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Field Overview

Explore all information about fields & the options we offer for customizations

Peter Novosel avatar
Written by Peter Novosel
Updated over a week ago

Feature Overview Video


Fields are the building blocks of Tables, and are the containers for your data that can be easily managed by the right team.

Once the field is created, you have many options to customize the field from the dropdown menu. In this article, you will learn more about all the options we offer for field customizations.


Intro

Plan availability

Available on all plan types

Permissions

  • Admins, Solution Managers, and Creators - All customization options are available

  • General Access - Can sort, filter, and group

Related reading

Note: Every SmartSuite Table has a Record Title (Primary Field). This field is intended to describe and serve as a short representation of that record. It is used as the label for the record when users need to select the record. As a system field, it cannot be deleted, moved, hidden, or duplicated.


Field Configuration Menu

Accessing the Field Configuration Menu

Click on the three-dot menu to access the configuration menu to the right of the field title.

You can additionally access this from the expanded record view through the three-dot menu on the right side of the field.

Editing a field & its settings

From the field configuration menu, select "Modify Field Settings." You can also double-click on the field title to open the field settings.

From the field settings, you have the option to:

Rename the field

A cursor will display at the top next to the bold field title for you to rename the field.

Change field type

To adjust the field type, click on the dropdown directly below the field name. Learn more here.

Adjust display formats & additional options

Depending on the field type, you have the option to customize display types/formats and value options as well as overall field options. For example, you can edit and create additional status values, and adjust the way values are displayed.

Note: These options will vary based on the specific type of field.

Under Options, depending on the field type you can set the settings to require an entry for fields, require a unique entry, enable or disable users from adding new entries, and more.

Including help text

In the "Help text," tab of the field settings window, you can include a description or help content about the specific field. Help text displays by hovering over the icon, but you can choose to display the language fully in the record view below the field name. For more information on help text, view this article.

Duplicating a field

To duplicate an existing field, select "Duplicate field' from the configuration menu. A new "copy" field of the same kind (and will the same settings) will be created. The new field will be added and titled with the same name followed by "copy." A window will display allowing you to include current field content, such as the current status values. Learn more

Deleting a field

To delete a field, select the "Delete field" option from the configuration menu. You can restore the field in the recycle bin if you wish to recover a deleted field. Learn more here.

Inserting a new field

From the same menu, you can easily insert a new field to the right of the current field. Explore other ways to add new fields here.

Create default field values

To set default values, click on the "Defaults" tab. This will direct you to select a default value that is applied only to new records. For more examples, visit this article.


Other options:


Changing a Field's Type

If you change a field with existing values into a new type, SmartSuite does its best to convert any existing values into the chosen type. For example you can convert a text field into an Assigned To field, and SmartSuite will try to match with any existing users, but in cases where no match is found the cell is left empty.

When converting a field to a different type and you are not confident on if the data will properly convert, it is best to create a duplicate of that field so you can easily change the field back and paste the previous values if there are any issues.

After selecting the new field type you would like to change the field to, you'll be presented with the same customization options as if you were creating the field from scratch, such as choosing display types and defaults.

Explore all of our available field types in this article!


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