Fields
Common questions about the fields stored against a contact.
What Is the Difference Between Reserved and Custom Fields?
Reserved fields come with the product and cover names, identifiers and postal addresses. They cannot be created, renamed or deleted. Custom fields are the ones an organisation adds for anything else it needs to hold. Together they are the contact fields. See Fields.
What Fields Do I Get Out of the Box?
The reserved fields, listed in four groups: General, Identifier, Address and Additional. See Reserved Fields.
What Types Can a Custom Field Be?
Text, Number or Date. The type is chosen when the field is created and decides what its values, and any default value using it, are allowed to be. See Custom Fields.
What Should I Call a Custom Field?
Something a campaigner will recognise, because the raw field name is what appears in the variable menu when a message is written. The name is snake case, lowercase letters, numbers and underscores, such as renewal_date. Capitals and spaces are converted as the name is typed, but a hyphen is marked invalid and has to be replaced with an underscore. The name also has to be unique whatever the case and different from every reserved field name. It applies across the organisation and cannot be changed afterwards, so agree it before creating the field. See Creating a Custom Field.
Can I Rename a Custom Field or Change Its Type?
No. Neither can be changed after the field is created, and no role can override that. Correcting a name or a type means deleting the field and creating a replacement. See Custom Fields.
What Happens When a Custom Field Is Deleted?
The field and its values are removed for the whole organisation, and nothing using the field prevents that. The confirmation lists what references the field as a warning, then the deletion goes ahead. Segment conditions built on the field are removed, and a segment left with no conditions at all is deleted with them. Templates are not changed, so a variable on the deleted field stays in the content and resolves as a missing value for every recipient. See Deleting a Custom Field.
Who Can Add and Delete Fields?
A Campaign Manager, Admin or Org Admin. A Campaigner can use fields in a template but cannot create or delete them. See Roles and Permissions.
Can I Create a Field While Uploading Contacts?
Yes. Where a column in the file has no field to map to, a custom field can be created from the mapping step without leaving the wizard, and the new field becomes available as a target straight away. See Uploading Contacts.
Where Do Fields Show Up?
On the contact record, in the conditions that define a segment, and in the variable menu when a template is written. See Variables and Default Values.