Make Your Forms More Conversational
The best forms don’t feel like forms at all. They’re more like conversations – personal exchanges that build on ideas from beginning to end.
So - how do you achieve this ideal form? By using text piping.
What is text piping?
Text piping is when you take a user’s input from one field and use it elsewhere on the form. It’s sometimes referred to as “question piping” or “answer piping” because it’s so useful in surveys.
How do I use text piping to personalize forms?
There are many times you’ll want to incorporate piping into your forms. Here are two examples:
Provide a personal tour of your form. Take a user’s name from early in a form and insert it into Help Text throughout to give them personalized instruction on the types of information you’re asking from them.
Focus follow-up questions. After a user answer’s a survey question, use that answer to populate a more detailed follow-up. (This is sometimes referred to as question piping as you’re piping the answer from one question into another question further down.
What are some text piping best practices?
When you use text piping on Cognito Forms, there are just a few things you want to keep in mind.
When piping text from an entry field to a field label, make sure the destination is on a later page of a multi-page form or in a field that is hidden by conditional logic. This will enable the system to process the transmission of data from one location to the other.
Be sure to mark any field you’ll be piping text from as a required field. If nothing is entered in that field, your destination text will have gaps and likely be very confusing for your users.
How do I pipe text in Cognito Forms?
It’s easy and anyone can do it. To learn how to do text piping, see this quick tutorial.
Remember, you can also use conditional logic to pipe text into Confirmation Emails, Content Fields and other places on your forms. (That’s something you’ve been able to do for years.)
For more about that, explore our Conditional Logic Overview.
Ace Evans
Ace is the Marketing Communications Manager for Cognito Forms. When not at the office, you can find him volunteering with the American Advertising Federation (and soon on stage with his band: the Cottontown Soul Society).