Summary
Text input profile fields are a great solution for providing basic text as values for your profile fields. This is the most commonly used profile field type due to its simplicity. This guide will show you how to create a text input profile field.
Step 1 - Navigate
To create a new profile field, you need to go to the User Profile Field page which can be found by going to the following, whilst logged in as a site administrator:
Site Administration > Users > Accounts > User profile fields
Step 2 - Creating a new profile field
Within the User Profile Field page, you’ll see a range of different profile field categories that exist within your platform. Before adding the new profile field you’ll need to choose which of these categories the new profile field will fit into. Generally speaking, for all hierarchy (managers reporting) related fields, these should be added to the “Hierarchy” category. If your new profile field is not required for your hierarchy then it will need to be added into the “Other fields” category.
Once you decide on the relevant category, you can select the “Create a new profile field” button to the right of the category name. This will then present you with a number of different options for the different profile field types, as shown below:
As we are adding a text input profile field we will select the “Text input” option from the list. Once selected, you’ll be presented with the profile field settings page in which you can add the required profile field information, we’ll touch more on each of these sections below:
Common settings
- Short name - This is a unique “short name” value which is to be given to the profile field. This will be used when referencing the profile field from different areas of the site.
- Name - This is the full name of the profile field, as visible from the User profile fields page.
- Description - Here you can provide a description of the profile field, this can be useful for internal reference purposes.
- Is this field required - If set to “Yes” then this profile field will require every user to have this profile field populated.
- Is this field locked - Once a value has been provided, this cannot be changed.
- Should the data be unique - If set to “Yes” then only one user will be able to use each profile field value. Once assigned, no one else will be able to use this value.
- Display on signup page - If set to “Yes” then this profile field value can be assigned upon signup.
- Who is this field visible to - This option dictates who can view this profile field for any given user on the platform.
- Category - Here you can edit the category in which the profile field sits. By default, this will be within the category in which you created the new profile field.
Specific settings
- Default value - The default value is provided in cases where a value has not been entered.
- Display size - Here you can set the text area display size.
- Character limit - This value sets the character limit for your profile field values.
- Is this a password field - If set to “Yes” then the characters will be blanked when entering the value into the profile field area.
- Link - If the profile field value is a link, then you would need to provide part of the link URL in this text box along with “$$” to mark where the custom value will be added.
- Link target - If using a link value as mentioned above, then this setting will allow you to dictate how the link will open once clicked.
Step 3 - Save
Once you have applied the relevant settings to your profile field you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Save changes” in order to create the profile field. This will then be visible from within the User profile field page and values for this profile field can then be assigned to users on your platform.