Fundamentally, websites are about creating brand enthusiasm and capturing visitor details, usually via a web form. Sitecore forms have advanced editing capabilities, drag and drop, and include multi-step wizards. They are simple to use and can be quickly mapped to Salesforce using the S4S integration.

 Although "Contact Us" is the most common use of a web form, there are many other reasons to use a form on your site e.g. 

• Conference and event registrations
• Information requests
• Membership applications
• Survey or feedback submissions
• Setting communication preferences
• Job applications

When sending form data to Salesforce, the first consideration is deciding the type of record the form will create or update in Salesforce. This is usually a lead record but it could equally be a contact, case, opportunity, or any other record or a combination of different types of records. S4S has many ways to map a form to Salesforce including two mapping wizards.

S4S Experience Forms Mapping Wizard 

Before using the S4S Experience Forms Mapping Wizard, Sitecore editors need to create a Sitecore Form and assign it the S4S Generic Submit Action. Editors then open the S4S Form Mapping Wizard from the Sitecore Launchpad and select the required form and complete the steps:

• Companies with multiple Salesforce instances (orgs) select the destination org for the form data. This means a website with multiple forms can interact with several Salesforce instances
• Selecting the org populates the Salesforce Object Owner dropdown list with the Salesforce users in the selected org. This is where Salesforce workflow can be used to notify the nominated user whenever a web form is submitted
• Selecting a Salesforce object, or custom object populates the field mapping section which lets the editor map the Sitecore form fields to Salesforce fields
• The Salesforce Object Matching Rule is used to select one or more fields that, if matched, cause an update rather than an insert. This new feature eliminates the need to create a custom save action that does de-duplication checking against Salesforce
• Another feature of the S4S Mapping Wizard is the ability to automatically add leads and contacts to nominated Salesforce campaigns if the form is mapped to one of those objects. A receiver campaign can be selected in the “Map to Salesforce Campaign” section
• The S4S Generic Submit Action associated with the Sitecore Form can push the form data to Salesforce with, or without, Sitecore analytics. The latter option applies to mapped Salesforce lead or contact records only. If this is required the Sitecore editor can check the ‘Push Sitecore Analytics” checkbox. Note that, the S4S Salesforce package needs to be installed to host the Sitecore analytics details

With the form field data and the visitor's web browsing behavior visible in Salesforce, sales reps have an insight into their prospect's needs based on their browsing activities. If the visitor returns and continues exploring the website in the future, S4S will auto-update Salesforce with real-time analytics.

S4S Save to Salesforce Submit Mapping Wizard

This wizard is an alternative to the S4S Experience Forms Mapping Wizard discussed above. In general, it performs the same task but has some added features:

• Wizard is available on the submit action properties within the Form designer (not the Sitecore Launchpad)
• Allows multiple instances on the same form to create or update different objects
• Provides a mechanism to relate objects to each other
• Each Submit Action can connect to a different Salesforce instance, even on the same form
• Mapping option to avoid overwriting existing values
• The same form field can be mapped to multiple Salesforce fields
• Conditional execution

 A frequent use of this wizard is to update staging objects in Salesforce. These objects accept web form submissions and then use Salesforce workflow to determine who will be assigned the lead, and run other business rules before accepting it as a valid entry in Salesforce.  

S4S Custom Save Actions

If the wizards do not adequately support your use case it is a simple task to create a custom submit action for your Sitecore form or custom form. additional code examples can be used to transact with Salesforce objects in real-time.

Ensuring Submitted Data is Never Lost

S4S ensures form submissions are not lost if your Salesforce instance becomes unavailable (e.g. during Salesforce maintenance or network issues). Most S4S customers choose to send an automated email containing the "lost" form data to a nominated recipient. Some simultaneously capture form submissions in the Sitecore contact record, while others log the form data to the Sitecore tree or an independent file. It's also possible to use S4S to schedule retries until Salesforce comes online.  

Conclusion

S4S has a number of powerful out-of-the-box features to capture web form submissions and map the data to Salesforce. Because S4S works in real-time, any Salesforce record can be created, updated, viewed, or deleted making the possibilities virtually endless.

 

FuseIT specializes in CRM integration. Our enterprise S4S Cloud, S4S, CDP4S, S4D, and CDP4D integrations enable the real-time exchange of data from website technologies to Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics 365. Please contact us for more information or to see a demo of these in action.