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Intro

Gravity Forms dynamic population is one of the secret, yet interesting features of the Gravity Forms plugin, which gives one a lot of flexibility in what they can do with the form. If properly combined, with the already great set of features of the plugin that is, they allow one to hasten the lead analysis and categorization process, which may come in handy, due to obvious reasons. In this article, I’ll outline several useful case scenarios of the usage of the Gravity Forms dynamic population feature.

Example #1

Let’s say we have a simple contact form on our website, which your visitors land on from different pages, say you have a call to action button: “Request a Quote” and a call to action button: “Ask me a Question”.

With Gravity Forms’ dynamic population, you could have the form subject field, being auto populated, say:

Email
Please let us know what's on your mind. Have a question for us? Ask away.

Email
Please let us know what's on your mind. Have a question for us? Ask away.

This is particularly useful if you want to automatically divide the leads into groups. With the Subject in place, you’ll be able to identify the ongoing leads and categorize them into groups, focusing on the most important one, or assigning leads from any group to the different employees of your company.

 

Example #2

Let’s say that, based on a different subject you want to display an extra field, i.e. you’d want to know more, up front. With a dynamic population, you can do so with ease. Say, if our topic was “Help me with the website”, which could be triggered by another CTA, somewhere on your site, you could reveal a new select field, where you’d ask your visitors for more details.

If you change the subject, the extra field will be hidden. This approach allows one to further divide your leads into more specific subcategories. In that case, some of them could be more important than others.

Example #3

Let’s say you have a business directory, where each business has a different Gravity Forms form assigned to it. You want to make sure that each business owner receives a separate notification to his business email. For this article, let’s assume that each business is a custom post type, with a custom meta field: email. In that case, we should do the following:

  1. Add a hidden email field to the form.
  2. Enable dynamic population for that field.
  3. Create a Form Notification, which sends a separate email to the business owner.
Name(Required)
Email(Required)
Please let us know what's on your mind. Have a question for us? Ask away.
This field is hidden when viewing the form

In this case scenario, our field is prefilled in with [email protected], which will send a separate notification to my contact email, upon submission.

How to setup dynamic population and related

In this part of the tutorial, I’ll teach you how to set up the Gravity Forms dynamic population, conditional logic, and new form notification yourself.

How to add dynamic population to any field

  1. Go to Forms -> Create New Form.
  2. Choose the appropriate form from the “Explore Form Templates” popup. In my case, it was “Simple Contact Form”.
  3. Add a new Topic/Subject field, by dragging and dropping the Single Line Text field, below the Email fields.
  4. Click on the field -> Field Settings -> Check the “Allow field to be populated dynamically” checkbox.
  5. Input, your dynamic population parameter name.

Note: Click on the image to show it in full size.

Now then, with our form and dynamic population in place, we can choose from several options to populate the field dynamically. In my case, I decided to use the shortcode, dynamic population, so the trick is to pass in the parameter name while embeding the shortcode, say:

[gravityform id="7" title="false" description="false" tabindex="10" field_values="wp_doin_dynamic_topic=Request a Quote"]

Another way of doing so, is using a query string, say with the former buttons in place, we could change their address to: https://wp-doin.com/gravity-dynamic-population-tips-tricks/?wp_doin_dynamic_topic=Request a Quote, which would fill in these values directly from the query string parameters.

How to add conditional logic and create a new notification

When it comes to conditional logic, it’s Example #2 from above. This feature allows us to hide or reveal any field, based on the choice or value of any preceeding field. I love this feature as it allows one to further divide the leads into subcategories, which if combined with notifications may automatically send leads over to specific employees of your company, reducing the amount of manual time to do so.

Assuming you have completed the steps from the previous part of this tutorial, here’s what you need to do to.

    1. Go to your previously created form.
    2. Add a new Select Field, via the drag & drop interface and fill it in with values.
    3. Click on Field Settings -> Conditional Logic.
    4. Make sure the field is visible only if the topic is set to: “Help me with website“.
    5. Pre-populate the email field, using steps from the previous part of the tutorial.
    6. Go to Forms -> Hover on a form -> Notifications -> Add New.

With the above settings in place, your form should:

    1. Automate some of the fields.
    2. Send a confirmation email to the prepopulated email, which may be different per each submission.
    3. Combine the two, and you’ll be able to send personalized emails, based on the choices made by your visitors and automatically send them over to specific people responsible for different tasks. Time savior, isn’t it?

Summary

Gravity Forms Dynamic Population is a secret yet powerful feature that can significantly enhance your forms’ functionality. By allowing fields to be pre-filled with dynamic data, you can create a more personalized and efficient user experience. This feature becomes incredibly potent when combined with Conditional Logic and personalized Notifications.

Conditional Logic enables your forms to respond dynamically based on user input, ensuring that only relevant fields are shown to the user. This not only streamlines the form-filling process but also helps in collecting more accurate and targeted data. For instance, you can set up a form to display additional questions based on a user’s previous answers, making the form more interactive and engaging.

Personalized Notifications take this a step further by enabling you to send customized emails or messages based on the user’s inputs. This could mean sending different confirmation emails depending on the selections made in the form, or notifying specific team members when certain conditions are met. By tailoring communications to the specific needs and actions of your users, you can enhance customer satisfaction and improve the efficiency of your business processes.

Together, these features can transform how you collect, process, and respond to information, making your business automation workflows more intelligent and responsive. With Gravity Forms Dynamic Population, Conditional Logic, and personalized Notifications working in concert, you can create a highly adaptable and powerful system that meets the unique needs of your business and its customers.

Reference links

Gravity Forms Documentation on dynamic population

 

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