Creating forms and sharing them with students is easy. Gecko allows you to level up your forms by pre-filling them with data you already know about the student.
This article walks you through two form pre-filling methods: static values (values that will be the same for everyone who completes the form) and dynamic values (values unique to the student filling in the form).
Static values
Pre-filling a form with static values allows you to pre-fill options on your form for anybody you share the link with. Gecko allows you to pre-select both visible and hidden fields.
Click on your form and head to the Share tab to get started. Go to the Prepopulate Form Fields section and select the field you'd like to pre-fill on your form. Add the value(s) you'd like to use and click Update Link.
And that's all you need to do! Your Webform link and Embed code will now contain the pre-filled selection you've made. Feel free to repeat the above method with any additional fields you'd like to prepopulate or share your augmented form link with students.
Dynamic values
Prefilling a form dynamically allows you to populate fields on your form with data you already hold on the student's contact record.
This can be useful when sharing a form where you don't want a student to have to fill in the information you already know about them (such as name, email, or course/major of interest).
To create a dynamically prepopulated form, we'll need three things:
1️⃣ Finding your form link
Click on your form and head to the Share tab. Copy your Webform Link. This is the link to our basic blank form.
Example:
https://app.geckoform.com/public/#/modern/21FO00r8rptkrp007fm36breve
2️⃣ Identifying the fields we want to pre-populate
Click the Designer tab of your form, edit the field you want to pre-populate, and note the value in the Template tag field. Imagine our value was field2765. Let's update our link (from step 1) as such:
https://app.geckoform.com/public/#/modern/21FO00r8rptkrp007fm36breve?field2765=
Note that the basic form now ends in a question mark, and how field2765 has an equals sign immediately after it.
3️⃣ Finding your Gecko contact field
Finally, we must tell Gecko which contact field we want to pull into our form link. Navigate to your Gecko account Settings > Contact Fields, find the contact field you want to reference, and note its Template tag. Imagine that our tag was program_of_interest. Let's update our link from the previous steps:
https://app.geckoform.com/public/#/modern/21FO00r8rptkrp007fm36breve?field2765={{contact.program_of_interest}}
Note that we've used curly braces to wrap the contact field tag. This lets Gecko know that it's a dynamic value that should be pulled from the contact module, specifically the program of interest. You can learn more about template tags or view a list of popular tags here.
If we wanted to pre-fill additional fields, we could keep adding them to the URL string using an ampersand (&) character.
https://app.geckoform.com/public/#/modern/21FO00r8rptkrp007fm36breve?field2765={{contact.program_of_interest}}&email={{contact.email}}&full_name={{contact.full_name.first_name}}|{{contact.full_name.last_name}}
Once your link is complete, share it with students via text or email.
Troubleshooting
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