Using Account Engagement Form Handlers to Integrate your Existing Web Forms

This post in our Doing More with Account Engagement Forms series looks at how to use Account Engagement Form Handlers to integrate existing web forms without disrupting any back-end processes.

Some of your website forms may be already set up to trigger internal processes, e.g. logins or online purchases. If this is the case, a standard iframe Account Engagement form may not be able to recreate these processes exactly. Especially where they integrate with other third-party applications. So, you may want to consider using a server-side post instead to integrate these forms with Account Engagement.

What is a Server-Side Post?

A server-side post occurs after the data has been captured by your existing form. It then posts the captured data onwards to an Account Engagement Form Handler. Therefore, you keep your existing business processes intact without the need for extensive website/developer changes.

To get this set up, simply create your Form Handler in Account Engagement to receive the fields that will be passed through from your existing web form. Ask your developers to send a data post from the server to the Form Handler Endpoint URL, found on the summary page of the Form Handler. For more help creating a Form Handler, check out this Account Engagement help page.

Cookies

A server-side post can also pass the Account Engagement browser cookie through with the data so future web activity can be tracked. This requires an extra script to extract the cookie ID from the browser and pass it to the visitor_id field in Account Engagement. This is something your developer will be able to set you up with. Please note that Kiosk mode should not be enabled for any Form Handlers using this functionality.

An added benefit is that once data is passed to Account Engagement along with the cookie, any iframe Account Engagement forms on your site will be pre-populated. For example, a login form passes data to Account Engagement via a server-side post. Once a user has logged in, the Contact Us and Download a Whitepaper forms that have been created in Account Engagement are pre-filled, so registered users do not have to repeat their details.

*Please note: this page has been updated to reflect Pardot’s name change to Account Engagement.