Webservices related to Forms
Form participation APIs can be used to build a link between Actito and forms that were not necessarily designed by Actito.
On the one hand, it can used to collect data coming from an external partner and submitting them to Actito in order to enrich a database, all while storing the source of information in a GDPR compliant way.
On the other hand, it is typically used when the form design is made by another platform. Answers given by profiles can be directly submitted in an Actito technical form by using the forms APIs.
Designing your Actito form in itself is not possible through the APIs. It has to be done in the Actito interface. For additional information on this subject, we invite you to read the chapter dedicated to forms.
However, forms API allow you to:
- obtain the structure of a form
- obtain the participation information of a profile
- create and update participations to a form, all while applying enrichment rules
Preparing a form for API compatibility
Using APIs related to forms entails that your form will have to follow some constraints in order a successful use of webservices. Those constraints should be kept in mind when creating your form in the Actito interface.
Display name and translation
When creating your form by the means of Actito interface, if you choose multiple choice questions, you will have the possibility to define display values that differs from technical values. You can also translate these values depending on the language.
However, this notion is not supported in forms APIs. Only technical values, which remain the same whatever the language, can be obtained and submitted in return.
On the other hand, questions can be translated, as they will be associated with technical names.
Give your form proper technical names
Forms APIs make use of the technical names in order to submit data. It is the important to give clear and precise names to your questions, both for ease of use and to avoid any risk of error while setting up the APIs.
The short text that you can associate to each question while creating your form is used in reporting, but it is not the technical name, which must be added afterwards. To do so, click in the list of existing forms in the 'Active' tab. Click on the 'More' button then, in the dropdown menu, click on 'Define technical name'.
You will be able to define appropriate technical names both for the main survey and for each individual question.
If you included "Predefined questions", they will have a pre-defined technical name.
Database enrichment rules
Forms allow your contact to directly modify their profile information. During the creation of a form whose purpose is to be used the Actito APIs, it is necessary to define proper enrichment rules.
Indeed, one of the available enrichment rules consists in enriching the database if one specific page is submitted. However, the notion of page completion is not taken into account when APIs are used.
It is therefore necessary not to use this rule but instead to prefer the enrichment rule when "the participation to the form is complete".
For additional information about enrichment rules, we invite you to read the 'Enriching a database through a form'.
The structure of the body representing the questions and the answers given by a profile can be tricky to visualize.
If you want to push form participations into Actito, the easiest way is to create a test form participation in the platform, and to retrieve it by API to understand its structure.