Custom fields

Adding the things your plant tracks that the product does not — fifteen field types, and why a type can only be chosen once.

What the product tracks is not all you track. Custom fields add your own to any record type.

The types

Type	For
Text	A line — a batch number, a serial
Long text	A paragraph. Notes, observations
Whole number	Counts. No decimal point
Decimal	Measurements — hours, pressures, tolerances
Money	An amount, in the organisation’s currency
Percentage	Nought to a hundred
Rating	A score out of five
Yes / no	A single condition
Date	A calendar day
Date and time	A moment
One of a list	A closed list you define
One of a few	The same, as buttons, where there are three or four
Any of a list	More than one may be chosen
Link	A web address

The type is chosen once

A field’s type cannot be changed after it is created.

This is not a limitation anyone forgot to lift. The type decides which column an answer is stored in — changing it would not convert the answers, it would orphan them in a column nothing reads.

So after creation the screen shows the type as a fact rather than a control, and tells you how many answers are stored against it.

Everything that is genuinely a decision stays editable: the label, the help text, whether it is required, and what a choice list offers.

If you have the type wrong, create a new field and retire the old one. It is a nuisance; silently orphaning a year of answers is worse.

Adding a field

1. Choose the record type

   Work orders, assets, parts, vendors, contracts, technicians — anything the model allows.

2. Name it and choose its type

   The label is what people see. Choose the type carefully — this is the decision you cannot undo.

3. Add help text

   One line saying what good input looks like. Worth writing; it is what stops five people entering a date five ways.

4. Decide whether it is required

   A required field must be answered before the record can be saved — and, on a work order, before the job can be closed.

5. Add the choices, for a list type

   Added after the field exists.

Required fields on work orders

A required custom field appears on the field app under “before you can close this”, with the count. A technician cannot complete the job without it.

That is a useful lever and an easy one to overuse: every required field is something somebody must type at the machine, possibly in the rain.

Choice lists

Editing a choice list follows the same rule as everywhere: what has already been answered cannot be reinterpreted. Removing a choice that answers already use is refused, and the refusal counts the answers so you know what you are dealing with.

Add new choices freely.

Where they appear

On the record’s own screen, in a section of their own; in list Columns; in Filter; and in exports.