Custom ticket fields are the most flexible way to add extra information to a ticket. You choose both the name of the field, and the type of values it can store.

You can also add custom fields to users, organizations, and chats. These are all separate systems; even if you have a custom ticket field and a custom user field with the same name, you’ll need to set their properties separately.

You can add custom fields you create to the ticket form that users see on the portal or embedded in your website, as well as the agent form. Your layouts can include different fields for each department. See  Ticket form layouts for details.

To create a custom field, go to Tickets > Fields, then click the + Add button in the Custom Field section.

Select the type of field you want. There are a number of different types you can use, depending on the kind of data you want to store.

Enter a Title and Description. Both of these can be displayed if the field is included in a form: make sure they explain the purpose of the field in a way that will make sense to the people who will be using it.

Remember that a custom field must be added to a form layout under Tickets > Departments for it be visible to users/agents.

Custom field types

The types of custom fields available are the following:

• Single-line Text Box

• Multi-line Text Box

• Predefined Choices

• Toggle

• Date

• Date/Time

• Display

• Hidden

• Url

• Currency

• File

Single-line Text Box: a single-line text input box that users/agents can type into; accepts up to 136 characters

Multi-line Text Box: a larger multi-line text input area that users/agents can type into

Predefined choices: a set of options you define for users/agents to pick from, with the option to set pre-selected default(s). Can be nested (using Custom fields) into a hierarchy, as many layers deep as you like. There are four types of predefined choices available:

• Select box

Only one can be selected at a time.

• Multiple-select box

Allows multiple selections

• Radio buttons

Only one can be selected at a time

• Checkboxes

Allows multiple selections

Toggle: a simple checkbox; can either be on or off by default; can require user or agent to check it (for example, to confirm they accept your terms and conditions)

Date: stores a calendar date; users/agents can select from a calendar, or enter a date in text in YYYY-MM-DD format.

Date/Time: stores a calendar date and a time of day; users can select from a calendar or enter the date and time manually.

Display: this type of field is just used to display HTML, and cannot take input; you could use it for warnings or disclaimers or design customization.

Hidden: a special field that’s never visible to users, which can take information from cookies or parameters in the URL; you can use this to capture information about the user’s browsing session which agents can then see as part of the ticket.

Url: this field lets users enter any url links.

Currency: this field lets users enter any money values.

File: this field allows users to attach any files to a ticket or.

Custom field defaults

When you create a custom field, you can (optionally) enter a default value. This is shown as the default option if a ticket is being created via a web interface (agent interface or portal). If the field is not shown on the form, or the ticket is created by email or API, this value will not be set - instead, you should use a trigger.

Custom field validation

When you create a custom field, you can set validation rules which control what sort of values are accepted.

The validation options vary with the type of field.

See the section on  Field validation and display for details.

Nested choice fields

The options in a custom predefined choice field can be nested into sub-options, and those sub-options can have sub-options in turn. Nesting can go as deep as you like.

To create a nested option, select an existing option as the parent (i.e. it will contain the new option) before you click Add.

In the image above, the ‘Apartment’ option will be created nested under the Residence option.

The line shows that Apartment is a sub-option.

Use the handles at the left to re-order the options, and the X button at right to delete an option.

While category and product fields can be nested one layer deep (so you can have sub-categories and sub-products), you can nest custom choice fields as deep as you like. For example, you can go on to create sub-options under Apartment.

This is how a nested select box choice field is displayed on the portal and agent interface:

Note that only the options at the bottom of the hierarchy (ie with no child options below them) can be submitted. In the example above, you couldn’t submit ‘Kitchen’ as a value because it contains ‘Refrigerator’ and ‘Oven’. You could submit ‘Refrigerator’, ‘Bedroom’ or ‘Hotel’ because they don’t have any options below them.

Converting built-in Category

The built-in Category field can only be nested one level deep. If you find that you want deeper nested categories, you can convert your Category field to a custom choice field.

In Tickets > Fields > Categories, use the gear icon at the upper right to select Convert field to custom field.

When you use this control:

A new custom field called “Category” will be created and all of the options you have defined for the built-in category field will be copied to the new custom field.

All tickets with selections for the Category field will retain that value in the new custom field.

All ticket layouts, filters and triggers that refer to the Category field will be updated to use the new custom field.