Custom Participant, Household, Anonymous, and Organization Fields

Adding Fields to the Entity Forms: Participants, Organizations, Households, and Anonymous

Note: This article describes how to add custom participant fields. Adding custom fields for Participants, Organizations, Households, and Anonymous forms follows the same process. Creating or editing any custom field on an entity type form requires administrator permission for managing that entity form. 

Each entity form, such as the Participant form, has a set of built-in, standard fields. These fields gather basic details such as names, contact information, and some demographics.  

Most organization need to collect additional information about their service recipients, such as employment status or county of residence. Custom fields can be added to the entity forms to capture additional demographic information and other data that rarely changes.

 

 Select Admin > Manage Entity Fields

 

Select the Participant form by clicking the form name or the Edit icon to open the form for editing.

 

When the form opens for editing, the Standard Fields will appear at the top of the page with the the Custom Fields section below, such as the Custom Participant Fields section. 

 

To add a new field, click the Add New Field button.  The custom fields will appear in the first column of the entity form after the last visible standard field.

Note: If the field you want to add already exists in the system, you can click Add Existing Fields, which opens a search window. This allows you to copy any existing custom field on survey forms, note forms, and entity forms.

Custom fields can have a number of different types of input, such as radio buttons and attached files. For a full list, see the Compyle Field Types Dictionary.

 

For example, if the field asks for a date, the input format will be mm/dd/yyyy.

As an example, the question “Preferred contact method” should have a Single Choice format, either dropdown or radio buttons.

The options themselves are entered below: fill in the first option, then use the Add New Option button to add more options. You can also add an “Other” option in some formats, set the question as visible or hidden, and choose to assign numerical values to options.

The buttons above the options can be used to show a preview of the field (what the participant will see), delete the entire question, save the question, or cancel without saving. 

You can add as many custom fields as needed. Just make sure you save each new field after setting it up. To edit or delete a custom field, click its Edit icon.

 

To rearrange the custom fields, drag and drop fields in the Custom Fields section. The field numbers will automatically change. 

 

If you already have custom fields in your system that you would like to add to the Participant form, you can copy the field onto the Participant form. To search for an existing question, click the Add Existing Field button.

Search for a question keyword, such as “Parent”. Select a field to add it to the form.

Once the new field appears on the form, you can edit it, and the original field will not be affected. Make sure to save each existing field that you add before adding another field.

 

All custom fields you create will be available when creating a new participant or creating a new organization. Hidden or archived fields will not be displayed.