Article

    Answer piping | Forms Help

    2 min read
    Last updated 4 days ago

    Answer piping lets you reference a respondent's earlier answers directly in field labels and help text. It makes forms feel personal and conversational.

    Syntax

    Use double curly braces with the field's pipe slug. Slugs are namespaced by their object type (people.name, companies.domains, etc.):

    {{object.attribute}}
    

    For example, if your first field captures a person's name on a People form, its slug is people.name, and you can write:

    "Thanks {{people.name}}, what's your company called?"

    When the respondent fills in their name, say "Jordan", subsequent fields show:

    "Thanks Jordan, what's your company called?"

    Where piping works

    Piping tokens can be used in:

    • Field labels: the heading text above any field
    • Help text: the descriptive text below any field
    • Placeholder text: the hint text shown inside the input before the respondent types

    Using the autocomplete

    In the form builder's label and help text inputs, type {{ to open the pipe autocomplete. It shows all eligible source fields (those appearing before the current field). Select one to insert the token.

    Namespacing

    All pipe slugs are namespaced by their object type to avoid ambiguity when multiple fields share the same attribute name (e.g. people.name vs companies.name). The autocomplete handles this automatically and inserts the correct fully-qualified slug.

    Fallback behaviour

    If a piped field has no value (the respondent skipped it or it is hidden), the token is replaced with an empty string. Design your labels to read naturally even when the piped value is absent. Avoid constructions like "Hello, {{people.name}}!" where the comma looks odd if the name is blank.