The miniExtensions form can be integrated with existing workflows, such as the Airtable form, Zapier email workflow, and many more. This will allow you to add further functionality without rebuilding anything from scratch! In this guide, we will show you how to set up your miniExtensions form to integrate seamlessly with your existing Airtable form so you can take advantage of all the additional features our form offers!
This type of integration works with any workflow that allows either an automatic redirect to a record-specific URL or anywhere that you can include a link to a specific record. Feel free to get in touch with us if you need any help in setting up the integration with your specific workflow!
This integration is made possible by adding a final step to your workflow that redirects the user to the miniExtensions form. With miniExtensions acting as a 'second step', you can add extra data or features to your workflow, effectively bypassing its limitations. These ‘after submission’ actions include, but are not limited to:
Collecting IP addresses
Location coordinates
Signatures
Payments
Custom success messages
Field redirects
Email validation and/or verification
Scanning QR/barcodes
Setting up your miniExtensions Form
The way you set this up in miniExtensions depends on whether or not your additional step requires user interaction (like adding a signature for example) or not (like collecting the user's IP address or location). We will go over both options in this chapter. Keep in mind that you can also combine both methods by enabling automatic features like the collection of geolocation or IP address in a form that otherwise requires user interaction.
At the end of this chapter, you will have a URL pointing to your miniExtensions form, which is ready to use in your existing workflow, such as your Airtable form or Zapier email workflow.
For this guide, we assume that you already have a miniExtensions form. If not, just go to your miniExtensions dashboard, select your base and click Create Extension, then select the Form and the table it will use. If you don't have a miniExtensions account connected to Airtable yet, you can follow this guide to get up and running in no time!
Capture additional Data in Fields with User Interaction
If you intend to capture extra data (that your existing workflow does not support) with the miniExtensions form, such as a hand signature, you will need to first create the fields that will hold the data in Airtable. To collect a signature, for example, you would need an attachment field.
Once you have your field(s) set up, go to your form's configuration page in miniExtensions and select 'Fields' from the left panel. Add only the extra fields that you want to add with miniExtensions once your form is submitted. Optionally, you can add read-only fields from the existing record if you wish to have further information visible to the user. This might be useful to make it clear what it is they're signing or paying for, for example.
You can hit "Remove All" at the top right of your fields list to remove all fields first and then only add back the field(s) that will hold the additional data!
Once your form is set up, you will need to prepare your form URL as explained here.
Capture additional Data in Fields without User Interaction
To capture data such as the IP address or the geolocation in the background without any extra user interaction, you will take advantage of the miniExtensions form's auto-submit feature. Here's how to set this up in the form configuration:
To trigger the auto-submit feature, we need to prefill a field using the form's URL. This can be a dummy field or an existing editable field (a single-line text field would work well for this, for example). Don't worry, we won't overwrite any existing data! Add your field to the miniExtensions form and enable 'Read-only' for it. This will prevent the prefill contained in the URL from modifying the data; however, the automatic submission will still be triggered. To ensure no data is overwritten, make sure to keep 'Allow URL prefills' off!
In the 'Prefill' section, enable 'Automatically submit form after prefill':
In the 'Security' section, you can set up the fields that will capture the GPS Location & IP Address of the user that's submitting the form. Configure the fields as needed:
Remember that the geolocation fields (Latitude & Longitude) require setting the maximum number of decimal places and 'allow negative numbers' for their fields in Airtable.
Once your form is set up, you will need to prepare your form URL, as explained in the following section.
Prepare the redirect URL to your miniExtensions Form
Now that your form itself is set up, we need to get a URL that we can use in our existing workflow (as a redirect in the Airtable form or a link in an email, for example).
First, get your form URL by clicking on the options menu on your form's configuration page and then selecting 'Copy URL' from the dropdown menu.
Your form URL will look something like this:
https://web.miniextensions.com/o6RhCcFAFGLRSDfvQsAK
You will then need to append the record ID so that the miniExtensions form can add the extra data to the appropriate record. First, add a forward slash to the end of the form URL and then include the appropriate placeholder for your workflow like this:
https://web.miniextensions.com/o6RhCcFAFGLRSDfvQsAK/{record_id}Depending on your workflow, the {record_id} placeholder and the method of getting it can vary. The placeholder shown here works for an Airtable form, and we will show you how to set this up on Airtable at the end of this guide!
If you're setting up a URL for a form with user interaction (for a signature field, for example), your URL is now complete, and you can skip ahead to setting up your Airtable form!
If you're setting up a URL for a form without user interaction (to collect a user's IP address, for example), please keep reading since we need to add another bit to the URL!
Now, we need to configure a read-only field to be prefilled. After redirection to the miniExtensions form, this will trigger its submission without any user interaction.
Add a dummy prefill value for the read-only field on the form we set up earlier. You can do this following this syntax:
?prefill_Name=ABC, where Name is the name of the read-only field, and ABC is the dummy data to trigger the submission. Remember that if you followed the configuration above this data will never actually be written to the field! It is only used to trigger the automatic submission of the form.Append the prefill parameter to the URL to get an end result like this:
https://web.miniextensions.com/o6RhCcFAFGLRSDfvQsAK/{record_id}?prefill_Name=ABC
With this URL and the setup described above, you'll be able to populate the geolocation and IP address fields in your Airtable base after the user has gone through your existing workflow. Submission will happen automatically, so no user interaction is required.
Setting up your Airtable Form
Setting up your Airtable form to work with your miniExtensions Form is easy, just:
Go to the 'Interfaces' or 'Forms' tab on Airtable and select the form that you want to use.
In the right panel, you will find the 'Submission options' section. There, you can enable redirect to URL:
Click the gear icon and paste the form URL we prepared earlier in the URL field.
This will allow your user to fill out your Airtable form as before and then be redirected to the miniExtensions form we just set up to gather the additional data. That additional data will then appear in the same record in Airtable.
The URL you prepared in the previous section can be used in a variety of existing workflows. In essence, anywhere that allows you to redirect to a record-specific URL will work with this setup. How and where this can be set up is different for each platform. Feel free to reach out to us with any questions about other workflows, and we'd be happy to assist you!