Answer piping lets you quote respondents' previous answers into fields, email notifications, and internal comments. This helps you personalize forms and notifications, and clarify questions that build on previous fields.
For example, you can pipe the respondent's name into submission confirmation emails or use their previous answer of "dog" when asking about the specifics of their pet registration.
Where to Use Answer Piping
You can use answer piping in:
What Fields and Data can be Piped
You can pipe answers from the following fields:
| Basic fields |
- Text
- Number
- Dropdown
- Checkbox - can only be quoted in content fields, submission confirmations, emails, and comments.
- Radio button
- Date
- Email
- Rank - can only be quoted in content fields, submission confirmations, emails, and comments.
|
| Advanced fields |
- File upload - displays as a link or file name depending on where it's quoted. Can only be quoted in content fields, submission confirmations, emails, and comments.
- Calculation
- Signature - can only be quoted in content fields, submission confirmations, emails, and comments.
- Location
- Payment
- Radio matrix - can only be quoted in content fields, submission confirmations, emails, and comments.
- Checkbox matrix - can only be quoted in content fields, submission confirmations, emails, and comments.
|
| Layout fields |
- Standard group - can only be quoted in content fields, submission confirmations, emails, and comments.
- Repeatable group - number and calculation fields only. When quoted, the sum of all repetitions is quoted. Can only be quoted in content fields, submission confirmations, emails, and comments.
- Office-use-only group - can only be quoted in content fields, submission confirmations, emails, and comments.
|
You can also pipe form details into notification and reminder emails and internal workflow comments, although workflow details are only available for workflow notifications and reminders. The form details you can pipe are:
| Response details |
- Form name
- All data
- Receipt number
- Response ID
- Response reference ID
- External system reference ID
- External system status
- Link to a response PDF
|
| Workflow details |
- Submission date
- The current workflow step
- When the response entered the current step
- The step the response is transitioning from
- The step the response is transitioning to
- Notes to the respondent
- Link to the review
|
How to Pipe Answers
When piping answers into anywhere with a text editor, including content fields, section and field descriptions, and email body content, you can use the Pipe answer drop-down to select the field or form data.
To pipe answers into a field label or email subject line:
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Place your cursor in the text and type {{ to initiate answer piping.
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Type the name of the field or data you would like to quote from, and select it from the predictive drop-down that appears. The quoted field will become a descriptive label when you exit the field.
- Enter default text by typing |[default text] after the target piped field. This is used if an answer is unavailable, such as when a respondent has skipped an answer or scanned ahead. The overall format for default text should look like this: {{piped field|default text}}
Piping Answers to File Upload Fields
Answers piped from File uploads work differently based on context. The answer will appear as file link or list of links for response notifications, workflow reminders and notifications (excluding external comments to respondents), and internal workflow comments.
In all other situations, it will appear as a file name or list of file names.
To access linked files, email recipients must log into OpenForms. You must allow access to uploaded files to let external reviewers access file uploads.
What Else?