Hi,
I am looking for a way to facilitate forms data entry for our users.
For example, when user enters their name, I want to lookup for user’s phone number and email on a board and auto populate it into Phone number and Email fields.
Most of the users who have to fill out the form already have their phone number and email on a board.
I am new to monday.com and come from the database development world where this would be a simple task.
Please push me in the right direction.
Thanks.
You posted this in monday Apps & Developers. Are you looking for ideas on how to do this using the API or how you might do this with base monday?
If the latter, I would start by considering how you might use one of these automations:
… or VLOOKUP Auto-link App in the monday marketplace.
If the former, unless you want to create a custom app, I would recommend creating an integration with Integromat.
Jim - The Monday Man channel
Our Latest Video: POWERFUL Item/Subitem Templates with Integromat - YouTube
Hi,
Monday “forms” currently dont support pre-filling… which is a pain. They are currently fairly basic way of entering a new record, and dont have the ability to lookup in other tables/boards, as they are really designed for “new request” forms rather than true data entry.
HOWEVER
Rather than using the forms, if people fill directly in to a board/view you can they use automations, lookups, link columns etc to do what you want, but you loose the form view.
At this time, your best bet would be looking into the “match and connect” recipes that Jim has pointed out. Those would act as a Lookup function, even for items created via Forms.
That said, the monday Apps & Develoepers section is indeed dedicated to using our Apps Framework, API and No/Low-Code solutions like Integromat or Zapier. As such, I think you’d have better luck in the Workflows section - I’ve moved your request there 
-Alex
@AlexSavchuk @JCorrell
Jim, Alex
Correct me if I’m wrong. I think both of your suggestions applicable to Boards only, not to Form.
I could not find the way to add automation to a Form’s field. There is no option to edit it. It just inherits from the board’s column.
I think you suggest me to add automation on a Board’s column and auto-populate Phone number and Email when form is submitted. Is that right? Will I need to set these fields as hidden in a Form then?
And if I set it as hidden then what will happen if it is a new person filling out the Form, who does not have a phone nor email in the board yet?
So my question remains, is there a way to apply any solution to a Form itself or is it really as simple as @MHaigh mentions in his reply?
Thanks.
Correct. And currently, monday forms do not provide for any type of dynamic lookup.
With regard to entering data directly into a board, I don’t think that this is possible without the person being invited to a board as a guest. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
@JCorrell @AlexSavchuk
New items added to our Boards via Forms that filled out by our clients. They don’t have access to boards.
Ideally we would need some sort of asynchronous function, like Ajax call. For example when Requestor Name field is entered, it would lookup requestor’s phone number and email in corresponding Board’s columns and, if found, would return them to the phone and email fields of the Form.
If Requestor’s name not found on the board then phone and email would remain blank.
Is Monday.com planning to add this type of automation to Forms eventually?
Hi again… Hopefully someone on the dev team at Monday may chip in, but I know they are working on forms at the moment. They are adding some “conditional” controls to the forms, but as mentioned, currently, forms dont support looking up data in boards (Dev team - would be good if we can tag specific boards as “public” boards and allow them to be referenced in forms!)
If you use a board, @Leon is also correct, each person needs to either be a member or invited to the board. We have some forms where we have created dropdown & status columns as lookups, but it is a pain, so where we we use the boards directly, with column permissions/board permissions to help structure/limit the details, automations to help with data validation/workflow and some formula columns to provide users with guidance on what to do next/what to fill in.
IMHO - Monday forms are great to replace basic form filling/surveys , but not (yet) powerful enough to act as true data entry, so in most cases still have to use boards as data entry…
Hope that helps
We use the VLOOKUP Auto-link Editor app to populate this type of info on the board (like you said though, not the form). We have an email address field on the board & form. When the form is submitted the application looks up the provided email address on another board & automatically assign the requester in a people field. The lookup board could also included any other necessary details like phone number, location, etc and automatically add that to the new item.
@JCorrell this is very helpful!!
I find the connect and mirror functions confusing to use, but got it to work.
Tips for others: