Prefill Through the URL

Overview

You can build a link to prefill any web form. Before you begin, consider the size and content of the link. The more fields you choose to prefill, the longer the link gets, and longer links can easily break. So keep in mind: The shorter the link, the better.

It's also easiest to prefill fields which don't have spaces. Spaces can also cause links to break.

In most cases, however, it's possible to work around these concerns.

Note: If you're sending your prefill link by email, you can use a mail merge process to populate the merge fields and to send out the email. It's optional, but more efficient.

Video Tutorial

Learn how to prefill your forms. We go over what types of links, passing from one form to another, passing multiple fields and more.

Prepare to Build Your Link

To build your prefill link, you'll need:

The form's address (URL)

- Go to the Publish page and copy the public address under Your form is publicly available at this address.
  
  If you've published the form on your own website page, you can also use that page's URL. Now, decide which fields you want to prefill.

The aliases of the fields you want to fill

- In the Publish page for your FormAssembly form, you'll find a link at the bottom of the page: Show how to prefill form data dynamically.
  
  Click that link to find the field alias(es) you'd like to prefill.

Here are the prefill parameters for the form we'll be looking at:

Build Your Prefill URL

You can use a basic text editor to build your link, like Notepad or TextEdit. Here's a form link from the Publish page, where 237760 is the form ID.

http://www.tfaforms.com/237760

Now, copy your form URL from the Publish page, and place a question mark after it. Here's what our example link looks like:

http://www.tfaforms.com/237760?

Next, pick one field alias from the list that you want to prefill, and place it after the question mark. Here, we're using the email field "tfa_16." Add an equals sign after the field alias.

http://www.tfaforms.com/237760?tfa_16=

After the equals sign, you'll want to enter the data that will prefill the form field.

http://www.tfaforms.com/237760?tfa_16=name@domain.com

Or you can use a merge field from an email system.

Salesforce

http://www.tfaforms.com/237760?tfa_16={!Contact.email}

MailChimp

http://www.tfaforms.com/237760?tfa_16=*|MERGE0|*

Note: FormAssembly's formula engine can only handle a maximum integer/number length of 19 digits. This means if you are trying to prefill a number that is longer than 19 digits, it will be cut off. There is no limit for letters, only for numbers.

List, Radio Button, or Drop-Down Menu

Note: Checkboxes are handled differently than lists, radio buttons, and drop-down menus. Please see the section below on checkboxes for additional details.

When prefilling a selection list, radio button, or drop-down menu field, the question has an alias, and so the does the choice.

You'll be placing the alias of the question before the equals sign and the choice alias(es) after the equals sign.

You can use the choice's field alias as the value.

tfa_11=tfa_12

Or you can use the exact text of the choice.

tfa_11=Lettuce

In this example, the question is a menu list, where you can select multiple answers by separating them with a semicolon.

tfa_11=Lettuce;Onion

Checkboxes

Note: It's now possible to check or uncheck a checkbox through the URL.  You can use a "0" to uncheck a checkbox or a "1" to check a checkbox.

Checkboxes work a little differently than other multiple-choice fields.

The alias before the equals sign is the choice alias. The question has no alias.

When you're using checkboxes, you can use a 1 (which means "TRUE") to check a box or 0 (which means "FALSE") to uncheck a box.

tfa_19=1 or tfa_19=0

Or, you can use the exact text to fill the field.

tfa_19=Yes

If you are building a prefilling redirect link, you can use a formula like the one below to pass the value of a checkbox field. You will not be able to pass a checkbox value without using a formula like the one below.

https://www.tfaforms.com/123456?@IF(%%tfa_2%%,"tfa_3")

The formula above says, if there is a checkbox value for tfa_2 in the first form, pass that checked value to the tfa_3 checkbox in the second form.

To create a prefilling redirect link like this, you will need the field aliases for the specific checkboxes on each form.

With checkboxes, you must do a one to one checkbox mapping. In other words, you cannot use the field alias for a checkbox question, you must use the aliases for the individual checkbox selections.

