As a service-based business owner, you wear a lot of hats. There’s always more to do than there are hours in the day. Being able to simplify, outsource, and automate are key factors to success.

That’s why we love Dubsado's* Question Mapping feature. It’s a virtual genie for your business.

Question mapping is an automation tool that allows you to take answers from a question and “map” them somewhere else. These are also referred to as mapped fields. You can use question mapping in Dubsado on all forms:

1. Contracts

2. Sub-Agreements

3. Questionnaires

4. Proposals

5. Lead Captures

For example, the contact form on your website (Dubsado* calls these “lead captures”) has question fields such as “first name,” “ last name,” “email address,” etc. If a lead comes to your website, they will fill out those fields. Upon submission, that form and those answers will live inside of a new document in Dubsado.

With question mapping, you can take those answers, duplicate them, and store them in the address book and the corresponding project in Dubsado.

Why Do I Want Question Mapping?

Simply put, it’ll save you time. It will also be more convenient for your clients.

Why?

Let me explain.

Taking from the example above, the lead capture collects the lead’s first name, last name, email address, and message. The lead capture will store the information.

Right now, that’s the only place that information is stored.

That means you’d manually have to add their name and email to your address book and file.

Manual tasks = more work for you.

With question mapping, you can have these tasks automated.

Now, let’s take it one step further.

Perhaps you want to find out more information out about your lead, so you send them a questionnaire after you’ve mapped the info from the lead capture. That questionnaire asks for a mailing address, a business address, etc.

Once they’re done with the questionnaire, question mapping will automatically pull that information from the form and store it in your address book and project.

Once again, you’re saving time. You don’t have to copy and past the answers or sift through various forms to find them.

However, you’ve got to set up question mapping in order for this to work.

How to Set Up Question Mapping in Dubsado

I’ve created a video tutorial to show you how to set up question mapping and how it works.

Watch the video below to learn more.

Note: Dubsado* allows you to add different elements to your forms (images, text, etc.). In order for question mapping to work, you’ll need select the “Short Answer" or “Date Select” element. It will not work if you select “Free Response.”

What Can I Map?

Dubsado has several options for question mapping built in. All you have to do is tell Dubsado* to point an answer to one of the fields. You can point answers to these “built in” fields:

• Client First Name

• Client Last Name

• Client Email Address

• Client Phone Number

• Alt Contact First Name

• Alt Contact Last Name

• Alt Contact Email Address

• Alt Contact Phone Number

• Company Name

• Address line 1

• Address line 2

• City

• State/ Province

• Country

• Project Address line 1

• Project Address line 2

• Project City

• Project State / Province

• Project Zip / Postal

• Project Country

Dubsado’s Custom Mapped Fields

Dubsado* loves giving its users flexibility and that’s why we now have the option to create our own custom mapped fields. We are no longer limited to the built in mapped fields.

The possibilities are endless! Check out how to set up custom mapped fields here.

Dubsado’s Smart Fields

Dubsado* has another feature called Smart Fields. To be clear, question mapping and smart fields are different. However, they are interlinked.

Smart fields are an auto-fill feature that helps personalize documents.

Instead of taking the time to write out each of your clients’ names and addresses on every form, contract, or canned email, you can use a short line of code. However, the client will not see that code. Instead, they will see what the code puts there.

Here’s an example of a smart field from the service provider viewpoint:

Here’s what the client will see from their viewpoint:

Now this is where the two are interlinked: you can take the answers from question mapping to use in smart fields.

Yes, as long as you use a “built in” question mapping field, you can use smart fields to pull the answers into a document.

For example, a lead capture maps the name Betty Crocker. “Betty” is mapped as the first name and “Crocker” is mapped as the last name. Now you want to send a canned email that starts with the greeting, “Good morning, Betty.” You don’t actually need to type “Betty” in. You can use a smart field code and Betty’s name will auto-fill.

Now if you take the same canned email and send it from your other client’s account. This client is, Michael Jordan. Michael’s first name will appear in the email (and not Betty’s)

How amazing is that?

Question mapping basically puts outside information into the right "home" in Dubsado, while smart fields take information already in Dubsado and sends it outbound (sent via form or email to the client).

I hope this article cleared up question mapping if you didn’t understand it. And if you didn’t even know question mapping existed, I hope it saves you a lot of time moving forward!

Are you going to use custom mapped fields? What kind of things will you be mapping? Share in the comments below.

Think Dubsado might be the CRM for you? Every Dubsado user gets a FREE 3-client trial that never expires. To activate 30% off your first month or year when it comes time to pay, enter code “productiveco” to your billing section now.*