the submission, even if the form redirects to a new page.

 

Once HubSpot captures the form submission from the cookie, it is processed by HubSpot, generating a submission notification email (if it is enabled) and pushing your contact to any connected email provider lists. This process can take approximately two minutes.

 

 

Because the tool is able to pass on the form submission information through a cookie, there would be no way to prevent submissions from the same browser from being overwritten; however, there will be an event on the contact's timeline notifying you that said email address was altered.

 

Best of luck with your process!

0 Upvotes
ddchbhs
Contributor

How to connect collected forms fields to contact properties

SOLVE

Hi May, does one need a paid subscription to HubSpot marketing to accomplish this?

 

I would like to create a form on my website with a number of custom fields, and then have it go into HubSpot accordingly, but I am looking to do this using the free plan if possible?

 

Thanks!

0 Upvotes
MayPascaud
HubSpot Alumni
HubSpot Alumni

How to connect collected forms fields to contact properties

SOLVE

Hi @ddchbhs! You can accomplish this with the Collected Forms tool (provided that your form meets its requirements) which is a free product currently in beta: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/articles/kcs_article/collected-forms/how-do-i-use-collected-forms

 

 

With the paid Marketing product, you would be able to leverage the Forms API to seamlessly connect your forms with HubSpot (though you do need development resources): https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/methods/forms/forms_overview

0 Upvotes