Form Prefill Options

   Journey Manager (JM) Previously known as Transact Manager (TM).  |    Platform Developer  |  5.1 & Higher This feature is related to 5.1 and higher.

Manager offers several options to prefill a form with some data, including applicant data, when the form is rendered to the applicant. Form prefill is a great way to significantly improves user experience and reduce data entry errors. You need to configure or map form’s data with prefill data, which will affect a form’s XML at render time. Manager distinguishes the following mappings:

Property prefill mappings: client, form, user properties

This allows you to reuse data that is already stored in Manager:

• User data
• Organizational data (Reuse across multiple forms)
• Configure form specific properties without needing to customize or redeploy the form
• Can be configured to sync or update the user properties maintained in Manager

XML prefill mappings: external XML file containing prefill data

It provides the following benefits:

• Third party and external data
• Can create mappings to a particular XML schema

Parameter prefill mappings: HTTP request parameters, session attributes or cookies

It has the following advantages and disadvantages:

Pros:

Data can be provided as part of the URL (simplicity)

Cons:

Difficult to map and provide complex data structures.

Extracts of Submission Data can also be configured via the Form Data Configuration.

A form’s data configuration can contain one or more of the following methods of prefill data mappings in a form's XML data structure:

• Property Prefill Mapping - properties for the form version are used for sourcing your data to prefill your form.
• Input XML Prefill Mapping - An external XML file containing prefill data is obtained at the time that the form is rendered. This needs a prefill service to obtain the data values.
• Request Param Prefill Mapping - prefill data is passed through as HTTP request parameters, session attributes or cookies.

Before a form is rendered and presented to form users, the various prefill methods are applied in the following order:

1. Form XML data
2. Property prefill - client forms
3. Request parameters
4. Property - user profiles

As a form can contain multiple prefill methods, it is important to understand the way this is handled in Manager. Where multiple mappings to the same form field exist, prefill data obtained at later stages overrides earlier obtained prefill data.

The form prefill is a flexible tool that allows you to implement various customer requirements. You can even mask some mask certain fields, such as data of birth, phone number or address, on a form resume to improve application security.

Next, learn about form property prefill mapping.