How to extract the firstname only on a Full Name field to show in email alerts?

  • tofecjamal
    Asked on May 9, 2018 at 11:56 AM

    For the "Name" field within a form, the field breaks the name into two parts (First Name and Last Name).  When formatting an auto-responder e-mail, we want the body of the email message to start with "Dear {FirstName}" but the field merge option only allows for the merging of the entire {Name} field which is the person's First Name and Last Name.  So, if the person's name submitting the form is "John Smith", we want the auto-responder to start off reading "Dear John", NOT "Dear John Smith".

    We want to populate only the submitter's FIRST NAME.  How do we do that?

    The title of our form is "eSig Request for 3 Samples" and can be viewed online at https://form.jotform.com/81276322285962

    Thanks,

    Jeff Forman



  • Brody_S
    Replied on May 9, 2018 at 12:19 PM

    Hello,

    Unfortunately, there is no "easy" way to do this.

    The only way to achieve what you are looking for would be to replace the Full Name field with two 'Short Text Entry' fields that are positioned side by side. That way you could access them individually and be able to fully customize your autoresponder to your liking.

    Please let us know if you require any assistance setting this up!

  • Brody_S
    Replied on May 9, 2018 at 12:41 PM

    Apologise for the previous answer, my colleague has pointed out a much simpler way to achieve what you are looking for.  

    Basically, you need to add {name:first} to access only the first entry of the full name field.

    So your autoresponder would look something like this:

    1525883923email Screenshot 10

    And the end result:

    1525884097emailtest Screenshot 21

    Please let us know if we can be of further assistance and I apologize for not providing you with a solution earlier.


  • tofecjamal
    Replied on May 9, 2018 at 2:43 PM
    New response receivedCool, thanks. This worked!
    Have another issue I just submitted... can’t seem to set the “From” e-mail address in Advanced Settings to be jeff.forman@e-letterhead (which is what we want) AND have the auto-responder actually go out and get received. Able to get your system to accept the e-mail address and add it to the drop-down menu of choices for the “From” e-mail address but when I submit test submissions of the form, I never receive the auto-responder so it appears they are either not going to my smtp server or my server is getting the request from the form but not sending the e-mail. I know for sure the SMTP settings for the e-mail box are correct.
    Jeff
    ...
  • Mike_G JotForm Support
    Replied on May 9, 2018 at 3:52 PM

    On behalf of my colleague, Brody_S, you are most welcome.

    As for your SMTP related concern, one of my colleagues already replied to the thread you opened regarding it and I would suggest that you respond to that thread if you have any further questions to avoid confusion.