Custom fields on employee records

Every company records slightly different things about its people. A cost centre. A payroll reference. A badge number. A note about the equipment somebody has been issued.

Custom fields let an administrator define those details themselves, name them, and set the order they appear in. Once a field exists it can be filled in on each employee’s record, and it can be switched on as an extra column on the reports and in their CSV exports.

The job it does is a plain one: put your company’s own reference data next to your leave data, so a report can go straight to payroll or finance without anyone re-keying it from a spreadsheet.

Fields of type Text and Dropdown hold a value: typed in, or picked from the options an administrator lists. Most of this article is about those two. A field of type File holds documents instead, on the employee record’s Documents tab, and is never a report column: read Documents on employee records.

Who can set them up

Custom fields are defined by administrators, on the Custom fields page under Settings. Filling in a value happens somewhere else entirely — on the employee’s own record, as part of editing that record.

Where to find them

Open Settings and select the Custom fields tile, under Company setup. A page you have pinned to the menu leaves its group and comes first, under Pinned.

The page has a tile for each field you have defined, in the order the employee record shows them. A tile leads with a small icon for the field’s type and carries the field’s label, with its description underneath. Beside the tiles, Manage custom fields says what the fields record and which of them can be report columns, and that the employee record shows the fields in the order of this list.

Add new, above the tiles, creates a field. Once the list is long, a search box sits beside it, with a count under them. The search finds a field by its label, its description or its type. The count tells you how many fields you have defined against the number your company may have; when you reach that number, Add new is switched off and explains why when you hover over it.

Before you have added any field, the page says No custom fields yet. Add one to record extra details about employees.

Selecting a tile opens the field’s details beside the tiles, which move into a narrower list; hover over a tile there to read its description. All custom fields, above that list, closes the details. The details come in three sections:

• What it is called: the Label, and the Description, which reads None when the field has none.
• What it holds: the Type and, beside it, a Text field’s Maximum length or a Dropdown field’s Options, in the order the employee record offers them. A File field has nothing beside its type.
• Who sees it: what The employee and Managers may each do with the field.

The ⋯ menu at the top right of the details, More actions, holds everything you can do to a field once it exists. See Edit, reorder and delete a field below.

Create a field

Select Add new. A new field’s details open as a form, with no ⋯ menu, in the same three sections.

Under What it is called:

• Label — what the field is called everywhere it appears: on the employee record and, for a Text or Dropdown field, in the reports’ column picker.
• Description (optional) — a hint shown under the field when somebody is filling it in on an employee’s record. Use it for the shape of value you expect, or for where to look the value up. Leave it empty if the label speaks for itself.

Under What it holds:

• Type — Text, Dropdown or File. A field’s type is settled when it is added, as the form says under it: it cannot be changed later.
• Maximum length, for a Text field — how long a value in this field may be. The form states the range it accepts underneath the control.
• Options, for a Dropdown field — the choices an employee’s value is picked from, one line each. Type each option in its own box. Add option adds a line at the end, and the buttons beside a line move it up or down the list, or remove it. A new Dropdown field starts with one empty line. Under the options, the form says that they are offered in this order on the employee record, and that renaming an option renames it for every employee who has it. The number of options a field may have is limited: at the limit, Add option is switched off, and hovering over it says why.

Under Who sees it:

• The employee — No access or Can view. Neither lets an employee edit their own value; a field they can view shows on their My profile once it holds a value.
• Managers — No access, Can view or Can view and edit. Under it, the form says: “Managers can edit the value only where they can also edit the employee’s record. Administrators can always view and edit.”

A new field starts at No access for both, so only administrators see it until you choose otherwise. Read Who sees and edits the values below.

Save changes creates the field, says Custom field saved and opens its details, and its tile joins the end of the list. Cancel takes you back to the tiles. A label another field already has is refused: the form says so under Label, and stays open.

A field of type File holds documents rather than a value, so it has neither Maximum length nor Options. Its The employee and Managers decide what each may do with the field’s documents: No access, Can view or Can view and add. Read more: Documents on employee records

A Dropdown field is not saved while an option is empty, while two options are the same, or with no option at all: the form says why under the option or under the list, and stays open.

A new field starts empty. Creating it does not put anything on anybody’s record — somebody has to enter the values, employee by employee.

Fill in a value on an employee’s record

Open the employee from Employees, go to the General tab, select Edit, the pencil on the Identity caption, and find the Profile section. Custom fields sit there, after Title and Date of Birth, in the order of the Custom fields page. A Text field is a box to type in. A Dropdown field is a dropdown that offers None first, then the field’s options in their order; picking None clears the value. Fields of type File are not there: their documents are on the Documents tab.

Values are saved with the rest of the employee’s details — the same edit mode, the same Save changes button. There is nothing separate to save.

Reading and editing show different things, and the difference catches people out:

• Editing a record, as an administrator, lists every field you have defined, empty ones included, each with its description underneath as a hint. A manager gets a box or a dropdown only for the fields they may edit, and sees the rest as reading shows them.
• Reading a record shows only the fields that have a value, exactly like the built-in optional details. A Dropdown field shows the option the employee has, as text. An employee with nothing filled in shows nothing extra.

You fill custom fields in on a record that already exists. Add the employee first — that includes employees added in bulk or imported for you — then open the record and enter the values.

Edit, reorder and delete a field

Select a field’s tile to open its details. Everything you can do to the field is in the ⋯ menu at the top right of the details.

Edit custom field turns the details into a form, in place, so you can change the field’s label, its description and who sees it, and a Text field’s maximum length or a Dropdown field’s options. The type stays as it was set. Save changes and Cancel sit at the bottom of the details and stay in view as you scroll. Save changes saves the field, says Custom field saved and shows its details again; Cancel drops your changes.

