Organizations are connecting with constituents across an increasing number of platforms and channels. With greater interaction comes an overwhelming amount of data that is too often stored in spreadsheets, meeting notes, and emails. By integrating forms with Salesforce, organizations can streamline their data intake process and store information in a single location. When tools and systems ‘talk’ to each other in this way they provide an organized, holistic view of constituents. In this post we explore how organizations can use tools, like FormAssembly, to automatically store and organize data in Salesforce.

Get Organized

A common challenge for organizations who gather information from external sources – constituents, members, volunteers, and staff – is that the collected data is manually entered into the Salesforce system. A process which often leads to inconsistencies, duplicates and low data integrity. Frequently, data entry falls to someone on the team to track and update this information – taking time and resources away from other important work at the organization.

Tools like FormAssembly, among others, integrate directly with Salesforce and keep your system organized. They automatically update or create new records based on information collected through externally facing forms. When integrated properly forms can create a new contact record per submitted inquiry, update a household record with a change of address, connect event feedback to an opportunity, or attach a new application to an existing record.

Use Forms to Streamline Processes

The relationship between form builders and Salesforce is based on field mapping. For example, an organization can distinguish volunteer applications by program. When mapped correctly the associated ‘program’ field in Salesforce will automatically update to match the submitted information. This level of automation and detail is useful for reporting and analytics. Staff can instantly create reports on ‘program type’ to gain insight on the pool of volunteers. Or, staff can view the individual’s record for specific detail on a volunteer’s program involvement.

Another common use case is triaging incoming information, such as online inquiries. With an integrated form users can create a ‘question type’ field and map it accordingly. Then, a rule can be made in Salesforce to assign a particular ‘question type’ to the appropriate staff member.

Forms can also be configured to prefill information directly from Salesforce. Common prefilled fields include information that is rarely changed (e.g. name, record ID, and email address). This level of automation ensures that new information is updated on the correct contact record, streamlines your business processes and creates a high standard for data quality. Most notably, it allows staff to focus their efforts on what is most important – your mission.

Integrate Forms with Salesforce

To connect external data with Salesforce, you must first build a form that gathers all of the required information from the external source. When doing so consider the end-user – what do they expect to see from your brand, what personal information are they comfortable sharing and how much time are they willing to spend on the form? Once constituent expectations are understood organizations can use FormAssembly and Salesforce to create an integrated form:

• Design the form based on your organization’s brand standards and your constituent’s expectations. Include logos, brand colors and appropriate language.
• Connect the form to your Salesforce instance. The first step is identifying what action should be taken when a form is submitted – it can either create a new record or update an existing one.

• Map the fields on your form to the appropriate fields in Salesforce.

Once you have mapped your fields the form is ready to go live and the information will automatically sync into Salesforce – removing all manual data entry.

Add Documents

Often forms will require supporting documentation to confirm eligibility, meet legal requirements, or verify information. Fortunately, most form tools have an out of the box functionality for uploading documents. When integrated with Salesforce the document can attach to the appropriate record – making the information immediately accessible to staff. To automatically attach an uploaded document from FormAssembly to Salesforce follow these steps:

• Select the record type that you want to attach the document to. Set a lookup to ensure that the correct record will be updated. This lookup should be a unique identifier such as Contact ID.

• Appropriately map the fields. For specific information on what each field represents visit FormAssembly’s How To: Upload New Salesforce Files with FormAssembly.

• To ensure you can see the files on your Salesforce records, add ‘Files’ to the page layout.

Adding documentation is just one functionality that benefits form users. It provides an additional layer of automation that can greatly improve the constituent and staff experience.

Summary + Conclusion

Organizations can streamline their operations by collecting and storing the information they gather in one common place. This makes communication with constituents easier, encourages collaboration, and saves time too often spent tracking down information across multiple databases (or even offline). More importantly, it reduces the amount of staff effort needed to manually transfer information and encourages data integrity. FormAssembly and other tools facilitate these processes by seamlessly connecting information with the Salesforce records your organization uses every day.