Tech Tip: How to Use URL Parameters to Pre-Fill Form Fields

Often a 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.

Filling in the fields of an electronic form can be repetitive and time-consuming. Rather than making users fill in those fields, organizations can pre-populate the generic form with the correct information that multiple respondents will answer in the same way.

This can all be done by linking to a specialized URL that includes all the information you want pre-filled in the form when users click it.

For example, let’s say you were emailing an event singup form to clients, and your email lists were already sorted by region. For the emails going to California, you could change the link from:

www.website.com/signupform

To:

www.website.com/signupform/?State=CA

To dig a little deeper, let’s take a quick look at the basic structure of these specialized URLs:

baseURL?variable1=value

All you need to do is replace baseURL with the form’s current 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

In the example below, on a purchase order form that is only available to Laserfiche employees, the Company field was pre-populated using the following URL:

baseURL?Company=Laserfiche.
Browser window with pre-filled URL in address bar.

Note that these URLs can also be generated using a digital workflow.
Pre-populating form fields can both reduce errors and save time for whoever is filling it out, increasing efficiency of staff and satisfaction among customers.

Customer Spotlight: Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group

Discover how Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group wanted to deliver a more seamless experience for its staff and customers. Learn how online forms and other technologies helped the firm reach its goals.

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Records Management Makeover, Kentucky Style

Kathy Jenisch, Records Manager for Kentucky Sanitation District No. 1 (SD1), had quite a messy document management problem to clean up.

Her organization, the second-largest public sewer utility in Kentucky, had been fined $40,000 for failing to produce just eight pieces of email — and that didn’t include the operational expense of paying several employees to spend six hours a day for three weeks searching for documents they couldn’t find.

Then she discovered that the organization’s offsite storage facility was allowing records to get moldy or rodent-infested — leading to the destruction of almost six tons of documents.

On top of that, she had to comply with a new state government transparency law that required her to create a website that displayed records about the organization’s financial expenditures as well as its annual budget and annual audit.  The records needed to be searchable, updated monthly, and maintained on the web site for at least three years.

The solution to all these problems was obvious. Digitize SD1’s records.

That’s not to say it was a simple process. SD1 did it on a project by project basis.

One such project involved 27 tubs of documents. Jenisch spent $20,000 hiring a digitizing service to prepare and scan the documents. The job was completed in five weeks, as opposed to the years the department estimated it would have taken to do on its own, she says.

Having records digitized paid off when SD1 had to respond to requests for documents associated with a state audit. Instead of pulling HR file folders from archive and hand searching for the documents, the search took only a matter of minutes. SD1 was also able to summon up historical documents dating back to the creation of the organization, board meeting minutes, policies and procedures, travel expenses, board and staff contact information, and budgets. SD1 could search and copy everything to a CD in about an hour. Without digitized documents, it would have taken days to comply with the audit request. SD1 passed its state audit with compliments to its record keeping, and aced its local annual financial audit as well.

Jenisch has advice for other organizations contemplating a similar move. “Just start somewhere,” she says. “Pick a project and get started.  You can’t mess it up, it can always be changed or revised.”