Proposal: Retrieval of Defaults w/ Form Builder and Form Processor

Overview

At the CiviSprint in Germany we found out that Submission forms (Form Builder) currently do not support use cases such as self-service forms that allow users to check and change their existing contact data.

A lot of Wordpress projects use CalderaForms together with Form Processor to transfer the data to CiviCRM. In CalderaForms there is an option to activate Retrieval of Defaults:

As well as in Form Processor:

Caldera Forms allows passing URL parameters to the form processor – e.g. a contact CiviCRM ID along with a checksum to prove that the user is allowed to see and edit data for this particular contact, as a way of authentication without requiring a login. These URLs look as follows:

https//link.org/example-page/cid={contact.contact_id}&{contact.checksum}

With this information the form processor can retrieve data from within CiviCRM when the form is loaded and prefill fields in the form.

What works in the Form Builder already?

• Adding Form Processor as an entity
• Using Form Processor fields for a form
• Submitting/Creating data entered in submission form
• Using the entity id as an URL parameter (requires login)

What is missing?

• Option to enable retrieval of defaults (like in CalderaForms) to fill forms with existing data.
• Forms that work for anonymous users, using a checksum for authentication

Comments

If you need any further information, please let me know. I could assist in setting up an example in a test environment since I am not able to implement this function myself.