Have you ever created a form and wished that you could standardize and automatically collect data from St. John’s users and get consistent expected results? Or have you ever wished your Form could be secured to prevent outside individuals from filling out your form and providing you with incorrect data? With Form Authentication and Form Prefill, these options are easy to implement and easy to enable on your form.


Table of Contents


(blue star) Field Prefill Options


The following Fields and Field Types are configured to prefill information stored within SignOn. When used, these fields will prefill for all Students and Employees.

  

Field Name

Field Type

Example Prefill Data

St. John’s University Email

Email Field

Employee Example: thunderj@stjohns.edu

Student Example: johnny.thunderbirdXX@my.stjohns.edu

Title

Short Text Field

Employee Only: Multimedia Engineer

First and Last Name

Name Field

Johnny Thunderbird

University Department

Short Text Field

Employee Only: Information Technology

Business ID (X-Number)

Short Text Field

X05555555

When adding the Business ID (X-Number) field to a form, it will be suggested you enable Form Encryption. This adds an extra layer of security to your form.


(blue star) Form Encryption


When adding secure fields like Business ID (X-Number) to your form. You will be prompted to enable encryption on the submission table within Formstack


Form encryption ensures submissions are properly secured and is suggested. Form Encryption can be enabled in a Form’s Settings tab, under Security. When adding encryption to a form, it is imperative that you make the password unique and store it in a secure location. Once Form Encryption is enabled, only that password set for the form will decrypt the data stored in the submissions table. Neither Information Technology nor Formstack Support will be able to decrypt the data. 



(blue star) Enabling Form Authentication and Field Prefill on New Forms

Building a form with Form Authentication and Prefill is easy and the options are shown to you during Form creation.

  1. In your folder, select “Create Form”

  2. Select any of the three options, Form, Survey, or Workflow then click “Next Step”

  3. Give your Form a name, which will also generate the Form’s URL.

  4. Below Save to Folder options, you will now see a Field Prefill option. Leave the option “Enabled” to enable Field Prefill and Form Authentication.

  5. Click “Start with a Template” or “Start with blank Form instead” to begin form building.

  6. Once in the Form builder, you’ll see new options under “Saved Fields” that will show a “Prefill” label. Use these fields in your form and they will prefill with those information types after a user authenticates into the form.

(blue star) Enabling Form Authentication Existing Forms

Securing an existing form is easy and can be accomplished in a few simple steps. This will lock the form behind SignOn and it will only be accessible by Students and Employee’s at the university.


  1. Navigate to your Form’s Settings tab and select “Security” from the options on the left

  2. Under “Form Password” click the dropdown and select “Single Sign-On (SSO)”

  3. Formstack will open a new window. Under “Step 1: Select a Form Authentication” select the dropdown and choose “SignOn Connection (SAML 2.0) from the options.

  4. If you want to only enable Form Authentication and NOT Field Prefill, select “Save Single Sign-On settings”, otherwise continue below to “Enabling Form Field Prefill on Existing Forms” section.



(blue star) Enabling Form Field Prefill on Existing Forms

Under “Step 2: Map single sign-on autofill fields to your form” you have a few options which are important to note.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Deletion of existing fields will delete all data saved in those fields in the submission table. Any notification emails, confirmation emails, workflow steps, Formstack Document/Sign connectors, etc. referencing those old fields will need to be remapped to reference your new Prefill fields

  1. If you plan to fully swap existing fields with the saved Prefill fields, check the box “Use Prefill Mapping”. This will default Field Prefill to the saved fields listed above in the “Field Prefill Options” section of this document. You then must replace the existing fields on your form with the saved Prefill fields for Prefill to work.

  2. If you do not want to swap existing fields, leave “Use Prefill Mapping” unchecked. You will need to individually map existing fields to fields. To do this, take “Form Fields” listed on the right side, and drag them to “From Single-Sign On (SSO)” boxes on the left.

    1. Formstack treats the Name field type as both “First Name” and “Last Name” so, make sure if you are using the Name field type and want it prefilled, to drag it to both “First Name” and “Last Name”.

    2. The following fields “From Single-Sign On (SSO)” will not prefill data to your form.

      1. Phone Number

      2. Fax

      3. Street Address

      4. Street Address 2

      5. City

      6. State/Province

      7. Zip

      8. Country

      9. Title

        1. For Title you must use the “Title Custom SSO Field” variant to prefill this information.

      10. Department

        1. For Department, you must use the “Department Custom SSO Field” variant to prefill this information.

      11. Company

      12. Username

  3. Once you have mapped your fields, click “Save Single Sign-On settings” to save and enable Form Authentication and Field Prefill.