Auto-fill or Hide Form Fields with Merge Fields

Build smarter forms and lighten the load on your users by hiding fields that are filled in with merge field data.

GetFeedback’s form questions are a great way to collect contact information from your users like name, email address, phone number. Make it easier on your users when registering for an event - by filling in those fields for them.

In the form question - choose to show all information that comes in or, hide information that you’ve already collected from a respondent.

This feature does not work on GetFeedback email templates. Use pre-filled form fields when sharing a survey link or building your own email template, outside of GetFeedback. 

Getting Started

How you’re sending out your survey, dictates how you’ll put together your merge fields.  If sending in-app, we'll automatically create the link and merge fields for you. If you're sending using another email provider, here is a list of common merge field syntax:

Create your form question. If you're sending to a group of 20 people but know that you already have a phone number for most of them, you can hide this field from those people and only show it to users who have not yet provided that information.

When creating your form you’ll want to match the form field names to your merge fields. For example, if you view the form below you'll see in our URL our merge fields will be named: Name and Email. The URL for our survey (using Campaign Monitor syntax as an example) will look something like this:

www.getfeedback.com/r/xxxxxxxx?Name=[name]&Email=[email]

Please note: If you’re bringing in date information from Salesforce to display on a form, you will want to make sure the date field in Salesforce is formatted "YYYY-MM-DD"

Using the 'Hide/Fill with Merge Fields' Feature

Once your form is ready, you can enable this feature on each form field that you would like to be pre-filled based on merge fields that come in via your survey URL by ticking the Hide/fill with merge fields checkbox. 

Use these checkboxes to choose which fields will be hidden and which fields will simply be pre-filled and editable by your survey respondents. If no information is available, the field will be visible to your users and they can fill in the form. 

We’ll create a unique survey URL for you, using the fields in your form question. To find this URL, navigate to the form question in your survey and on the right hand side customization panel click Copy Pre-populate Link to copy the URL to your clipboard. 

Your survey URL at this stage will look something like:

https://www.getfeedback.com/r/ZgD21miF?&gf_q[4634119][9877020]=<Full Name>&gf_q[4634119][9877578]=<Phone Number>&gf_q[4634119][9877579]=<Email Address>&gf_q[4634119][9877580]=<State>&gf_q[4634119][9877581]=<Country> 

Now add the correct syntax to this URL. If you're using Salesforce, it will look something similar to the URL below where you'll replace each component in between the < >'s with the corresponding merge field and the correct syntax:

https://getfeedback.com/r/ZgD21miF?&gf_q[4634119][9877020]={!Contact.Name}&gf_q[4634119][9877578]={!Contact.HomePhone}&gf_q[4634119][9877579]={!Contact.Email}&gf_q[4634119][9877580]={!Contact.MailingState}&gf_q[4634119][9877581]={!Contact.MailingCountry}

If you're sending from Campaign Monitor your link would look similar to the URL below:

https://getfeedback.com/r/ZgD21miF?&gf_q[4634119][9877020]=[fullname]&gf_q[4634119][9877578]=[phone]&gf_q[4634119][9877579]=[email]&gf_q[4634119][9877580]=[state]&gf_q[4634119][9877581]=[country]

 Please note: You might run into issues using the Country form field type depending on the service you are using when sending out your survey. To ensure that this works correctly, test before sending to your list.

When the survey is distributed from your email service provider, this information will be populated based on the data you have on file for your respondent:

If you choose to reveal the form field by unchecking the  Hide/fill with merge fields checkbox and retrieving a new survey URL by copying the link again - your respondent can see and update the form field if needed.