Creating custom fields

You can create up to 150 custom fields (depending on your plan) in your customer data platform. Each custom field has a field type such as Phone, Number or Single select. These field types help define how you will input the data. For example if you select the field type "Phone" the input will make sure you enter a number formatted correctly.


Create a custom field

To create a new custom field from the People page:

  1. On the People page, click into a person’s profile.
  2. Find the section you wish to add the custom field to and click the edit icon, a good place to start is under About.
  3. Click Create new field.
  4. Give the field a name and select the appropriate field type. Click Create.
  5. The field will appear at the bottom of the displayed section.
  6. You can drag and drop the field to re-arrange it. You can continue to add new custom fields or click Done to exit the editing mode.

You can also create a custom field in your account Settings > Customer data > Fields. Learn more about creating a custom person field via Settings in Fields.


Field values and activity tracking

Custom field values can be updated a number of ways:

  • Within a journey when a relevant activity occurs. Add the Action shape and choose Update field, then configure the field and value as required.
  • Manually in a person’s view. In the person details panel, locate and hover over the field to update, then click Add value or the edit icon to make your change.
  • Via the appropriate API call for Creating and updating people.

You can track changes to custom fields created from a person’s view or in Settings > Customer data > Fields to see the number of changes and changes by attribute. Learn more about field activity tracking in Fields.

When you enable field activity tracking, an associated custom activity is created. For example, a custom field called Plan tier with tracking enabled will have an associated custom activity called Custom: Plan tier changed. This custom activity will capture changes to the custom field value when they occur. You could then use this custom activity as a report metric to see, using the example above, how many people changed their subscription plan tier, and the new or previous value, in the last 30 days.

Should you need to, you can create a different custom activity to send the custom field data to. Learn more about custom activity creation and implementation in Creating a new activity.