Question About Embedded Form

[Anonymous]

My client has a form "embedded" on a web page but it's been done in a way that I don't understand. I put "embedded" in quotation marks because the "embed code" for the form is not there, and the fields in the actual Marketo form don't entirely match what's on the web page. Yet if I complete the form on the web page, it shows up in my activity log as Filled Out Form (name of Mkto form). Could one of you coding wizards like Sanford Winfield​ or Gregoire Michel​ please take a look at the source code on the web page and explain to me how this works? That is, how are values entered into this web page form fed to Marketo so that it thinks the Marketo form has been completed?

This is the page with the form:

Sign Up - Qubole Data Services (QDS)

I need to understand this because there are some problems. For example, a big problem is that the form as it appears on the web page (on the second page) asks for "Full Name" and if you enter, say, "Denise Greenberg", this populates both first and last name. However, if you enter only "Denise", that populates first name and leaves last name empty (which means the lead can't be synced to SFDC). I want to fix this but don't know how because unlike a true Marketo embedded form,  changing the form has no effect on the form that's actually on the web page (and there are other problems, too).

Thanks in advance!

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

The custom form is posting to their server api.qubole.com, and then their server code (could be Java, PHP, C#, Ruby, whatever) is remapping fields to the Marketo equivalents and reposting to Marketo. For example, the form gathers the field user[email] but the real Marketo field is Email, so their code is not simply passing form posts through to Marketo but changing them in important ways. 

To make matters much worse, they aren't even running Munchkin, so Marketo can't associate the form post with a known lead.

Because they are reposting to Marketo's forms endpoint (as a real form would) you still see a Filled Out Form activity for a form with a certain ID + name, but as you noticed you have no control over what is presented on the form.  There's no relationship between the Marketo form descriptor and the JS they use to control the form in the browser, nor any connection to the other code they use on their server.

This is not a recommended architecture for a number of reasons, not only because of the above problems but because they are limited to 30 form posts total per minute (meaning a hacker could bring down the form functionality easily).

[Anonymous]

Thank you, Sanford! Much appreciated!