Working with Account Engagement Form Handlers and Your Server

This is the Account Engagement form handler series which explains how to integrate your custom forms with Account Engagement form handlers.

The use of a Account Engagement form handler as the action URL to your custom form is recommended, as it will automatically capture the prospect’s visitor cookie from the browser and associate it with the prospect submission in Account Engagement.

If you require data to be also sent to your business server, use the setting  ‘enable data forwarding’ on your form handler, which enables your business to subsequently send data onto your business server without issue from your form handler. To do this specify the server location to receive the data as the success location on the form handler.

This method can be employed if you already have a custom form submitting to your business server and will mean that your current process will largely not change. The use of an iframe on the success location of the custom form will still automatically capture the visitor cookie from the users browser and submit directly to Account Engagement with the prospect data.

Here is the article which is specifically about using this method.
 

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Note: this section is given for reference, however, implementing and troubleshooting it falls outside of the Account Engagement Support Team's scope as it requires customization.

If a location on your company server is used as the action URL on your custom form instead of a Account Engagement form handler URL, this will not automatically be configured to capture the Account Engagement visitor cookie from the browser and therefore any subsequent submission of form data from your company server to Account Engagement will not associate the visitor cookie with the prospect submission.

The use of an iframe on the form success location is the best way to resolve this situation. However if the iframe solution is not possible, it is possible to create a custom process in order to capture the visitor from the browser cookie separately and to subsequently associate the prospect created by the form submission with the visitor, but this will involve custom development and you should refer to your own development team in order to complete.

The broad steps for this process are:

1. Capture the Account Engagement visitor ID from the browser of the user at the same time as the form is submitted to your business server

2. Submit the prospect details to Account Engagement via the form handler (or alternatively the Account Engagement API)

3. Query the Account Engagement API for the relevant prospect ID

4. Use the ‘Assign’ operation on the Visitor object available through the Account Engagement API to associate the visitor ID with the Prospect ID
More on Account Engagement  API usage can be found here.

You must ensure that ‘Kiosk mode’ is enabled on your form handler when using this method in order to prevent your server being cookied against all prospects submitting your form. This will also mean that regular activities such as page views will also not be associated with your prospects in Account Engagement by default until that association is made between prospect data and visitor using the Account Engagement API. 

Here is the link to the relevant section in the Account Engagement API documentation on linking the prospect and visitor.