Custom fields are a powerful tool within Crelate to indicate specific attributes on any contact, company or opportunity. Custom fields can be configured to list as: Short/Long Answer, Date Fields, Numeric, Picklists and many other types. Your custom fields will be completely searchable as well to make the input of information easy to find later on.
As a result, it will be extremely important, when setting up a custom field, to consider what type of field you should create.
Should this be a free text field? Do I want the team to have the flexibility to enter whatever they'd like?
Should this be a picklist? Do I want to control the experience on behalf of my team to ensure a clean set and an easily searchable field?
Should this be a Monetary/Date Field? Do I want a structured field that I may later search through a range on? (ie. Contacts who make between $60-$80k or contacts who started employment after January 1st 2020)
All of these are items you'll want to consider when you're actually Creating a Custom Field. Customers often find value, when in a list or search, being able to review unique custom fields. You'll always have the ability to control the displayed view to render the specific custom fields that may be important at that given moment.
Custom Field Examples
We see many common and uncommon use cases for custom fields. We'll share a few of the more common examples below:
Bonus Expectations - If there is any additional salary information beyond what Crelate provides by default (such as Salary, Salary min/max, etc) you may want to consider other monetary fields that may make sense such as a bonus expectation
Ranking - A field type within Crelate is a 1-5 star rating. It's very visual (depicted by star icon) and can be a great way to view and search based on the data.
Clearance/Authorization - We see this often as a picklist set. Something where as an admin, you have the ability to create a picklist (as a single or multi choice option) and have your team add clearances to given records.
Desired Start Date - Just like salary above, Crelate already provides several key date fields by default. However, if there are additional points that may prove useful to your firm, something such as Desired Start Date may prove useful.
What's Next?
Now that you have a few ideas, let's get started and have you begin creating and searching through custom fields!