Forms: General mapping

In this article:

• Planning how you'll map your fields
• Data classification for form fields: Examples
• Steps for mapping your form
• What to do when your form fields have no clear “home” in LGL

If you’ve already built your form in LGL Forms, before you can begin taking form submissions you’ll need to map the fields (assuming you want all data submitted into LGL). Mapping is what will allow data submitted through your form to be brought into your database.

Before you do your mapping, however, we encourage you to think about how you will use the data once it’s in LGL. How you’re going to use the data later can help you understand how to map it now.

Planning how you'll map your fields

Try the following exercise:

• Visualize the data your form will collect
• Jot down the data classification for each piece of data (e.g., name, donation amount, volunteer interest)
• Think through what you will want to know (what data you'll want to have) once someone has made a submission through your form

Your form data’s eventual destination is your LGL database

Say you created a donation form. You would want to collect the name, contact information, and a donation amount, at a minimum, from each person submitting the form. Since you want that data to go into LGL, you will need to instruct LGL about where to put each data point. Some will go into creating constituents and defining their contact information, and some will be used to create new gifts, notes, or event records, to name a few.

To break this down a bit more:

• The name information would always be related to the constituent
• The contact information would always be the constituent’s email, phone number, mailing address fields, etc.
• The donation amount would always become a gift record for that constituent in LGL

A critical part of the mapping process is to have a good understanding of what you want to capture and what information from each submission you would like to transfer into LGL.

Data classification for form fields: Examples

Take a look at the enews signup form below. Before you start mapping, go through the mental process of figuring out which form field will go into which LGL field. As you can see, the name field will go into a constituent, the email field will be that constituent’s email address, and so on.

This example is a simple donation form, so it includes a donation amount field.

Steps for mapping your form

Assuming that all fields in your form will have a home in LGL (which is straightforward in this case because we’re dealing with two simple forms), here are the steps you can take to do the mapping:

1. Look at your form fields
2. Identify which field they can go into in LGL
3. Identify any fields with no clear home
4. Think about any default value that should be set. For instance, should this gift be assigned to a particular campaign (information the donor won’t provide, so you may want to set a default to bring that in)?
5. Map the fields in LGL Forms by clicking the “Not Linked” link for that form in the LGL Status column on your main LGL Forms page, or the LGL Integration link under the name of the form you want to map:



NOTE: If the form has already been mapped, the LGL Status column will contain a “Linked” link. If your form has not already been linked, when you click on the “Not Linked” or "LGL Integration" link you will be directed to link your form to LGL before you are able to define the mapping. 

6. The mapping tool will open on your screen, displaying some default mappings for data types that have clear homes (such as name, address, phone number, gift amount, or email). 
   
   So you should see many of the fields you need to map by default. The simple examples shown above shouldn’t require you to do anything besides select the field in LGL that you want each to go to.
   
   To map data to a record type that was not created automatically, select the Add record type button at the top of the form mapping. Then click on the record type you would like to add a mapping for. 



Locate the new record and select the Map a field button. On the Map a field popup, select the form field you would like to map into LGL and then the corresponding field in LGL. Save the mapping. 




You can also set a default or rule in any mapping to assign values when saved in LGL.

Form fields can be selected from the Form Fields sidebar and mapped directly as well. Mapped fields will have a checkbox in the Mapped? column. 

What do to when your form fields have no clear “home” in LGL

Keep an eye out for data fields in your form that don’t have a clear home in any of LGL’s default fields or any of your custom fields (such as custom categories or attributes that may have been added to your account).

In these cases, we encourage you to think through the form you are planning very carefully. This is true in particular for mappings related to notes, events, appeals, and custom constituent categories.

If you have additional questions, please use the Help page in your account to find resources or submit a question to Support. Support may be able to help you with suggestions or assess whether your form in its current configuration is not a good fit for mapping/linking to LGL. Sometimes a form design may not map well to LGL and should either be left unlinked or re-designed.