Renaming a field keeps everything already entered against it: only the label changes, the values stay where they are.

A change to who has access takes effect at once. An employee who has TimeOff.Management open sees it on My profile after reloading the page.

There is one limit on lowering the maximum length: if employees already hold values longer than the new limit, the change is refused and the form says, under Maximum length, what needs to happen first. Shorten those values on the records that hold them, then come back and lower the limit.

A Dropdown field’s options change in the same form, and each change takes effect when you select Save changes:

• To rename an option, type over it in its box. Every employee who had that option then has the new wording.
• To reorder the options, use the Move up and Move down arrows beside an option. That changes the order the employee record offers them in, and nothing else. Never retype options to reorder them: typing over an option renames it, so swapping two by retyping renames both, for every employee who has either.
• To add an option, select Add option. It is offered from then on, and nobody has it until somebody picks it.
• To remove an option, select Remove option beside it. An option that employees still have cannot be removed: the form puts it back at the end of the list and names it. Pick another option on those employees’ records first. Renaming it instead renames it for them.

The arrows beside an option move it within its field. They are not the ⋯ menu’s Move up and Move down, which move the field itself.

Move up and Move down, in the ⋯ menu, move the field one place in the list at once, with nothing to save. The menu offers only the moves the field can make. The order is used everywhere: the employee record, My profile and the reports’ column picker all follow it.

Delete custom field asks you to confirm, with Delete custom field?. Deleting a field removes it from every employee’s record and takes the values with it. This cannot be undone, and there is no way to get the values back afterwards. The confirmation says so — read it before you select Delete.

Deleting a field of type File also deletes every document stored in it, on every employee’s record. Its confirmation says how many documents the field holds.

Show a field as a report column

Custom fields can be added as columns to the reports that list employees:

• Allowance snapshot report
• Allowance usage by time
• Leave report
• Leave usage alert

Fields of type Text and Dropdown can be columns. Fields of type File hold documents, and are not available as report columns.

Each of those pages has a Columns control at the top right — the small column icon beside Download CSV. Open it and you get your company’s custom fields, grouped under Custom fields; on the Allowance snapshot report they come after the report’s own Extra columns. Tick a field to add it as a column.

An administrator finds every Text and Dropdown field there. Anyone else who can open these reports finds only the fields set to Can view or Can view and edit for Managers, and the table and the CSV follow the same rule.

Three things worth knowing about report columns:

• The choice is yours alone, and it is remembered. Ticking a column changes what you see, not what your colleagues see, and it is still ticked when you come back to the report.
• The data arrives when you select Update, the same as every other change you make on a report page.
• The CSV export follows the columns on screen. Tick a custom field and it is in the download.

A custom column carries a cell for every employee in the report, and that cell is blank where no value has been entered. For a Dropdown field, the cell holds the option the employee has.

For how the report pages themselves work — filters, Update, and the CSV — read Reports.

Who sees and edits the values

Each field’s Who sees it decides who, besides administrators, sees its values and fills them in. A Dropdown field works exactly as a Text field here.

• Administrators see and edit every field on every employee’s record, whatever the field is set to.
• Managers see the fields set to Can view or Can view and edit for Managers, in the Profile section of the employee’s General tab. A manager here is one of the employee’s supervisors, or anyone with an employee management role that lets them view that employee’s information. A manager changes a value only where the field is set to Can view and edit and they can also edit the employee’s record, which takes a role with Edit employee information that covers the employee. A supervisor without such a role sees the value but cannot change it.
• The employee sees, on My profile, the fields set to Can view for The employee that hold a value for them. That level never lets them edit a value.

Anyone else who can open the reports also gets the fields set to Can view or Can view and edit for Managers, as report columns: read Show a field as a report column.

A field set to No access for Managers is not on the record for managers at all, and is a report column for administrators only.

A field of type File has its own access, for its documents. Read Documents on employee records.

What the employee sees

Employees find the fields they may view on My profile, on its General tab, in a Profile section after Employment details. Each field that holds a value for them is listed there, with nothing to edit. With nothing to show, there is no Profile section.

An employee who has TimeOff.Management open when a field is shown to them, or when their value changes, sees the change after reloading the page. My profile is not part of the phone layout, so employees see these fields on a computer.

An administrator’s own My profile shows every field that holds a value on their record.

Good to know

A new field starts empty for everybody. Defining a field does not fill it in. It stays blank on an employee’s record until somebody enters a value there.

A new field is seen by administrators only. It starts at No access for The employee and for Managers, and stays that way until somebody chooses who else sees it.

Values are entered on a record that already exists. Add the employee first, then open their record and fill the fields in — that is true however the employee arrived, including employees added in bulk or imported.

Renaming a field keeps the values. Change the label whenever the wording stops fitting; nothing already entered is lost.

Renaming an option renames it for everyone who has it. So reorder a Dropdown field’s options by moving them with the arrows beside them, never by retyping them.

An option that employees still have cannot be removed. Give those employees another option first. The option can be renamed at any time.

A Dropdown field records a detail; it groups nobody. Its value scopes no policy and filters no view. To group employees for a policy, use tags.

Deleting a field is permanent. The field goes from every employee’s record and the values go with it. There is no undo.

A field’s type is chosen once. It is settled when the field is created and stays that way.

The maximum length cannot be lowered past values employees already hold. Shorten those values on the records that hold them first, then lower the limit.

The order of the Custom fields page is used everywhere. Move up and Move down, in a field’s ⋯ menu, decide the order on the employee record, on My profile and in the reports’ column picker alike.

Blank cells in a report column are normal. Every employee in the report gets a cell in that column; it is empty for anyone whose record has no value.

Changes are recorded in the Audit trail. Changes to a field itself and changes to an employee’s values both appear there. Read more: Audit trail.