Pre-fill form fields for logged in users

  • georgiamarie

    (@georgiamarie)


    9 years, 7 months ago

    Hello,

    I am loving Ultimate Members so far. One problem I face is users having to re-type information that have previously provided. In our case we have 3 membership levels, and a user must first sign up as a Default site user, then can enrol as a Student and later can apply to be an Alumni.

    When registering as a Student the user will already be logged in. They cannot access this form otherwise. As such, I would like to auto populate existing user info – eg First Name, Last Name, Email – anything that we already have stored for this member.

    Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. I do not want to rely on the browser to pre-fill form data, instead I want this to be pulled from the member’s user profile on our website.

    Thank you!

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • borisv

    (@borisv)

    9 years, 7 months ago

    This would obviously require using multiple forms, but as soon as you have it all figured out (or maybe someone modifies the script for you), you are going to want to have UM export an Excel file with all your user data. And, that GeorgiaMarie would be your stumbling block.

    Thread Starter georgiamarie

    (@georgiamarie)

    9 years, 7 months ago

    Hi @borisv thanks for your reply. I am not sure why I would want to export my UM user date to excel in this scenario? I do have multiple forms set up – for example as follows:

    DEFAULT REGISTRATION FORM
    – First Name
    – Last Name
    – Email
    – Phone
    – Country

    STUDENT REGISTRATION FORM
    – all of the above * (these fields to be pre filled with logged in user’s data, already collected in previous form and therefore saved in UM user data)
    plus
    – Address
    – Occupational Field
    – Language
    etc

    borisv

    (@borisv)

    9 years, 7 months ago

    Sorry if I wasn’t being clear. An excel sheet is something that most administrators need to transfer all the user data to a more robust administrative program (e.g. Filemaker Pro).

    But, if this isn’t a hurdle then let’s analyze your request:

    In a nutshell; you want a user to register once, then after some time, to fill out a new form fields again. You don’t want the extended form to have the same fields empty, correct?

    The easiest solution would be to change the user role of the member to one that would allow new fields in his form to become visible. This means that your form will have to be a complex series of form fields with many privacy, visibility and possibly, conditional rules.

    I hope this helps,

    Thread Starter georgiamarie

    (@georgiamarie)

    9 years, 7 months ago

    Thanks for clarifying @borisv, I see now what you meant about the export. You’re right my client may want to transfer their member/user data to a spreadsheet down the track but I will tackle that if and when this a requirement.

    In regards to the solution you mentioned… just checking I understand correctly… I can create just 1 form and ensure that the fields required for my STUDENT registration are only visible to logged in users, yes? I tried a proof of concept, of this, as follows:

    1. Added one new field to registration form, set Privacy to be visible only to ‘Members’ (the role I have in UM for default site users)
    2. Logged out to check form, but could see new field that I shouldn’t have been able to (problem #1)
    – Moving on to test the other part, despite this…
    3. Registered for the site as ‘newbie1’ (making me a Member / default user role)
    4. Received confirmation email, tested login/logout, forgot password and similar (all good)
    5. Logged in as newbie1 and went back to said registration form
    6. Saw the new field (good, although no different to step 2 as mentioned) but all my previous fields are still empty (in other words original problem still persists, my wannabe student has to re-type their basic registration info such as name, phone, email etc)

    I hope that makes sense. Not sure if I have misunderstood or I’ve just not implemented correctly, but I definitely can’t get this working at this point. 🙁

    The only workaround I can think of is just to remove the fields we already collected data for, and replace it with a message like “we already have your name, phone & email – but if you need to change any of this info, please visit your account page before proceeding” for example.

    This is kinda ugly and tedious, not the best user experience (many users could be upgrading to Student after weeks, months or years from initial signup so may not remember what they put in the first place and would be better if they didn’t have to go looking in other sections of their account to sort that out).

    Any further help would be appreciated. Thank you for your time so far!

    borisv

    (@borisv)

    9 years, 7 months ago

    It mat initially not be obvious, but you will eventually get the hang of it.

    What I meant was that you create the role ‘member’ which say registers the user with the following fields:
    – UserName
    – First Name
    – Last Name
    – Email
    – Phone
    – Country

    Then is taken to his profile page where he can fill out more fields if you want to:
    – Address
    – Occupational Field
    – Language

    Later, if you want the member to fill out more new fields, then you change his user role to, say, “student” where his profile page will be updated and will show the new fields to fill out.

    If the student filled out all fields, then you can change his user role to ‘alunmi’ where again new fields can be filled out.

    This can go on to new user role levels as long as you create all these user roles, their fields and you set the privacy settings in the fields manager window accordingly.

    Am I making sense?

    Now

    Thread Starter georgiamarie

    (@georgiamarie)

    9 years, 7 months ago

    Yes, this makes more sense now. Thank you. However it seems to rely on the admin changing the user role when the person wants to upgrade their account from member to student, but this should be totally autonomous option on the part of the user – but perhaps I can still work with the concept of having extra fields in the ‘edit profile’ part which don’t initially appear in ‘register’ form and that might be enough for now, I will have a think. Thanks again! 🙂

    borisv

    (@borisv)

    9 years, 7 months ago

    You can also offer a user the option to upgrade the account by him/herself of course. But then again, what stops anyone from being, for example, at a teacher level, or get the “premium account”, if you let them do, or be whatever or whoever they want on your site. You know what I mean?

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

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