Website Forms

Quick links in this article:

1 Collecting form submissions | 2 Set up an email account | 3 Next steps

In this article, we’ll work through the steps required to connect a form from your website to Gnatta. There are two methods available - the first will require access to your technical or IT support teams in order to call our API. The second will require access to your website CMS (content management system).

Collecting form submissions

There are two methods for getting your contact forms into Gnatta, as follows:

1. Send form submissions via API

This is the most recommended method, as forms will be delivered to Gnatta directly leaving the least margin for error.

You (or a developer) must edit your website form to call our API and trigger an External HTTP Request event whenever a submission is received, by making a POST request to the relevant endpoint in JSON. You will then be able to build your routing flows on that event, to create conversations with customers and assign them to your agents.

This method will deliver each form submission to Gnatta directly, and is the most robust way to collect forms.

To obtain the URL and relevant keys to make your API call, you’ll need to first create an External HTTP Request event.

Create an External HTTP Request event

When you’ve created the event, you’ll be able to collect the URL for your new endpoint as well as the primary and secondary keys, which you can pass to your development team along with a link to our API documentation.

From this interface, you can also regenerate the keys as needed using the refresh icons. We’d recommend doing this semi-regularly (and providing the new keys to your developers) to maintain a secure connection. For example, whenever someone with access to the key leaves your business, it’s best practice to regenerate your key.

Collect the URL and keys from your new event

We’d recommend formatting your HTTP request like the example below. This will ensure the data is structured correctly when it’s passed into Gnatta, ready for you to take action on it in a routing flow.

Before passing this to a developer, you’ll also need to create the custom data fields you want to pass from your form into Gnatta, and collect the GUIDs to be placed in the placeholders below. More on custom data fields here: Defining Custom Data

{
    "echo": {
        "channel": "Email", 
        "body": "{{Customer's message}}"
    },
    "conversation": {
        "channel": "Email",
        "person": {
            "email": {
                "address": "{{Customer's email address}}", 
                "name": "{{Customer's full name}}"
            }
        }
    },
    "interaction": {
        "data": [
            {
                "Data": {
                    "value": "{{Customer's phone number}}"
                },
                "Type": {
                    "Id": "{{GUID of your Gnatta data field}}",
                    "Name": "{{Name of Gnatta data field}}",
                    "DatabaseType": 0
                }
            },
            {
                "Data": {
                    "value": "{{Customer's order number}}"
                },
                "Type": {
                    "Id": "{{GUID of your Gnatta data field}}",
                    "Name": "{{Name of Gnatta data field}}",
                    "DatabaseType": 0
                }
            },
            {
                "Data": {
                    "value": "{{Reason for contact}}"
                },
                "Type": {
                    "Id": "{{GUID of your Gnatta data field}}",
                    "Name": "{{Name of Gnatta data field}}",
                    "DatabaseType": 0
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

2. Send email notifications into Gnatta

If access to technical support is limited this approach will still work well, though you may experience more latency depending on your mail servers or the forwarding method used.

Most website forms deliver email notifications upon submission. Simply setup your form (you’ll likely need access to your website CMS) to deliver those email notifications to an email account in Gnatta.

Once that’s done, you’ll be able to setup a routing flow on a New Message Received event to that email address to detect the customer’s details and create a new interaction. More on that here - but you’ll need to get your email address set up first!

Set up an email account

In order to respond to your form submissions, regardless of how you’re collecting them, you’ll first need to configure an email account in Gnatta. That can be a Gnatta mail account like support@mycompany.gnatta.com or a custom mail account configured in your Gnatta domain, like support@mycompany.com.

For full steps an instructions on setting up an email account, please refer to this article:Email

Next steps

Once you’ve setup your chosen method for collecting forms and configured an email account in Gnatta, you’re ready to convert your forms into an email conversation your agents can respond to.

https://gnatta.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/HELP/pages/2911404046