String value "default" set by form submissions

[solson2]

Hi All, 

We've been experiencing a phenomenon with our new leads coming in (all from the same form) where the data in certain fields being input as "default." I've looked for the cause of this in the activity logs of each of the leads and it appears this is happening at the form level. I'm wondering if the problem comes down to some of the fields had the form pre-fill enabled. Has anyone else had this experience? 

[SanfordWhiteman]

The string value “default” is valid for any string field — it’s not special. Marketo will Pre-Fill with this value the same as any other. So it’s likely you have a Smart Campaign stamping this value.

[solson2]

@SanfordWhiteman That was my assumption as well, so I did a deep dive of our smart campaigns and couldn't find one that was changing the data value. Instead, the activity log suggested that "default" was being input by the lead when filling out the form. This is what made me think it could possibly be a form pre-fill error. 

[SanfordWhiteman]

Pre-Fill gets the value from the lead record. It’s doubtful there’s anything wrong with that process. You’ll have to link to your page so we can look at it more deeply.

[solson2 · Accepted solution]

Update: I was able to find the problem thanks to a combination of feedback. 

When the postal code field was added to the form, the pre-form fill was enabled and the field was set to accept text values vs numerical values. Because the postal code field is a string field, the string value “default”was autofilling into the form upon form fill.  As soon as I edited the form, the problem ceased. 

I also wanted to add that we had a composite field that was combining all of our address fields during the sync to Dynamics. This was causing the system to change the value- which threw us off during the investigation. 

To solve for the postal codes: I created a smart campaign to update the zip codes based on time zone and inferred city of the leads.