Prefill More than One Field

To prefill more than one field, you can add more field aliases with their value, separated by an ampersand (&).

http://www.tfaforms.com/237760?tfa_17=name@domain.com&tfa_17=MyFirstName&tfa_21=MyLastName

Repeat this as needed, but remember that the shorter the link, the better.

Pass Data Between Forms

If you're passing data between FormAssembly forms, you'll want to place the first form's value aliases nested inside double percent (%%) signs.

http://www.tfaforms.com/xxxxxx?tfa_email2=%%tfa_email1%%

In the example above, tfa_email1's value from the first form will be passed to the field tfa_email2 on the second form.

Once you are finished building the URL, place the URL in the redirect field in the Notifications page of your first form.

The "POST" Method

You can also use the "POST" method to prefill your forms. Users with advanced technical expertise can pre-populate a web form dynamically by "posting" data to the web form itself. This method is most helpful when passing data that does not pass well through the URL, like multi-line text fields.

Please note: Our support team is unable to provide assistance for the custom code needed to prefill via the POST method. Please use the example below as a guide to get started with the POST method.

Here's a short example. This first form prefills the "subject" field in a second form, FormAssembly's Contact Form:

Here's the corresponding HTML:

<form action="http://app.formassembly.com/forms/view/2" method="POST" >
<input type="text" name="wf_Subject" value="subject goes here"/>
<input type="submit" value="Open the Contact Form" />
</form>

The form will accept a HTTP POST request and match submitted name/value pairs with its own field names. Unknown fields are ignored. Matching fields will take the submitted value.

To find the field name used in your form, inspect the HTML source, or:

Go to the Form List and click configure on the form you need to set up. This opens the form properties panel on the left-hand side.
On the Publish page, click the Show how to prefill form data dynamically link.

Note: This works only for forms hosted on FormAssembly or published using our API. The Copy & Paste publishing method does not support form prefilling using a HTTP POST request.

Prefill Repeatable Fields and Sections through the URL

It is possible to prefill repeatable fields and sections through the URL.

To do so, you must first view the live version of your form, and click on the repeatable link to make an additional field or section appear.

Once you have clicked on that link, you should then right click on the "Add another response" text and choose "Inspect."

This will show the HTML code behind the form. You will want to look for the section that provides the ID for the "add another response link". It should be highlighted, and will look something like this:

In the example above, the ID is "tfa_1-D[0]-wfDL"

You can now begin building your prefilling link using this value. An example would be:

www.tfaforms.com/123456?tfa_1-D[0]-wfDL

Next, you will need to put an equal sign, and the number of times you would like that repeating field or section to be triggered to appear. For example, if you were planning on prefilling 4 fields total (the original field plus 3 repeats), your link would look like this:

www.tfaforms.com/123456?tfa_1-D[0]-wfDL=3

Next, you will need to right click on the actual field you are wanting to prefill, and select "Inspect" again.

Just like before, you will want to look for the ID of the field. It should be highlighted, and it will look like this:

So the ID for the example above would be tfa_1[0].

Now, you can use that value to continue building your prefilling link by adding an ampersand and the value you would like to prefill:

www.tfaforms.com/123456?tfa_1-D[0]-wfDL=3&tfa_1[0]=A

That link would trigger the repeated field to appear 3 additional times, and would fill the first field with the value "A."

In order to fill all four form fields that were triggered to appear with values, you would need a link like this:

www.tfaforms.com/123456?tfa_1-D[0]-wfDL=3&tfa_1[0]=A&tfa_1[1]=B&tfa_1[2]=C&tfa_1[3]=D

It's important to note that the number in the bracket increases by 1 for each additional repeated field, while the number in the alias does not change. For example, tfa_1[0], tfa_1[1], tfa_1[2], and tfa_1[3].

You could use this same approach for prefilling repeatable sections, you would just need to inspect all the fields in the section in order to determine their ID.

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