Creating a Form

To create a form:

  1. Click Actions on the side navigation bar, and select either Create Form or Create Form from Existing Form. (Not seeing this choice? Refer to the Side navigation bar changes topic.)
  2. Complete the steps:
  3. Activate your form when you are ready.

After you finish, you can review all open forms, access the form dashboard, and processes and close a form with one click. Click The Forms icon Forms on the side navigation bar and choose Active Forms. (Not seeing this choice? Refer to the Side navigation bar changes topic.)You can also search for forms from the global navigation.

After you have created a form, there are three ways to use it in your marketing efforts:

  • Generate a URL to use with a non-personalized, blank version of your form
  • Generate links to personalized versions of the form for use in your email campaigns
  • Host the form content externally and submit the responses to the Oracle Responsys form handler for processing

Learn more about using your form.

Step 1: Form Summary

On the form summary page, complete the fields:

  • Name – Enter a unique name, using only the listed characters.

    Note: Your form cannot have the same name as an existing campaign or form in any folder.

  • Folder – Select the folder for your form.
    We recommend selecting the folder containing the associated HTML document for your form.
  • Description (optional) – Enter form description.
  • Recipient Locale – Various response pages are in the selected recipient locale, and any text you supply for the form is assumed to be in the same character set as the selected recipient locale.

Step 2: Prefill Data

List

To prefill your form with personalized, customer-known information, select a List containing the customers you want to target with your form. Then define the rules to apply when merging form-submitted data with your selected List.

Note: If you use a form link call, the data is passed automatically in the URL string, and is not passed in the database. Data is populated in the form when it is passed in the form link call to that recipient.

  • List Data Handling Rules: After selecting a list, you can define a variety of load rules when merging form-submitted data into your selected List.
    • Define merge rules for matching new to existing records. For example, match on email address, email address and another selected field, or selective combinations.
    • Select action to apply when submitted data matches (based on the merge choices you made), and when data does not match your criteria.
    • Select default permission (Opt-in or Opt-out) for any newly added channels.
  • Opt-In/Out Status Values: If your submitted data contains channel status values (email, mobile, or postal), enter the values you want to represent the Opt-in and Opt-out status. For example, I vs. O.
  • Email Format Values: If your file contains Email Format data – You must define what values indicate HTML and Text formatting. For example, H and T.

Personalization Data

You can augment your form data by selecting personalization data sources containing profile information pertinent to recipients viewing and submitting information via your form.

Select a folder, select one or more personalization data sources, and input your selections into the box on the right.

Tip: Click Clear to remove any of your selections.

Step 3: Message

Choose the form you want to use from your folders.

  • Document must include <form> elements (input fields and a submit button).
  • Document must be an HTML form.

Dynamic Content

Optionally manage dynamic content modules associated with your form.

  • Create New Dynamic Content – Adds a dynamic content module to the displayed list, and opens an edit area where you define the module or copy an existing dynamic content template or another module within this document. Set up rules to control content appearing at any locations where this module is placed in associated form document. Rearrange them so they'll be evaluated, top to bottom, in the order required.
  • Open Designer - Opens the Preview-Design Editor. Use the Design tab to easily create and edit dynamic content modules within your form document.

Dynamic Content Partners

You can take advantage of product and offer recommendation engines to insert highly targeted content in an email campaigns. If the Account Administrator has defined any of these partner content providers for your account, you can use them in your campaign.

  1. Select the partner content provider from the drop-down list.
  2. Click Insert tags to insert the default partner tags.
  3. Edit the tags as needed so they will work for your campaign.

Notes the following:

  • For each dynamic content module in this list, you can copy an existing module or template, or define a new one by naming it.

    You can also set up a series of rules to insert plain text (which can include Oracle Responsys Built-in Functions and any other appropriate text for the HTML form you're editing), a document you select from a folder, or no selection (as a default rule, for example).

  • In the list, icons represent the content defined for your dynamic content modules.

    Red icon – Indicates a problem with the dynamic content module in the form document.

    Gray icon – Module has HTML content defined, but the associated form document doesn't use it.

    Missing icon – Form document doesn't use that module.

  • Same list contains option to delete the module.

    Note: This would make the module unavailable for use in the associated form.

  • All forms documents are HTML. Therefore, there is no need to create plain text equivalents of HTML content for dynamic content modules in your form.

Step 4: Settings

Form Rules

Use the Form Rules step to determine how responses from recipients are to be handled. After defining the rules to associate with your form, you determine which rules you want to apply, in what order, and whether all applicable rules should be executed or just the first one for which the conditions are satisfied. Rules are applied when a form is submitted – when a respondent clicks a submit button on your form.

Each form rule can contain the following:

  • Define your form response landing page (required) – Either a URL, a form, or a campaign message acknowledgment to be sent to responding recipients, informing them that their responses have been received.
  • Optional form-behavior rules in response to recipient form submissions can include: Triggering a campaign, triggering custom events, populating supplemental tables with form-submitted data, and emailing specified recipients with form-entry data for every form submission.

You must configure the default rule and you can add additional rules to handle different conditions. If you add multiple rules, specify the order in which the rules will be evaluated.

The following form behaviors may be optionally defined to occur after a form has been submitted, and associated with an individual (RIID).

  • Trigger Message from Campaign: You can select a campaign in the drop-down list to be triggered as a response to a form submission. Click Done.
  • Trigger Events: Select whether to trigger an REI event (if Responsys Event Interface is enabled for your account) or custom event for each customer match occurring with form-submitted data. Custom events and REI events can also be used to trigger Program or to record behaviors in the Data Mart. (Data Mart-related events can be used in List filtering rules.)

    Important: If a customer is listed in submitted data more than once, this causes multiple events to be triggered for that customer.

  • Populate Supplemental Tables with Form-Submitted Data: Select one or more supplemental tables that will be appended with data from the fields in the submitted form. Submission-Form field names must match the names of columns in the supplemental table.
  • Email Recipients with Form-Entry Data on Every Submit: When recipients respond to your form, their form-entry data is emailed to the list of addresses you supply. Multiple addresses must be separated with a comma.

Auto-Close Options

Specify whether your form should remain open indefinitely (until closed manually), or closed automatically on a specified date.

Use the Form-Close Options to specify a URL to which the form submitter will be directed. Alternately, you may specify a built-in function, such as $formlink(formname)$, $prefilledform()$, or formlink(formanme, fields)$ to display another form or campaign.

Note: Default message sent to anyone submitting data for a form after it has closed is “No Longer Accepting Responses.”

Defaults & Variables

In this step, you can specify additional text replacement fields to be used for personalization.

You can also provide default values for text replacement fields in the form document, in case some of the database fields are empty for a particular respondent.

Learn more