Enter constituents and their membership

This article explains how to create constituents from a form submission in a Workflow, including matching contacts in Constituent Manager and updating their group membership.

After you create a Form workflow, the next step is to create constituents from the form submission. 

While the form submission itself is subscribed to the workflow, a form submission cannot receive messages or act on them. Use the Constituent step to extract contact details from the form submission and link them to existing constituents or create new ones. 

Create constituent(s) from a form submission

Note: This is the most important part of creating a Form workflow, and it should almost always come first. (In some cases, you may want to add a Branch step first.)

1. Add a Constituent step. 

2. Name the step. In the “Step Name” field, give the constituent a memorable name that you will use to configure later steps. It is possible that your form contains contact information for multiple people, so you may have Constituent steps named Parent 1, Parent 2, Student, etc. 

3. Select a Name field. The dropdown list will include all the name fields from the form. Select the one that corresponds to the constituent you are creating. If you have more than one contact in a form, it is a good idea to include details in the field label so you can tell them apart in this step.

4. Select an Email field. As with the Name field, the dropdown next to Email Field allows you to choose from all the Email Address fields in the form.

5. Choose a role or roles to search in Constituent Manager. To avoid duplicating data in your system, the workflow step will search for an existing constituent in Constituent Manager with the exact same name and email address. Use the buttons to decide whether to search all of Constituent Manager for a match, or only specific roles. Choose which roles to search using the Select Roles button below.

6. Create a new contact. If the constituent is found within Constituent Manager, it will be linked to the workflow. If the contact details do not already exist, you have the option to create a new constituent as a Workflow Contact. Enable the “If unable to match role, create new Workflow Contact” checkbox to create new constituents. 

7. Save the step and repeat for all constituents. If there are contact details for multiple constituents within the form submission, you may want to create a new Constituent step and follow the same procedures for the next constituent in the form.

8. Save the workflow. Before you proceed to the next step, save the workflow so that the constituents you’ve created will be available to select in the other steps. 

Update group membership for created constituent

When you choose to create new constituents in step 6 above, they are automatically added to the “Workflow Contact” role. This is not a traditional role that you can make changes to in Constituent Manager. You can make the new constituent available for use in other workflows and mailing lists, however, by adding them to a Group Manager group using an Update Group Membership step.

1. Add an Update Group Membership step. 

2. Select a constituent from the dropdown list. If you don’t see the constituent in the list, make sure that you have saved your workflow.

3. Select any groups you would like to add this constituent to. Using this method, you could automatically add the new constituent to an existing Contact workflow, among other options. 

4. Save the step and repeat for all constituents. For each constituent you created in the Constituent step above, make a corresponding Update Group Membership step to add them to any groups.

Best practice: While this is a necessary step for the beginning of a workflow, you may also use this step later in a workflow to automate the process of fulfilling a Group Membership workflow goal.

Once you have created or linked your constituents, you can begin adding steps that target them in the workflow.