The situation
Requests come in about everything: delivery time, invoice, a product question, a complaint. They all land in the same mailbox, in the same shape, and whoever answers has to ask back first.
A contact form that asks for the order number
Half of all contact requests are about an existing order. If the form does not ask for it, the first reply does.
The job
Where the built-in tools stop
The built-in form has salutation, first name, last name, email, phone, subject and message - and those fields sit in the template. An order number, a topic list or an attachment are not provided for.
This is what the form looks like
The order number only appears once the topic concerns an order.
What matters here
A choice instead of a subject line
A dropdown with fixed topics turns a free-text field into a column you can filter and sort by. In the export it is a column of its own with the same values every time.
The order number only when needed
A condition on the topic reveals the field. Whoever asks a product question never sees it - and therefore does not have to skip it.
An attachment without a detour
A file upload takes the screenshot along right away. The file lands in the media manager, in the folder set in the plugin configuration.
Where it sits
As a block in the shopping experience of the contact page. No assignment is needed here - the form is meant to be the same every time.
What comes back
In the history without context, because the form belongs to no product and no order. In return the topic is a column of its own in the export, and so is the order number wherever one was given.