Gravity Forms CRM Connection
As a freelance marketer and business owner, I try and stay organized as best as possible. Particularly where and how my leads are coming in. Now, I have a few different sources of lead generation but my website is mainly where the connection between lead and ‘conversion’ occur.
A conversion of course can mean anything that helps moves you closer to business revenue (in any size business).
My Goal: Gravity Forms CRM Connection
My goal here was to do two things with the connectivity to save me time. The first was to sync Gravity Forms form submissions from a particular landing page on my website, directly into Agile CRM. The second goal was to set up a ‘trigger’ automation inside Agile CRM once the new contact is added, in order to better sort and categorize later.
So let’s dive in.
here's what you need
To get connectivity between Gravity Forms and Agile CRM, you will need a few things:
- Basic Knowledge of WordPress
- Agile CRM Account (free is fine)
- Active Gravity Forms License
Gravity forms Agile CRM Add-on
Like anything new, there’s a bit of a learning curve to get situated. In this case, it came directly from Gravity Forms. Don’t get me wrong I love Gravity Forms and will continue using them for the foreseeable future but some of the documentation seems outdates or there’s a bug in the system. As of now I’m using Gravity Forms 2.6.8, there is a new 2.7 version coming in Beta but I don’t think the new version will address this change (based on the changelog on Gravity Form’s website).
The issue that I encountered came at the very end of the installation process, following the documentation directly from their website when a new ‘feed’ needed to be created. After some research I discovered that my newer version of Gravity Forms Agile CRM Plugin doesn’t have support (only supports up to 2.5). This does not mean however, that the connection won’t work – in fact I was able to get it working seamlessly by going a different route.
It’s important to note here that there are two different plugins that I reference throughout this post, both sound very similar.
1st Plugin – Gravity Forms Agile CRM Add-On (developed by Gravity Forms)
2nd Plugin – Agile CRM For Gravity Forms (developed by the Agile CRM team)
Agile CRM Plugin For Gravity Forms
Now, because the Gravity forms developed plugin did not work as expected I had to change routes and read documentation from the Agile CRM team (a bit lacking but it got the job done). Here’s a walkthrough of how it works:
Download and Install the Agile CRM For Gravity Forms plugin
If you’re reading this tutorial I’m going to assume that you have a working knowledge of the WordPress basics (Gravity Forms isn’t a beginner plugin for the most part, especially if all you need is a basic contact form).
Here’s a link to Agile CRM’s documentation on how to install and download their version of the plugin.
navitage to agile gravity forms settings
After downloading and activating the plugin within the WordPress dashboard, you’ll want to dive into the settings. The settings for this plugin are located here: WP Dashboard –> Settings –> Agile Gravity Forms
open agile CRM Dashboard to obtain API key
For this next section, you’ll need to hop over to your Agile CRM dashboard. The screenshot below is what you will see inside your WordPress Dashboard, inside the new Agile CRM plugin settings. The three prompts ask for the agile account, admin username and the API key.
You can obtain all of these over at the Agile CRM dashboard side of things (more on this below).
finding the Agile CRM API Key
To find your Agile API Key, navigate to your Agile CRM account and click your profile in the top right of your screen. A menu will appear and you’ll want to navigate to Admin Settings.
Navigate to form settings & Choose form
Copy your API key and save the changes. It’s a bit confusing as nothing happens upon saving, in fact this step confused me more than it should have (maybe it was the lack of coffee while doing this).
Either way, navigate to the forms settings tab (located inside the same screen that you’ve just added the API key, etc.)
From here you will see two options, a dropdown list of all your gravity forms and an option to integrate the form with Agile.
Find and select the form you want to integrate to Agile and then check the box, don’t forget to save the changes.
Map Gravity Form Fields For Agile
The last step to properly set up Agile CRM and Gravity Forms is to map out the fields inside Gravity Forms. This is just a fancy way of saying that the information inside your forms matches up with the proper field inside Agile CRM.
For example, the name goes to the name and not an email, etc. etc.
This step is going to depend on how your specific form looks and what you want to match. The biggest thing to note here, that I ran into problems with during testing, is that all the required fields inside the Agile form settings have something to map to inside your Gravity Forms.
The example that blocked me from the final connection was the Last Name field. On my live landing page gravity forms field there was no option for the last name. I was using the first name field only for the lead’s full name. This was fine for my purposes but it doesn’t mesh well with the CRM connectivity for one reason or another (maybe it’s the Gravity forms update?).
Either way, make sure that the required fields (denoted by a red asterisks in the screenshot below) have somewhere to match to. In my case I had to add a last name field to the form on the live page. Not a huge deal but just something to keep in mind.
final CRM Thoughts
My final thoughts for now is that Gravity Forms and Agile CRM is a great choice for those that want to add some further automation to the work process. I don’t use the CRM for sales, more on the marketing side of things, as I have a different set of sales funnels to keep leads progressing.
If you have any questions about your setup or Gravity forms feel free to reach out and I’d be glad to assist. Happy automating!
