Webforms that don't overwrite fields

[Lowe]

We currently use PDF forms that are sent via email to our quoting team. We want to create an internal web form that creates a task associated with a contact/company with a task owner within our quoting team. I think this would have multiple uses for a wide range of Hubspot users.

We can't use a traditional HubSpot form as it will overwrite the data in the fields each time. Is there a plugin that can do this?

[franksteiner79]

Hi Luke

Thanks for the additional context.

The "always create a new contact" option in HubSpot forms is a bit oddly named, in my humble opinion. What it does is either associate a new form submission with an existing contact (email) or create a new contact when that email isn't in your HubSpot CRM yet. The key thing is, it wouldn't overwrite a contact repeatedly.

Who is completing the quote request form PDF, is it the customers themselves or sales reps at your company?

I can think of two options, how this can work. Either by working with tickets and a ticket pipeline in Service Hub, that is just for the internal quotes team. Or by creating and working with a custom object called "Order Request" or something similar. Although I think going down the ticket route makes most sense when response times and reporting are important . This could then work as follows:

1. Create the necessary 30 fields - a mix of free text, drop-downs and checkboxes. either as ticket properties or custom object properties.
2. Create your form(s), with the "Always create contact for new email address" switched on.
3. Add either the ticket properties or custom object properties as needed.
4. A submission creates a new ticket with all the information.
5. That ticket can assigned to a specific conversation inbox, which can have SLA setting.
6. You can then work with ticket stages and automation to manage the process up until quote creation.
7. After that your existing automated deal creation process continues as it currently does.

Does that make sense?

Frank

[Lowe]

Hi @franksteiner79 

I work for a print company, and each quote request form has approx. 30 fields - a mix of free text, drop-downs and checkboxes. We have a few different versions of this form across our group of companies as each one prints different items (packaging, labels, commercial, large format, etc.)

I've considered your suggestions already and although they would, in theory, get me part way there it's not the ideal/complete solution I need.

Playbooks simply get far too long and have limitations in field types. Forms that create new contacts would essentially mean over 100 new contacts created per day across our entire group.

Five of those fields would become redundant/auto-populated if tied into HubSpot (requested by, date, client name, company name, address).

An overview of our current process is below:

1. Quote request form PDF is completed and sent to the estimates team via email
2. Estimates team pick this email up (no tracking on response time)
3. Estimate is raised in our print management software
4. Integration to HubSpot automatically:
   1. Raises a deal against the correct company and contact with correct order value etc.
   2. Assigns it to the correct salesperson/account manager with an email notification that the quote is ready
   3. Attaches the quote letter to that deal (removing the step of downloading and sending it back via email)
   4. Also talks back to the print management system to alert the print team that the quote has been approved

The goal is to be able to use HubSpot to cut out emails from this process as much as possible and to also run reports against new KPIs such as response times.

Lastly, we have the enterprise edition for all parts of HubSpot.

Thanks,

Luke

[franksteiner79]

Hi @Lowe 

You can set forms to "always create a new contact" which stops it overriding a previous submission, see this KB article.

One thing I'd be curious to better understand is the overall process where this form submission fits in, why it's necessary, and what HubSpot subscription you have. If the quoting team is in HubSpot and if you want to assign tasks, have you considered using playbooks, deal properties and/or automation to trigger these tasks once all the necessary information has been collected?

Frank