Key benefits of Custom Fields
Custom Fields allow you to customize how you track key information important to your organization on a plan-by-plan basis, or across all plans. They also lay the groundwork for quick, unique reporting options.
Custom Fields are used to improve tracking and reporting for a variety of types of plans including strategic plans, program/project plans and performance improvement plans.
Example Custom Field "Priority" shown in List View:
How to create, apply and enhance reports with Custom Fields
Creating Custom Fields is limited to organization User Managers. Please reach out to your primary AchieveIt Champion or your Customer Success Manager to learn who the User Managers are for your organization.
Step 1- Create a Custom Field
User managers can create Custom Fields under the Admin options.
To create a Custom Field:
- Select 'Custom Fields' from Admin navigation option
- Click on the [ + ] Create Custom Field button on the top right.
- Name your Custom Field.
- Add a description for the field. This description will only be visible to Plan Administrators and User Managers.
- Select the type of Custom Field that best fits your needs. See below for a complete list of types.
- Indicate if the field should be required or optional.
We offer a variety of Custom Field types, with each functioning differently.
Types of Custom Fields include:
Date – allows selection of any valid calendar date
Percent – supports a number in a percentage format
Number – supports a generic number format
Currency – supports a dollar ($) currency format
Dropdown Select – allows selection from organization-defined options
Hyperlink – supports link text and URL
Text – simple text format – up to one sentence
Long Text – simple text format – up to one paragraph
Boolean - True/False or Yes/No
User (AchieveIt users) - select any active AchieveIt user
Team (Achieveit teams) - select any AchieveIt team.
After creating a new Custom Field, it will show in the Custom Field library. User managers can access and manage the Custom Field library through the Admin dropdown.
Step 2 - Add a Custom Field to a plan
Once a Custom Field has been created, it can then be applied to any plan by a Plan Administrator. Up to 5 Custom Fields from the organization's Custom Field library can be added to a plan.
To add a Custom Field to a plan:
- Navigate to the plan to which you'd like to add the Custom Field.
- Select 'Plan Details'.
- Under 'Options ...' in the top right, select Custom Fields
- From the Manage Custom Fields view, select the '+' in the top right to select which fields to add from the library.
- Up to 5 Custom Fields can be added to a plan.
Step 3 – Adding values to individual plan items
After Custom Fields have been added to a plan then plan administrators can set the value for individual plan items from the item details view.
Plan administrators can also use Bulk Edit in List View to edit Custom Field values for multiple plan items in one action.
Reporting with Custom Fields
You can enrich and adjust reports based on the Custom Field(s) you’ve created and added to your plans.
3 easy ways to adjust reporting based on a Custom Field:
1- Add the Custom Field as a column to any view or report that includes columns such as List View, Timeline View, or List Widgets on a Custom Dashboard.
2- Sort based on the Custom Field by clicking on the top of the column.
3- Filter on the Custom Field based on filtering options in List View, Timeline View or Multiplan View Saved Search.
*Note – Custom Fields that are either the Text, Long Text and Hyperlink type will sort alphabetically but are not filterable.
Tips for implementing Custom Fields:
- Contact your Custom Success Manager or Strategy Consultant for expert advice on when and how to use Custom Fields.
- For existing plans: Review key or heavily used tags for potential Custom Fields.
- For new use cases: Consider how Custom Fields might enable plans beyond the existing plans managed in AchieveIt.
- Maximize awareness and benefit from any Custom Fields you implement by adding columns for the field(s) to lists and filtering/sorting on the field(s) as appropriate.