Field Overview

Fields are user account values that are defined within field sets. New fields may be created or existing fields may be edited or deleted.

Who has access?

System Administrators

Detailed Description

Create Field

Adding a new field to a field set is initiated from the Custom User Fields main page. On that page, click on Add field in the field set box. The Create Field form will be displayed.

  • Name
    The name of the field that is being created. This field is required and is limited to a length of 128 characters.

  • Title
    This is the text that will be shown as the name of the field whenever it is displayed in the system. If this is left blank, the Name of the field will be used. This field is limited to a length of 128 characters.

  • Hint
    This is help text that will be displayed on any form next to the field where the field value is being entered or edited by a user or administrator. This is generally a short description to aid the user by giving additional information about the field. This field has a maximum length of 256 characters.

  • Type
    A field can be either a single-value or a multi-value type. Once a field has been created, the type cannot be changed.

  • Enabled
    If a field is not enabled, it will not be displayed when viewing, editing, or creating a user account. The field will still be part of the user account and any existing values that have been set will remain.

  • Managed
    A managed field is one that can only be changed by a User Administrator. The value of a managed field will be displayed to a user when viewing their profile under My Account. However, it will not be displayed on the Update Profile page for editing purposes.

  • Required
    When a field is ‘Required’, the value cannot be blank whenever a user account is created or updated. Changing the ‘Required’ property of a field does not immediately affect existing user accounts. However, if a field was not required when a user account was created and later the attribute was changed to be required, then whenever a user or administrator attempts to update that user account, that field will be required to be given a value before any additional changes to the account will be saved.

  • Unique
    The ‘Unique’ property for a field indicates that the value given to that field when a user account is created or updated must be unique across all users. If the field is not ‘Required’, the field of multiple users can be blank but if it is given a value other than blank, it must be unique. A field can only be designated as having the ‘Unique’ property when the field is created and cannot be changed. The ‘Unique’ property is only valid for fields of type ‘single-value’.

  • Regex
    A PHP regular expression can be defined for a field and will be used to validate the value given to the field whenever a user account is created or updated. If the validation fails, an error message will be displayed that indicates that the value ‘has an invalid format’. Since this is a generic error message and doesn’t tell the user why the validation failed, it is recommended that the ‘Hint’ property be set to give a description of what type of input is expected for this field.

Update/Delete Field

To update or delete an existing field, click on the name of the field in the field set box to which the field belongs. This will be found on the Custom User Fields main page. A similar form as that which was displayed when creating the field will be shown with the current settings for the field filled in. To update the form, edit the fields and click on the Save button. To delete the field, click on Delete Field in the Operation section of the  Update Field page. A prompt will be displayed to confirm that the field is to be deleted. Warning - When a field is deleted, existing values of this field are deleted from all user accounts and cannot be recovered. If the deletion is confirmed, then the field will be deleted from the system.