Sometimes it may be useful to auto-fill fields on a form. Examples of this would would be:
- Send invitation emails to prospective registrants with a custom link to click. When they click the link, the ePly registration form would open with their name, company, address, etc. prefilled.
- When your website uses a member login functionality, a link could be added on your website to open the ePly registration form prefilled with their member information.
There are 3 ways this can be implemented, send invitations from within the ePly system, pass the information in the querystring or post the information to the ePly registration form.
1. Sending invitations under the Contact tab in ePly
If you upload your list of contacts and set up and send your event invitations from the "Contacts" tab the auto-population of the contact information fields on the form can be automatic.
- When you set up your email template, add in the merge field called [FormLink] and then when you go to send your invitation, you will select the form that you are inviting people to register on.
- You will need to contact ePly support to enable the auto population feature for you.
- If you would like to prevent people from being able to edit the pre-populated data (for example you don't want to allow a name to be changed), ask ePly support to lock the field for you.
The next two options are advanced features and typically requires some level of programming on the client's side to implement. Please contact ePly to activate this functionality.
2. How it works - querystring
To use the querystring method, first ask ePly to acitvate the feature. A link similar to the following would be inserted into an email, or made clickable from a website:
In the example above, 'John' would be automatically inserted into the FirstName field, and 'Doe' would be automatically inserted into the LastName field
- Replace 'myEventName' with any of the URL's that are set up for your event on the 'Form Links' page.
- The spelling of the field must be spelled exactly as defined by the 'Field Name' for each field (including spaces and capitilization).
- Each field to be automatically filled in is separated by the '&' symbol.
3. How it works - post
To use the post method, first ask ePly to activate the feature.
- To use the post method, simply set up the variables to be posted to the ePly registration form.
- The post url would be your registration form, eg: https://www.eply.com/myEventName
- Replace 'myEventName' with any of the URL's that are set up for your event on the 'Form Links' page.
- The spelling of each field to be posted must be spelled exactly as defined by the 'Field Name' for each field (including spaces and capitilization).
Pros and Cons
The querysting technique is typically easier to implement, but shows the user's information in the URL. Usually this is not a problem. The post method requires a higher level of expertise by your programming staff.
