Contact fields are used to identify contacts, or those you plan to send email or direct mail communications to. Contacts are recipients of marketing and sales information.  To help identify contacts in many ways, contact fields can be added to the platform to house any number of data points about a contact. To create or edit contact fields, navigate to Administration > Contact Management > Manage Contact Fields.

Reviewing Contact Fields, Permissions and Viewing Order.

When you get to the Manage Contact Fields page, you will see a list of existing contact fields. This screen shows the Column Name, Display Name, Variable Tag, Category as well as "Visible" permissions and "Downloadable" permissions.

On the left side there will be a drop down box with a list of "Actions" for any fields that are not system only fields. The available actions will be "Edit Field" and "Delete Field". 
**Please Note: Deleting a field will remove all data for all contacts for that field.

For existing fields, the Display Name and Category can be changed by clicking the "Edit Field" option in the Actions drop down. Once you create a contact field, the Column Name and Variable Tag cannot be changed.

Visible permissions allow an admin to set what users/user groups are allowed to see data for a contact field when viewing their contacts.  There may be some contact fields that are internal and not meant for the end user to see/know the data about the contact.

Similarly, permissions can be set on what data can be downloaded by an end user. Fields may be visible however if the Downloadable permission is set for a specific user or user group not to be able to download the data, then that data would be omitted from any downloaded contact data. 
** Please Note: there is a separate configuration that must be set on a specific contact to "Protect" the contact. If that is set, then the downloadable permission would take affect. This value is hidden but called "enforce_download_permission" and would need a value of "1" to be passed to protect a specific contact

Finally, you can also change the order for how the contact fields are displayed. The visible order you see on the Manage Contact Fields page will be the same order end users see when editing a contact. You can change this order my dragging a field the three bar icon on the left and placing it in the order on this page you prefer.

Creating a Contact Field

To create a contact field, first scroll to the bottom of the page and click "ADD NEW CONTACT FIELD". You will be provided a screen to fill out specifics needed about the field including:

Column Name: This is the database name you want to assign to the field. This is also used as the "Variable Tag" name for the contact field. This should be all lower case, no spaces and without any special characters other than underscores "_".

Display Name: This is the visible name you want users to see when they are editing or reviewing data for their contacts.

Field Types

There are several field type (input types)  that a contact field can be assigned. The input type determines how a user can update a contact field manually. These types are:

• Single line text: This is the most common field type and can house any string type text data. 
• Multi line text: Similar to Single line text, but allows for carriage returns within the input field.
• Numeric: A Single line input that only allows numbers for the value. 
• Date:  Provides a Date Picker as the input type. The date can also be typed in as long as it is done in an accepted date format. 
• Drop Down: Allows an admin to provide pre-determined values where a user can select a single value from a dropdown list. 
• List Box: Allows an admin to provide pre-determined values where a user can select multiple values from a select box.  
• Image: Allows a user to upload an image as the value for the field.
• State List: A pre-determined list of US States for a user to select from.
• Country List: A pre-determined list of Countires for a user to select from.
  
  

Field Values: This box is only used if the List Box or Drop Down field type above is selected and is where the admin sets the pre-determined values a user can select from.

Default Value: This box is only used if the List Box or Drop Down field type above is selected and determines what the Default Value from the "Field Values" list should be.

Category: Select an existing category for the new contact field to be assigned to. Or type in a new category name if a new one is needed.  A contact field can only be assigned to a single category.

Once you have filled in all of the necessary information, click "SAVE" at the bottom to create the field.