With the most recent release of cloudconnectors.eloqua.com, you may have noticed a New Form Tool button on the connector overview pages.
You may be asking yourself "what is that" or "how does that work"?? Well, with this new feature, you now have the ability to set up a Cloud Connector to run "one-off" when a contact submits a form.
To illustrate how this works, let's walk through an example. As a marketer, I want to be able to use the WebEx Register Attendee connector to register a contact for an event. I have found that, when using the connector in a program, I am unable to process those "last minute" registrations due the run cycle of the steps on the canvas. Since I am already using a form submit to add contacts to the program, which in turn kicks off the registration step, it would be really great if I could just execute the same connector functionality as soon as form is submitted. Well, this is where Form Tools come in!!
Here's how to set things up...
Start by logging into cloudconnectors.eloqua.com, the clicking on the App menu.
Next, select the WebEx: Register connector from the Communicate menu. (NOTE: You can set up any program step-based Cloud Connector as a Form Tool)
The connector overview page will then be displayed.
Click on the New Form Tool button. The Credentials page will be displayed.
Choose your Eloqua Credentials, and then click Go.
When the New Form Tool page shows up, you'll notice that the page looks exactly the same as it would if you were setting the connector up from a program step. The difference here is that you do not need to Enable the step, as this will not run on a scheduled basis. More on that later.
Continue to Configure the app as you normally would, and don't forget to set up any required Mappings. When this is complete, Save your setup and then click on the Instructions link.
The Instructions will then appear, explaining how to use the new Form Tool. Highlight and copy the URL shown next to the "Point the processing step to" bullet...you will need it for the next step.
Go into Eloqua, and if you have not already, create the form that will be used for the event registration. In the Form Editor, go into the Processing Step area and create a new Post Data to Server step.
Paste the URL that you copied from the Form Tool configuration screen into the box, as shown above. Save the form.
Setup is now complete! When this form is deployed, and a contact fills in the required info and submits, the WebEx Register Attendee connector will fire "one-off" and register the contact for the event. The connector acts as it normally would, updating the contact or custom data object (depending on your setup choice) with the Join URL etc.
Some things to keep in mind...
- As mentioned earlier, you do not need to Enable this connector. It does not run on a scheduled basis, but rather is "triggered" by a form submit via the processing step.
- You can set up any program step-based connector as a Form Tool. So, in addition to event registration you can perform things like one-off String Manipulation or Concatenation, or Normalize contact data on the fly.
- The connector is set up the same way as if it was being executed via a program step. This means it can create custom objects, modify the contact record, or trigger an external event like sending a Tweet when a form is submitted.r