Chat for Magento: Add new data fields

Learn how to create custom contact data fields.

Overview

You can create new custom contact data fields to capture and hold additional information about your contacts.

The more useful data you can collect on your contacts, the more you can usefully segment, target and personalise your campaigns and, in turn, generate better response rates.

When you create a contact data field, it's added to all of the address books in your account. This way, all of your address books maintain the same structure.

Before you start

Things you need to know:

• This article is for Chat for Magento, which is no longer available to new users.

Limits of contact data fields

The total number of data fields you can create and their limitations:

Data field type	Maximum allowed	Limit for each data field
Text	295	1,000 characters
Numeric	100	27 digits Up to 9 digits can be after a decimal marker Up to 18 digits can be before a decimal marker
Date	99	-
Yes/No	100	-

There are an additional six default data fields that cannot be renamed used to store first name, last name, full name, gender, last subscribed and postcode.

Add a contact data field

To add a new contact data field:

1. Go to Contacts > Contact setup > Contact data fields.
2. Select the Custom data fields tab and then select NEW DAT FIELD.
3. For Name, enter a unique name for your contact data field.
   

   • You can't use spaces between words when creating a name for a new field.
   • There are some names you can't use for data fields. For a list of restricted data fields, check out Restricted data field.

4. For Data type, expand the Data type drop-down menu and select a data type.
   

   There are four data-types: Text, Numeric, Date (use ISO 8601 format), and Yes/No.

5. For Default value, if you want, enter a default value for the contact data field in case it's not filled in after uploading your data.
   

   To learn more, check out the article Set a default value for a contact data field.

6. For Access, select either:
   
   1. This data label is public
   2. To let your contacts view and amend the data you hold on them for this contact data field.
   3. This data label is private
   4. To only let users of your account view and amend data held in this contact data field.
7. For Folder, expand the folder drop-down menu, and choose which folder you want to save the contact data field in.
8. Select Save.

You can also create contact data fields in the Data fields tab when viewing and editing a contact.

Storing telephone numbers

We advise using the text data type for contact data fields storing phone numbers or prices, instead of the numeric data type.
The numeric data type removes 0 values, for example, phone numbers beginning 07xxxxxxxxx will have the first 0 removed and 9.50 will become 9.5. If you use the text data type, the data maintains 0 values as part of the string. Learn how to create custom contact data fields.