Custom Fields

Custom Fields in Close are flexible and can be used for many different purposes. They allow you to store attributes about your Leads and Contacts. You can store common attributes like industry/vertical, company size, or timezone; set up our user type custom field to assign Leads to specific reps; unsubscribe a contact from future communications, or sync your internal database to pull in data that could be relevant during a sales call.

Exact use cases depend on what you are trying to accomplish, so let’s cover how to set them up.

Lead Custom Fields

Custom Field Types

There are four main types of custom fields:

• Lead custom fields - assigned to Leads and are visible within the Lead page
• Contact custom fields - assigned to Contacts and are visible within the Lead page for each contact
• Custom Activity custom fields - assigned to Custom Activities - see more at Custom Activities
• Shared custom fields - can be assigned to Leads, Contacts, and Custom Activities - see more at Shared custom fields

Creating Custom Fields

Set up new Custom Fields in Close by going to Settings > Customizations > Custom Fields where you can navigate between Lead and Contact custom fields by using tabs at the top.

Custom Field types

You can create, rename, merge, remove, and change types of Custom Fields from that page.

Creating Lead Custom Fields

Types

There are different types of Custom Fields you can create. Let’s review the differences:

• Choices (single): a dropdown of predefined choices where you can only select a single choice on a single Lead.
• Choices (multiple): a dropdown of predefined choices where you can select one or more choices on a single Lead.
• Contact (single): a dropdown containing all Contacts on a given Lead. You can assign a single Contact to a given Lead.
• Contact (multiple): a dropdown containing all Contacts on a given Lead. You can assign one or more Contacts to a given Lead.
• Date: a text field that only accepts a date.
• Date & Time: a field that requires both a date and a time.
• Number: a text field that only accepts numeric values (including numbers with decimal places)
• Text: a plain text field with no validation or structure.
• Textarea (for Custom Activities only): a plain text field with no validation or structure that supports new lines
• User (single): a dropdown containing all the Users who are active in your Close organization. You can only assign a single User to a single Lead.
• User (multiple): a dropdown containing all the Users who are active in your Close organization. You can only assign multiple Users to a single Lead.
• Hidden (for API use only): a field that is never displayed to the users in Close, but can be useful for API integrations. Accepts any data type from JSON, including lists and objects.

Shared field

Enable this to create this field as a Shared Field that you can later reuse for other objects - Leads, Contacts or Custom Activities. See more at Shared Custom Fields.

Restrict Editing

If you turn on Restrict Editing only selected users (within certain roles) will be able to edit/delete those custom field values, but the values will still be visible to all users.

Use Roles & Permissions to Restrict Custom Field Editing

Restrict which users can edit Custom Fields by setting up Roles & Permissions. Assign Leads to specific users with a "user" type Custom Field - learn more about Lead Assignment.

Editing Custom Fields

Change the name and type of an existing Custom Field once it is created by clicking the pencil icon next to the Custom Field.

Changing a single-value custom field to a multi-value (and vice versa)

You can safely change a custom field from type Choices (single) to Choices (multiple) and from User (single) to User (multiple). However, changing a multi-value custom field back to single-value drops all the existing values.

Changing a text/choice custom field to user custom field

Before changing an existing text/choice custom field into a user custom field, make sure your field values match the exact full names (or IDs) of the users in your organization. Any values that don't exactly match will be lost.

Deleting Custom Fields

Navigate to the Custom Fields section under Settings > Customizations > Custom Fields. Then, select the trash icon from the options to the right of the Custom Field, or select the pencil icon next to the Custom Field name and click on the trash can icon in the bottom left corner.

Lead Custom Fields

Adding Custom Fields to Leads

Custom Fields can be added to each Lead individually, during a data import, or by bulk editing a list of Leads.

Add a Custom Field value to a Lead by simply navigating to the Lead page, select the + sign next to the Custom Field section, select your Custom Field from the drop-down, add the value, and click Save. You can also edit a Custom Field from this same section as shown below:

Custom Fields will only appear on the Lead page if there is a value associated with it for that Lead.

Update or Clear Lead Custom Fields in Bulk

Add a Custom Field in bulk to a list of Leads by using the Bulk Editing tool on the Leads page. For example, assign Leads to a sales rep in bulk based on certain Lead criteria.

Updating Lead Custom Fields in bulk

Contact Custom Fields

Adding Custom Fields to Contacts

You can also add Custom Fields to Contacts in Close. This is especially useful for Leads with multiple contacts associated with them. To do this, simply click on the edit button next to Contact name as shown below:

Editing contacts

Then, you will see the edit screen. Here, you can select the Contact-level Custom Field from the Dropdown as shown below:

Adding contact custom fields

Update or Clear Contact Custom Fields in Bulk

Add a Custom Field in bulk to a list of Contacts by using the Bulk Editing tool on the Contacts page. For example, mark Contacts as DNC (Do Not Contact) in bulk based on certain criteria.

Updating Contact Custom Fields in bulk

Shared Custom Fields

Shared Custom Fields are usually used for fields that are duplicated across multiple object types (Leads, Contacts, Custom Activities). The most common examples are Industry and Assigned To custom fields. Instead of creating the same industry option list over and over again, you can just create a single Shared Custom Field named Industry and then add it to both Lead, Contact, and Custom Activity objects.

Creating Shared Custom Fields

You can create Shared Fields from within Leads, Contacts, or Custom Activity pages by checking the Share Field option:

Creating Shared Field

or you can create them directly from the Shared Fields page:

Creating Shared Field

Assigning Shared Custom Fields

To assign a shared field to a specific object type, go to Leads, Contacts, or Custom Activities page, click on + Add Field, tab over to Shared section, and just add it in:

Assigning Shared Custom Fields to Contacts

Currency

Close doesn't support multiple currencies and their exchange rates just yet. However, you can pick the main Currency on the Settings > Organization > General page and it will be used in various places across the whole application, making the use of Close more intuitive.

Currency option