Customizing the Database > Designing Custom Fields, Pages, and Records

Designing Custom Fields, Pages, and Records

You can design Custom Fields, Pages, and Records for use in Files and People records.

Custom Fields store information in a variety of available types. For example, you could design a "Costs" Custom Field that accepts only currency data. A Custom Field may be applied in any of your Custom Pages and Custom Records.

Custom Pages are provided to users as views of the File or Person details dialogs. A Custom Page can contain several Custom Fields, and may be designed to appear in Files of particular File Types, in People records, or in both.

Custom Records are available from list views of File or Person details dialogs, where specifically configured. A Custom Record can contain several Custom Fields, and may be designed to appear in Files of particular File Types, in People records, or in both. For example, if a "Medical Expenses" Custom Record is made available in Files of File Type "Personal Injury", the firm could track multiple medical expenses, with each instance recording the date, amount, description, and who incurred the expense. The File would have a separate view listing each instance, with the expense amount totaled at the bottom. The details of each instance can be viewed in a separate dialog.

Although supplemental information can be kept "free-form" in the Main Note or Summary fields for Files and People, there are many reasons to take advantage of Custom Pages and/or Custom Records:

Greater organization—Information is presented in an organized structure. Custom Records are useful for recording sets of data in separate records displayed in lists you can customize for ease of reference.
Flexibility—You can create Custom Fields, Pages, and Records to suit specific needs.
Validity and consistency of data—A variety of Custom Fields types, such as date fields, numeric fields, list boxes (with customized list items), currency, SSN, and Path/URL ensures that data is captured in the right format. (For a complete list, see Custom Field Types.)
Accessibility—You can associate Custom Records with selected Files and/or People, reducing the unnecessary duplication of information and providing wider, appropriate access to the information that is entered.
Document assembly—Custom Fields from Custom Pages (but not Custom Records) can be included in the documents generated from your customized Merge Templates.
Third-party Links—Information in Custom Pages can be synchronized via Links with some third-party applications.
Searching—Firm Members can search in Custom Fields.

For more information on how Firm Members can view and use the Custom Pages and Records you design, see the "Files" and "People" sections of User Help.