The best way to explain custom fields is thinking about your quoting process, those specific questions you always ask your prospects and customers in order to know how much you will charge for your services. Usually it will depend on the size of the house, the number of square feet a property has, how many windows do you want to clean, how soon the customer wants the service, etc.
Kapi allows you to create these fields / questions as the core of your quoting system, these questions will be used later to setup dynamic pricing for your services, and will be used to build the form you and your customers will use to create a quote or a new deal.
Custom fields belong to a model, is an entity within your business model, for example a model can be an Address ( a property) and a custom field of this model would be “Year of construction”, so in order to create a custom field, you must select a model first and then create a custom field within this model.
Types of Custom fields
To understand the different type of custom fields think once again on the questions you usually ask during your conversation with your customers, but now focus on the answers to your questions.
Our custom fields were created to capture these answers in a way you could use it to build automatic quotes for your customers. Below you’ll find a list of our available custom fields:
Text
These fields will allow the user to input their answer, so they’ll be able to type whatever they want. Within the text custom fields you’ll have several options:
Short text: Short text box, useful to ask for short answers.
Long text: also know as text area, will provide the user with a text field with a larger amount of characters to write. Useful when you want your customer to provide directions or explain additional details.
Email: a text box with email format validations.
Phone: a text box with phone number format validations.
URL: a text box with valid url format validations.
Numbers
These custom fields will be extremely important, use these custom fields to gather information from your customers in terms of quantities. Theses custom fields will be used to help you calculate services pricing as they could be used as
in the future. The input allowed by these fields will be restricted to a numeric value and it will have two options.
Integers: allows only integers numbers
Decimals:allows decimal numbers
Booleans
Use booleans to ask yes/no questions, the input allowed by these fields will be yes or no. I.e. Are there trees in the front yard? Booleans fields could also be used as
to affect the pricing of your services, meaning you can set rules to add an amount of money to the value of a service if the answer to a Boolean field is yes or not. In Kapi you’ll be able to use 3 formats for boolean fields:
Checkbox: a checkbox the user could check for a positive answer or leave blank instead.
Toggle ( switch): a switch that would turn on/off when clicked by the user
Radio button: a single radio button the user can select, if it’s selected means yes if left blank means no.
Select
Use select custom fields when you want your customer to make a choice from predefined options. These fields will allow the user to select only one option from the ones you create, and they can also be used as
for your services pricing. For select fields you’ll have 2 options:
Dropdown: a dropdown where the user can click, see a list of available options and select one.
Radio button: all available options will be visible, the user can select one.
Date Pickers
Date pickers are really useful when you need to gather a date from your customer, either the date of the last service or the date when they want to receive the next service. These fields will provide your customer with a calendar they can click and select the desired date and time. There are different options you could set in order to obtain the best format for the information the user will provide.
Single date: will allow the user to input a specific date.
Period: will allow the user to select a start date and end date.
Time only: will allow the user to select just a time.
Accessing models / entities
It all starts by going to your settings section, and click on the models option under the “Admin” submenu. Within the models section you’ll find a list of entities that somehow interacts with you on your business’s day to day. We made these entities as models so you can customize them to your needs. Examples of models are contacts, addresses, businesses, projects etc.
Within the models page you’ll see a grid where each model is listed, this grid will offer you the following information:
Model: The name of the model
Records: the amount of times this fields has been used and store in your records
Custom fields: the amount of fields created for a specific model
Source: Indicates if the model is a default entity created by Kapi or it’s a new model created by you.
Description: A brief description of the entity.
Creating a custom field
It all starts with by selecting the model where you want to create the new custom field. Then you’ll be taken to the model’s page, where you’ll see all the custom fields of this model and other informations.
These are the elements you’ll find and be able to use on the model’s page:
Fields table: a grid containing all the fields that belongs to the model, within this grid you’ll see the following fields:
Field: the name of the field
Type: type of custom field as explained above.
Source:
Defaults: Kapi’s default fields, you can’t erase or change these fields.
Custom: fields created by you.
Models profile
Name: the name of the model
Description: a brief description of the model
Navigation tabs
All platforms: Shows all custom
Admin: Shows custom fields that are visible only from the admin platform
Gosales: shows custom fields that ara visible on the sales workflow ( Gosales)
Add new custom field: this button is used to add a new custom field.
You can click the “Add new custom field” button and you’ll see a modal showing the different types of custom fields available.
Select the desired type of custom field from the list.
Provide the needed information in order to create your custom field:
Settings:
Label: this will be the name of your custom field
Show in Sales platform: it’s a toggle, select this option (turn it on) if you want this field to be visible in the sales platform, in other words if this is an information that your customer should provide.
User interface
Select the subtype of custom field. Each type of custom field has subtype as explained above, for a text it could be simple tex, long text, email, phone, etc.
Place holder: this is a text you could use to provide some guidance to your customers of what should he input in this field, in other words an example of the expected response.
Description: Complementary information about the field that will appear below the field.
Validation rules: use this tab to add some rules to this field.
Required: if enabled the user will be force to fill this field on the sales workflow.
Unique Value: If enabled the user won’t be able to input a repeated value
Once you’ve completed the required informations click on add this field
The new custom field will be created and you will see a notification on the upper right corner