Update a contacts form field using url params

[Mark_Wallace1]

Hi All

I have a third party system integrated to marketo.  A lead comes in and is passed to this system where it is either marked as approved or rejected after a human assessment.

The approval is made on a marketo form link with the contacts email address as a url parameter.

The form that pulls the url parameter to a hidden email field, the approver then sets approve or reject for that contact and the intention is that that value is passed into the contacts fields using the email address to identify the record to update.

This seems to create a new lead (a duplicate) rather than updating the original contacts field.  It can even add a new lead if the address doesnt exist (this occured in testing) but it wont update the original record with the field value.

Hope that makes sense.   Does that plan sound reasonable.  If the email value is filled by a cookie this approach works but the hidden field pulling the email from the url doesnt seem to work.

Any ideas?

thanks an advance

Mark

[SanfordWhiteman]

You can't update email addresses directly from the client side. You need to have the new email address go to a secondary field (Email Address - User-Modified or whatever) then use Change Data Value.

[Mark_Wallace1]

Thanks for replying.

I'm using the email to identify the contact that will be approved or rejected.  It might be that I have to get the approver to enter the email address and then that will set the status field to approved or rejected.  Rather than trying to pull the email from the url into a hidden field.

I was attempting to take the email from the url parameter but that doesnt seem to work.

So the email address wont change but it is populating from the url to allow the form fill to update that specific emails status field to approve or reject.

Hope that makes sense.

[SanfordWhiteman]

I'd have to see the actual code you're using.

If the form post looks right on the wire and the fields aren't blocking updates, the update doesn't get "censored" by Marketo due to the origin of the ​Email value -- the server doesn't know where it came from. The value could've come from user entry, JS ​setValues() ​call, hidden field, whatever. You just have to get the referral form aspect right.