What are Formulayt fields?
Formulayt provides administrators the ability to manage form fields and customize them for specific use cases. Fields are the building blocks of your forms, and proper management ensures optimal user experience and data collection.
Accessing the Fields area
The Fields area can be navigated to from the left-hand menu under Setup. When opened, it displays all fields associated with your account.
Finding specific fields
The Fields area has two tabbed tables. One for visible fields, one for hidden fields. Visible fields are any field that a visitor to your website (and your forms) will interact with.
Note: Any hidden fields that you create are automatically added to every gate that you create.
Use the search input to locate fields by any information that appears in the table. We recommend establishing a globally agreed taxonomy or field naming guidelines to save time as your number of fields grows.
Creating a new field
To create a new field, click the Create a field button on the top right. This will load the field editor.
Field configuration options
Basic settings
Field Types - Determines what input will display to users and what data it accepts. Options in the Field types dropdown include:
Simple Text
Large Text
Check Box
Email Address
Phone Number
Country Selector
Picklist
Multi-Select Picklist
Checkbox Group
Radio Button Group
Hidden Fields (not displayed to web users and automatically added to every gate that you create).
Custom Content - (HTML content to be displayed in the form)
Note: The receiving platform should be setup to receive data that matches your field types. If you are sending data to a Marketing Automation form, ensure the field types in that form are compatible with what is being sent. For example don't send text data into a receiving form field that only accepts numeric data.
Field name
The field name determines the HTML name that the field sends as. In many cases the field names should be named to align with the field names in your receiving platform (e.g. marketing automation or CRM). Field names can only contain alphanumeric characters and have no spaces. It is important to establish guidelines for naming fields to support proper organisation within the platform.
Label
The text that appears to users on the form alongside or above the field input (depending on your account styling). For example, "Please Select a Country". This can be translated using the translation management area.
Placeholder text
Appears as light-colored text inside the input area when blank. This improves form UX by providing hints or format examples (e.g., "email@formulayt.com"). This overwrites any default placeholders and can be translated.
Pre-population source
Fields can be pre-populated with data from various sources while the form loads. Options include:
Fixed value - A simple, static text value
Gate attribute - Data from the gate configuration (e.g. download URL)
Gate editor - Allow gate editors to set the pre-population value on a gate by gate basis
Form interaction - Data about the form submission (submission time, blind submission status)
Query string - Capture values from query strings in page URLs
Meta tag - Capture data from meta tags on the page
Form field - Copy values from another field in the same form
Page - Data from the web page (e.g. URL or domain)
Browser - Data from the browser (e.g. browser or OS)
Session - Data from the user's session (e.g. session referrer)
UTM parameters - UTM parameters including first touch, last touch and current session
Formula - Concatenate data together from the other data sources
Marketing automation - If you have integrated your marketing automation platform it may appear in this list. Selecting a field from the presented list configures Formulayt to pre-populate with a value from a user's profile in your marketing automation platform
Google analytics - If you have enabled the Google Analytics App you can request to pull certain values from the Google Analytics session on the page (e.g. Google Client ID)
Browser memory timeout
Browser memory allows Formulayt to remember what data a user has submitted in a form for a period of time. The data is stored in the user's browser and is used to pre-populate fields for the next form they view.
Browser memory is useful to reduce down the number of times Formulayt has to query your marketing automation platform. It also ensures any submitted form data is useful immediately in a session (for things like progressive profiling). And it can be used where there is no marketing automation tracking in place; to enable progressive profiling.
This type of pre-population is different to the pre-population sources listed above and only applies once a user has submitted a form. If a value is available from browser memory it will overwrite any value from a pre-population source.
Translate field messaging
Controls whether field messaging (label, placeholder, validation) is available for translation. You can find out more about languages and translations in our Translation Management Guide.
Note: Bear in mind, the type of field you select will change the options available at later stages of customization.
Field-specific options
Checkbox fields
When using checkboxes, you must provide a checked value that will be sent to the receiving platform (e.g. marketing automation or CRM). If the field is not checked, the value will always be blank.
Picklist fields
For picklists, you must provide both labels (displayed to users) and values (sent to the receiving platform (e.g. marketing automation or CRM)).
Bulk adding picklist options - You can add multiple options at once using this format:
Value|Label
Value|Label
Value|Label
Picklist translation options:
Translate picklist option labels - Makes the visible labels available for translation
Translate picklist option values - Makes the submission values available for translation
Prevent the picklist option labels from being translated using root language values if the gate is using a sub-language (e.g. de-ch cannot inherit from de) - This option can be used to prevent options from inheriting a translation from a root language, if the gate is using a subculture language. An example of this might be a business department dropdown, where only certain options should appear in certain languages (e.g. an option might appear in German (de) but not Swiss German (de-ch)). This option is normally used in conjunction with the 'Hide any options that don't have a translated label' option to control which options appear in which language.
Hide any picklist options that don't have a translated label - If activated, this option will cause any options that don't have a translation to be hidden, instead of being displayed in the default language (which is normally English). This is useful for hiding certain options, such as salutations, in language where they are not used (e.g. Miss).
Sort picklist option in alphabetical order after translation - This option will cause picklists to be sorted alphabetically after translation, instead of displaying in the order that they are entered in
Custom name
When using Custom content, content name will not be displayed to users but is only used internally to show gate editors where the content will appear on forms, and also to identify the content for translation.
Validation settings
Custom validation message - All fields use default validation messaging specific to the field type when the user attempts to submit the form with invalid fields. This messaging can be overridden for a field.
Custom validators - Custom validation rules can be added to this field. Each validation rule must take the form of a valid regular expression.
Rules
Rules tell a field how to behave under a given set of conditions. You can learn more in our Form Field Rules Guide.
Publishing your changes
Once you have created or edited fields, you will need to push the changes live before you start seeing them on gates or in the form type editor.
