Tech Tip: Using URL Parameters to Pre-Fill Form Fields

Written by User Education

Published: January 6, 2014

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By Eric Cressey
Technical Writer

Often a form will contain several generic fields that many respondents will answer in the same way. Rather than making users fill in these fields, which can be repetitive and time consuming, organizations can pre-populate them with the correct information so that, when users open the form, these fields will already be filled in. To do so, organizations will need the form’s URL and the variable names associated with the fields they want to fill in.

Field values can be passed into a form by appending them to the form’s URL using the following structure:

baseURL?variable1=value

Replace baseURL with the form’s URL, variable1 with the variable associated with the field to be filled in and value with the appropriate field value. To fill in multiple fields, insert the ampersand symbol (&) before any additional variables:

baseURL?variable1=value&variable2=value

For example, on a purchase order form that is only available to Laserfiche employees, the Company field can be pre-populated using the following URL: baseURL?Company=Laserfiche.

In addition to manually specifying URL parameters to pre-fill fields, organizations can also use Workflow to create these customized URLs.

Note: URL parameters can only be used with the starting form of a business process.