Prepopulate form with information

Ross Buchner

We are wanting to send an email to our customers asking them to confirm whether the company/contact details we have for them are correct. This means we would need to upload the details we have into a sheet and then send them a link to check their details specifically. We don't want them to have to populate a blank form when we already have most of their details.

Can smartsheet achieve this or does someone know of a platform that does?

Andrée Starå

Hi @Ross Buchner

Yes, Smartsheet would be perfect for that use-case.

You’d use Update Requests, and your customers can update their information with ease.

More info: 

https://help.smartsheet.com/learning-track/smartsheet-intermediate/update-requests

Would that work?

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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Ross Buchner

Thanks Andree!

Would the email have to be triggered directly through smartsheet? Ie we couldnt send them a nice looking email from our company domain when we ask them to update their details?

Andrée Starå

@Ross Buchner

Happy to help!

It depends on how automatic you'd want it to be. There are a couple of options.

You could send a nice looking email and have a link to a form where they either add their information or we pre-populate it through personal links.

How many customers do you want to send it to?

Ross Buchner

Thanks Andre,

I was hoping we could insert a link into a nice looking email that we send them. When they click on the link they would see their prepopulated information and just update anything that looked incorrect.

Approx 4000 customers.

Appreciate your help.

Ross Buchner

Hello Andree, just wondering if you had a recommendation in relation to my last comment?

Andrée Starå

@Ross Buchner

We would need to create a form and then use the Query string feature to make each URL unique and pre-filled.

We would,

• add the data that you want to have already included in the form
• build the URL with formulas
• use the data to create the email list

Make sense?

Would that work?

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2478871-url-query-string-form-default-values

Ross Buchner

Thanks Andree, certainly sounds promising.

Would it still work if we had 20-30 fields that needed to be prepopulated?

Andrée Starå

@Ross Buchner

You're more than welcome!

I haven't tested that many fields, but I think it will work as long as we don't hit any limitations. For Smartsheet, it's 4000 characters in a cell, but if we hit that limit, we could build the URL somewhere else.