Horizon lets you build a single, centralised database of your contacts. You can easily create additional "custom fields" to store whatever data you want, in addition to the standard fields that are already configured in the database (the standard fields include each contact's name, date of birth, postal address, email address, landline and mobile phone numbers).
Custom fields can store a single set of information for each contact, or several sets of information (e.g. store a contact's purchase history).
You can also create custom fields for other types of data in Horizon, such as your groups, email messages and web landing pages, helping you to keep all your data well organised.
Sets of custom fields
In Horizon, you're able to organize your custom fields into one or more "sets" of fields. This is useful because:
- Each set of fields is grouped together on the screen when you're viewing or editing a contact's details, making it easier to see related information in one place.
- Each set of fields is listed separately in the Horizon advanced search and group creation screens, making it much easier to find the field/s you want to use for searching and grouping of your contacts.
- Each set of fields can be added to (or removed from) your types of contact, making it much easier to manage data collection campaigns such as surveys and competitions.
How to create custom fields
To create a new set of custom fields for storing data about your contacts
Note: When creating custom fields do not add any special characters (e.g. question marks or brackets) in the name. This can cause issues with notification smart inserts and exporting contact data. We are planning on removing the ability to add special characters. If you want to add special characters in a form, you can rename the field label. For more info, see Create an interactive form on your own website
Create a new set of fields
1. Click | Settings | at the top-right of the screen.
2. Scroll down until you see "Data management" options on the left of the screen, and click | Custom fields |.
3. Your existing sets of custom fields will be listed. At this point you can edit an existing set of fields or create a new one:
4. Click the | Add a new set of custom fields | button.
5. Give the new set of fields a name (e.g. customer details) and optionally some comments to help you remember what these fields are going to be used for.
6. Tick the "Data collection" tick box if you want to store several sets of information for each contact (such as a purchase history); otherwise leave it empty.
7. Tick the "Is Expanded" tick-box if you'd like these fields to be shown in full when you view or edit a contact's details. Leave it empty if you'd like the fields to be collapsed by default (on the view/edit contact screen you'll see the name of the set of fields and you can expand them by clicking on the name).
Create the custom fields within this set
Now you're ready to start adding the individual custom fields to this set.
8. Click the | Add a custom field | button and a pop-up window will appear.
9. Select the type of field you want to add (text box, date, number, dropdown list etc)
- Select "Text box" if you want to store a single line of free text.
- Select "Dropdown list" if you want to store a single value from a set of possible values.
- Select "Checkbox list" if you want to store zero or more values from a set of possible values.
- Select "Text area" if you want to store several lines of text.
- Select "Date" if you want to store a date.
- Select "Datetime" if you want to store a date and time.
- Select "Number" if you want to store a numeric value.
10. If you want to set a default value for the field, select it in the "Default" box; otherwise leave it empty.
11. If you want the data to be read-only in Horizon, tick the "Read-only" checkbox; otherwise leave it clear.
12. If you want the new field to be mandatory, tick the "Mandatory" checkbox; otherwise leave it clear.
14. Click the | Add | button.
Repeat steps 8 - 14 to add all the desired custom fields to this set.
15. To set the relative display order for this field, compared to other custom fields in the set, change the 'Order by' field in the custom fields screen
Assign your fields to the appropriate type/s of contact
Next you need to tell Horizon to store this data for one or more types of contact.
15. Click the "Select a type of contact" button, then select the desired type/s of contact.
16. Click the "Save" button at the bottom of the screen.
If you view, add or edit one of your contacts, you should now see that these custom fields are available for storing data.