This is a step by step tutorial on how to set up your form so that it integrates with PayPal’s payment processing service.

The PayPal connector is only available on the Professional Plan so you might want to consider upgrading your account or registering if necessary (Note: you can request a free upgrade for the duration of the beta-test.)

For more information on the PayPal connector, please refer to the feature announcement post.

Is this service right for you?

There are no definite restrictions on what the form may contain or what you may sell with it, but this service is better suited for simple situations, where:

• You have a limited number of items to sell.
• Items have a fixed price and a fixed or variable quantity.
• Shipping & handling fees and taxes are applied to the total price.

Here are a few examples:

• Selling intangible goods such as music (mp3), software, e-books, …
• Charging a membership or an admission fee.
• Charging a flat fee for consulting services.
• Accepting donations.
• Selling physical goods, to the extent that inventory is not an issue.

If you are not sure if this service is adapted to your particular needs, feel free to contact the support.

Getting Started

The first step is to design your web form with the Form Builder. You will probably include a description of what you are selling, ask some information about the buyer (but you can leave the shipping address out because PayPal can handle it for you) and maybe let the buyer specify the quantity (s)he wishes to purchase.

You will find some templates in the Form Library, under the “Order Forms” section.

Once you have saved your form, you will be taken to the “Form Display & Processing Properties” page. The option that interests us today is in section 3, “Connector Setup”. Check the “PayPal” option, set the other options on this page as desired and save. You will be taken to the “PayPal Connector” setup page.

PayPal Account Information

Enter here the email address associated to your PayPal account. If you don’t have a PayPal account yet, you should create one now (PayPal accounts are free).

If you have a PayPal Personal account, you should consider upgrading to a Premier or Business account. This allows you to accept credit card payments.

What You Are Selling

This is where you can specify the list of items that you are selling with your web form. This information will be exported to PayPal and displayed in the buyer’s shopping cart.

The quantity is the only information here that can be provided by the buyer. The drop-down menu lists all the questions that are appearing in your form. Select the one that corresponds to this item’s quantity.

Use the “add another item” link if you have more than one item to sell.

Shipping Address

If you need a shipping address, you may let PayPal collect it for you. If your form is already asking for an address you should adjust the export setting so that the buyer doesn’t have to provide it twice.

Exporting the shipping address works like the item quantity setting. For each address field, select in the drop-down list the corresponding question in your web form.

Data Encryption

By default, the data transmitted to PayPal is not encrypted. This could allow a malicious customer to modify an item price or description before paying for it. This should not be a problem as long as you are checking every order before delivering the goods.

If you have a Premier or Business account, we can use a secure certificate to encrypt the data. This prevents the risk mentioned above and opens the possibility of automating the delivery process since no manual review of the order is necessary.

To create your secure certificate, follow the instructions on screen.

Please note that the actual payment occurs on PayPal’s website and is always securely encrypted. This particular setting only affects how we transmit the content of the shopping cart to PayPal.

Your “Pay Now” Page

This is the page that instructs your buyer to proceed to PayPal to finalize your payment. You can customize the text displayed on this page.

At this stage the form has been submitted and you have received the email notification. The response report on FormAssembly.com includes a payment status.

Payment Tracking

Once the buyer completes the payment, the payment status on your response report is updated:

The payment status is updated as well if a pending payment is cleared or if you issue a refund.

That’s it! We tried to keep it simple and self-explanatory but we’re sure we can still improve this feature, so any feedback, questions, or suggestions are welcomed.

What is a captcha?

A captcha is a test designed to distinguish between humans and computers. In its most common form, it consists of an image of distorted letters that must be identified. While this test is quite easy to pass for a human, it is extremely difficult to solve programmatically. This makes it a very effective way to prevent automated scripts (a.k.a bots) from performing actions that are only intended for humans. This includes blocking spammers from abusing web forms with their spam bots.

How to add a captcha to your web form

Form Assembly users ^* can now easily add a captcha to their web form by following these simple steps:

• Go to your form’s display and processing properties page.
• Under the ‘Display and Hosting options’ you will find the ‘Spam Filter’ option. Check the box and save your change.
• If you are hosting the form on your own website, you will need to follow the instructions to install the form again, otherwise you are all set.

If you are not (yet) using the Form Assembly and still want to use captchas, you should look into Ed Elliot’s Captcha generation class (for PHP). Our captcha functionality is based on this library. It is powerful and very easy to use.

A few things to consider before using captchas

• It is somewhat of an annoyance for legitimate users.
• The test might be hard or even impossible to pass for people who are visually impaired. The Form Assembly provides an audio alternative, but this can also be challenging for some.
• If you need to comply with regulations regarding people with disabilities (such as section 508 for federal agencies in the US), you should not use captchas.

For the reasons mentioned above, it is best to not use captchas unless you are actively targeted by spammers or have another legitimate reason to do so.

If you have any comments or suggestions regarding this feature, please post it below, or in the support forum.

(*) Note: This service is not available on the free plan.

captcha, web forms, spam control

Create your Web Form

For the purpose of this tutorial, we are going to use a template from the Form Library.

Make sure you are logged on and have subscribed to the Form Assembly Professional plan ^*.

If you are familiar with the Form Builder, you can customize the form now, otherwise simply move on to step 2.

On this page, you can review the different setup options or keep the defaults for now. You can always change them later.

Salesforce Connector Setup

You first need to select which type of access you will want us to use to insert leads in your Salesforce application.

API setup

This applies if you have selected the ‘API’ connector type.

Step 5. Enter a valid Salesforce username and password.

You can use one of your existing Salesforce account, but it is preferable that you create a specific ‘API’ account and restrict its access rights to the lead object only (for instructions on how to do that, please refer to the Salesforce documentation).

Step 6. Press the ‘continue’ button. If the connection is successful you will be presented with the field mapping section.

Web-To-Lead setup

This applies if you have selected the ‘web-to-lead’ connector type.

Step 5a. Go to your Salesforce account and generate the default web-to-lead form.

Step 5b. Copy the HTML and simply paste it in the box provided.

Step 6. Press ‘continue’.

You do not need to do anything else with this HTML. The Form Assembly will automatically extract the information needed.

Field Mapping

Now your form is ready and the connection with Salesforce is working. You need to specify which field of your form corresponds to which field in Salesforce.

Here is more information on how to map your form fields.

How to Handle Picklists

Some Salesforce fields have a predefined list of values, or picklist. For instance, the picklist for Salutation contains ‘Mr.’, ‘Ms.’, ‘Mrs.’, ‘Dr.’, etc… If you match a multiple-choice question with a picklist, you can specify what choice corresponds to what item in the picklist. Most of the time, the labels will be identical, but that is not necessary.

How to Merge Fields

You can merge several of your form fields in one Salesforce field. For instance, if you had three fields for the phone number (US format (555) 555-5555), you would map all of them to the ‘phone’ field in Salesforce.

How to Use Conditional Sections

The form used in this tutorial contains a ‘other / please specify’ combo (in the product interest question). This allows the respondent to provide a free text answer when none of the predefined choices is relevant.

To map those fields correctly, first map the multiple-choice question to the Salesforce picklist (here product interest). Map each available choice, except the ‘other’, which remains ‘not exported’. Then move on to the next question - ‘please specify’ - and map it to the same Salesforce field (’product interest’).

That’s it! Feel free to post your comments below.

Salesforce, Web-to-Lead, Web Forms