Is it possible to bind 2 form fields to the same Marketo field?

[Anonymous]

Hello!

I'm trying to build a form and have a question about setting up fields.

The form I'm trying to build is pretty standard fare except for a text box field at the bottom. The text box field is tied to a field in Marketo which will send out a sales alert when it is filled.

Above the text box field is a piece of rich text (not attaches to any field) which simply exists as an instruction for the text box field (i.e. it asks the visitor a question whcih they answer in the text box field).

My question is this: is it possible to set the rich text above the text box field as a checkbox which is tied to the same field as the text box in Marketo? It sounds logical in my head but I feel that it would create a lot of issues. For instance, how would it affect form load? If the record that gets loaded already has data in that field, how does it pre-populate the checkbox and the text area?  Or, more importantly, how do both fields update the apptComment field?  Doesn’t one take priority and overwrite the other value?

The way it currently works with the smart campaign is that it checks if the text box (i.e. the marketo field on form submission) is not empty and then sends the alert.

Would love to hear some clarity around this.

Thank you.

how that is supposed to work on a form load.  If the record that gets loaded already has data in that field, how does it pre-populate the checkbox and the text area?  Or, more importantly, how do both fields update the apptComment field?  Doesn’t one take priority and overwrite the other value?

[Grégoire_Miche2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Danish,

This will not be possible at form level without some JS development.

But why don't you just use 2 Marketo fields, one being a checkbox and the other being a text field ? You would then use some "field visitbility" rules to show the text field only when the checkbox is checked. You would also use some smart campaigns to reset the values once the alert email has been sent. (to nullify a field, just use a "change data value" flow step with a new value = NULL).

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Hi Gregoire,

That totally makes sense. Thank you!

[Anonymous]

Gregoire,

If I set up two fields (the checkbox and then the text box one based on visibility rules from the first), how does data write to the Marketo? Do I tie both form fields to the same fields in Marketo?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Danish,

The 2 form fields will have to map to 2 separate database fields. But on the database level, you do not necessarily have them to be a boolean and a text field. You could have 2 text fields instead.

Also, you could imagine to have a smart campaign that concatenates both fields and store the result in one of them. This SC would trigger on form fillout.

-Greg

[SanfordWhiteman]

Can you answer my query above?  I think this is going to be an easier approach, if you can articulate what exactly you want written to the textarea in each case.

[SanfordWhiteman]

You can certainly add a checkbox in a Rich Text field, then attach behaviors to it using JS. It doesn't have to correspond to a Marketo field in this case (you can put anything you want in the RT/HTML). 

But I don't understand exactly what you mean by having a checkbox (which is a boolean yes/no) send data to a textarea (which is free text). Do you want it to, for example, write the string "yes" to the textarea (if the textarea is then empty) and then hide the textarea?  This is quite possible. You'd then have to do the reverse on every form load as well: if the textarea is prefilled with existing data, then hide the checkbox.  All of this is doable.