Custom Fields are used to capture specific data that you would like to track. Some examples include Department, Job Title, Shift, and License Number. These fields appear on the Employee Profile and Forms, and can be graphed on the Analytics page. While Custom Fields are not required for your organization, they serve as a powerful means to gather key data points, and in turn report out on the data points.
Custom Fields are initially populated on the Employee Profile. When completing a form for a specific employee, the fields will be prepopulated with the Employee's assigned Employer, Location, and appropriate Custom Fields. Custom Fields can be added at the Organization level, Employer level, and/or Location level.
- Organization level - Custom Fields added at the Organization level will appear on all Employees.
- Employer level - Custom Fields added at the Employer level will be visible when working with employees assigned to the employer.
- Location level - Custom Fields added at the Location level will be visible when working with employees assigned to the location.
Custom Fields are handled in a hierarchical manner, with Location applied first, followed by Employer and finally Organization on an Employee record. Example: an Employer has a custom field of Shift (with options of Day, Afternoon and Evening). The Employer has five Locations. By default, the Shift custom field would appear on all five Locations. However, Location 2 has a Shift custom field which includes Day and Afternoon only. The Custom Fields would be applied as follows:
- Employees (and Forms) for Locations 1, 3, 4 and 5 would include a Shift option with Day, Afternoon and Evening.
- Employees (and Forms) for Location 2 would include a Shift option with Day and Afternoon only.
To add a Custom Field, click Add a custom field. Add the field name, toggling Is required makes this field a requirement when creating new Employees. Type refers to the type of data being collected in the Field.
When setting up Custom Fields, please keep best practices in mind for the various field types. The selected field type determines how data is captured, and thus affects how data can leveraged in reports.
- Options - Allows you to create and select from a list of one or more terms. Options are ideal when you want to aggregate a group of users in subsets of common data. For example, if you need to track against employees who are millwrights versus machinists versus electricians, create a Job Role/Type custom field with the options of Millwright, Machinist and Electrician. Additionally, Options provides the means to have a simple Yes/No question.
- Text - Provides the means to enter data as needed by the user. Please keep in mind that Text field types do not work well for reporting purposes. For example, if Department is setup as a text type custom field, the entered data will not be consistent and thus cannot be reported against. Example: One user may add "Accounting" to the Department field on some employees, while another user may add "Acct" on employee profiles.
- Numeric - Ideal for capturing such values as Employee ID # and other values unique to employees.
- Email - While email is already captured on an employee record, the field could be used to capture a secondary email, or an emergency contact email.
- Date - Employee Start Date would be an example.
- Date Time - Allows entry of both date and time.