Creating a Web-to-Lead Form

Overview

Sugar provides a simple way to allow visitors to your website or other online location to become leads in your Sugar instance. You can create a web-to-lead form via the Campaigns module in Sugar and place the form on an external website. Then when a visitor to your site completes and submits the form, their information is entered into Sugar as a new Lead record.

Beginning with version 9.1.0, each user's license type (e.g., Sugar Serve) determines what functionality is available as described in the License Types Matrix documentation. Please note that the Campaigns module is not available for Sugar Serve users.

Steps to Complete

Creating the Form

1. Click the three-dots menu (for Sugar versions 13.0.0 and higher) or triangle (for Sugar versions 12.0.0 and lower) in the Campaigns module tab and select "Create Lead Form". This will display the Lead Form Wizard. 
2. Drag and drop the fields you wish to include on your form from the Available Fields list on the left to the Lead Form (First Column) or to the Lead Form (Second Column) list. You can also choose to Add All Fields to either column by clicking the Add All Fields button at the bottom. Ensure that "Last Name" is included on your Leads Form lists as it is a required field.
3. When all desired fields are included and arranged, click the Next button.
   
4. On the next screen, enter information for the fields listed below:
   • Form Header: This will be the title at the top of your form. A generic title has been populated; modify or remove this to suit your needs.
   • Form Description: A brief description will appear on the form. Feel free to edit this or remove it altogether.
   • Submit Button Label: By default, the button at the bottom of your form will say "Submit". You can edit this to "Sign Up" or some other wording to suit your needs. When the visitor clicks this button, the lead's data is first sent to your Sugar instance, and then the visitor is redirected to a new page, which can be configured via the Redirect URL field.
   • Post URL: This is the location where the lead information will be stored. To modify this information, select the "Edit Post URL?" checkbox and then enter the new location.
   • Redirect URL: Enter the URL of the page that you would like your leads to view after they have submitted their information. If no URL is specified, Sugar will display a "Thank you for your Submission" message.
   • Redirect Request Type: Choose how the redirect will be performed. This field is editable only if "Redirect URL" is populated.
     
     • "GET" will send the data that the visitor entered into the form fields as URL parameters. This means that the values can be read by programming done on your website, which may be helpful if you want to create a custom "Thank you" page that displays the answers that the visitor submitted. However, the answers would also be visible to anyone who can see the web history for the person who completes the form. In other words, if your Redirect URL is set to www.mycompany.biz/thankyou, then the browser will append the form values entered to the URL for each visitor like so: www.mycompany.biz/thankyou?name=Joe%20Smith&phone=412-555-1234&message=Please%20call%20me%20back This method is not recommended for forms that collect sensitive or personally identifiable information. In addition, the number of characters that can be sent via GET is limited to the length that the URL can handle, so it is not recommended for long forms or those with many text-area fields, which may contain a lot of content. Please research the risks associated with each request method before deciding which is best for your use case.
     • "POST" will send the form's data through the request body, which is hidden from the casual web viewer. This is generally considered the more secure method when compared with GET.
   • Include Form Results in Redirect: Choose whether the resulting form values are sent as parameters along with the request to the Redirect URL. If this box is unchecked, you will not receive the form data with the redirect request. This field is editable only if "Redirect URL" is populated.
   • Related Campaign: Enter the name of the campaign that is related to this lead form. Select an existing campaign by clicking the Select Campaign button. Leads generated from the form will automatically be associated to this campaign.
   • Assigned To: Enter the name of the individual who you want to assign to the new lead record or click Select to choose a user from the User List. By default, the record is assigned to the creator of the new form.
   • Team: Enter the name of the team that is allowed access to the leads generated from this form. To change the primary team, either enter the team name here or select the team. By default, the team will be Global. More than one team can be assigned simultaneously. For more information on teams, please refer to the Team Management Knowledge Base articles.
   • Form Footer: Enter text to appear at the bottom of the form if desired.
5. Click "Generate Form". This will generate the HTML and display your completed form. Here you can make any desired changes as well as save the form to your computer so that it can be placed on your website or other online location. Please refer to the below section on ways to save the form.
6. You can make additional modifications by using the WYSIWYG tools or clicking the "HTML" button to insert direct code.
   
7. Once any additional changes have been completed, click the "Save Web To Lead Form" button.

Saving the Generated Form

Your generated form will not be available after leaving this screen. There is an existing feature request to allow for accessing your web-to-lead forms after they have been created, but until the feature is implemented, you will need to save it immediately after creation.

To save the form, one of the following options should be chosen:

• To download the form, right click the "Web To Lead" form link and select "Save Link As...". Then select the desired location and name the file.
• To embed the HTML directly into another page, copy the HTML from the designated box. In order for accented and other special characters will be submitted properly in the form, please insert that the indicated code into the section of your target web page.
• For on-site instances, you can access your generated forms at any time in the ./cache/generated_forms/ folder of your Sugar directory on the server. You can copy the file from here and move it to another location if necessary.