How to Manage Fields and Forms
BoldDesk supports powerful configuration setup forms for a ticket, contact, and contact group. It supports several custom or dynamic field types to configure forms. Custom fields can be added to the BoldDesk for gathering more information about your support requests.
The following are the modules in which fields and forms are supported.
- Ticket Module – Supports ticket forms for multiple brands.
- Contact Module
- Contact Group Module
Apart from adding custom fields to a form, these modules support field display and field dependency configuration.
Field Display – Hides or shows a field in a form based on certain specified conditions.
Field Dependency – Creates a parent-child relationship (cascading effect) between two fields. For example, the parent field can be a Country and the child field can be a State. Field dependencies are not applied when an action is performed via email or automation. Using this, a cascading dropdown can be set up. Example: Country, State, City, and Region.
Different types of fields
There are three types of fields. They are:
- Ticket fields – A collection of system and custom fields that are used when creating and editing a ticket.
- Contact fields – A collection of system and custom fields that are used when creating and editing a contact.
- Activity fields – These are system fields that are used when creating and editing an Activity.
- Contact Group fields – A collection of system and custom fields that are used when creating and editing a contact group.
Custom field types
The following are the types of custom fields supported in the BoldDesk:
- Textbox (single line) – Max supports 255 characters
- Textbox (multi-line) – Max supports 1500 characters
- Checkbox
- Yes/No
- Date
- Date Time
- Numeric
- Decimal
- Dropdown (single-select)
- Dropdown (multi-select)
- Regex
- URL
Ticket fields
Ticket fields are a set of default and custom fields used in an organization when creating or displaying a ticket.
There are two types of fields:
- System fields – Except few fields (Category, Priority, Type), a set of predefined fields cannot be modified or deleted.
- Custom fields – This is a set of user-defined fields that the users can create on their own.
System fields are displayed with the tag “System”.
Using Ticket fields
- In Agent portal, choose Admin center.
- Select Fields and Forms and click Ticket Fields.
Creating ticket field
To create a new ticket field, go to the ticket field page and click Add Ticket Field.
Note:
- The created field will not be automatically added to a ticket form. Using the ticket forms module, you can map the created field to a respective brand form.
- After creating a ticket field, you can edit the field name, but the type of the field cannot be changed.
Things to be considered while creating a new custom field.
- Field Type – You can create a ticket field (Custom field) using the custom field types listed above.
- Label for Agent Portal – This is the name of the field that appears in the create ticket form and ticket properties of the agent portal.
- Label for Customer Portal – This is the name of the field that appears in the create ticket form and ticket properties of the customer portal.
- API Name – You can specify an API name for the custom field. By providing the API name to a specific field, you can fetch or update the corresponding data.
- Note Message – Specifies an information text for the field.
- Note Message Display – Displays the note message below the field or as an info icon near the field.
Below field
As info icon near the field
The properties mentioned above are common to all custom field types.
One more property for Checkbox and Yes/No types will allow you to select the default value as Checked/Unchecked or Yes/No.
For regex type, you can set the regex value using the ‘Validation Regex’ property.
Field configuration – Agent portal
Specifies the field visibility and mandatory status for the custom field.
- By checking or unchecking the “Agent can edit” option, you can control the field’s visibility. If it’s unchecked, the custom field will only appear as a read-only field on the ticket detail page.
- You can make a field mandatory when creating, updating, or closing/solving a ticket, or both.
In some cases, certain fields can be changed without fully validating the dependencies of other necessary fields. This situation can occur when tickets are created from an email source.
The following are the fields that can be edited on the ticket details page without any dependencies on other fields:
- Assignee
- Requester
- Status
- Resolution Due
- Tags
- Visibility
The following are fields that can be edited on the Ticket List page in a card view without any dependencies on other fields:
- Category
- Priority
- Assignee
- Resolution Due
- Status
Note: If you set a yes/no field as mandatory then the user must select “Yes” for the Yes/No field and tick a checkbox for the Checkbox field.
Field configuration – customer portal
The field configuration for the customer portal can be set similarly to the agent portal.
- The custom field will not be seen on the customer portal if the “Visible to user” option is unchecked.
- If the “User can edit” option is unchecked, the custom field in the customer portal will only appear as a read-only field in the ticket detail page.
- You can set a field mandatory by checking or unchecking the mandatory option.
Dropdown option value
The option values for the dropdown type custom field can be added as strings here. If there are multiple values, use a comma to separate them to add.
- Options values can be renamed or deleted.
- After an option value is deleted, it cannot be restored.
- Options value can be dragged and dropped for sorting. You can also sort in an alphabetic order.
- A default value for the dropdown option can be set, such that its value can be filled by default, when a form is loaded in the agent/customer portal.
Deleting custom field
Custom fields can be edited or deleted. If a field is deleted, the added field is deleted from tickets fields and ticket forms.
Activate/deactivate custom field
Custom fields can be deactivated. If a field is deactivated, the added field is not visible on the create ticket form or the ticket detail page until it is reactivated.
The deactivated field is shown with the tag “Inactive”. There is also the option to reactivate a custom field.
Ticket forms
Ticket forms are a collection of predefined ticket fields to use when creating or displaying a ticket. Ticket forms are brand-specific, and you can add, remove, or reorder the ticket fields in a form with a form template for each brand.
Adding fields to ticket forms can be accomplished in two ways.
- Adding a new field.
- Adding the existing fields from the ticket fields module.
Adding new/existing fields
- Open the Ticket Forms page and click the ADD button.
- Select Existing to add an existing field for the selected brand Or select New to add a new field for the selected brand.
- While adding the existing fields, you can select multiple fields.
Note: The fields will be added only for the selected brand.
Reorder ticket form fields
To reorder the fields in the ticket forms page, drag and drop the fields to the desired position using the highlighted icon in the below image.
Note: The custom field will be displayed in the same order in both the create ticket form and the ticket detail page.
Remove custom field
Click the Remove icon on the tickets form page to remove the added custom field from the selected brand.
Note: The field is removed only from the selected brand and not from other brands, and the field is not permanently deleted.
Activity Fields
These are system fields that are used when creating and editing an Activity. They Cannot be customized by adding or removing the fields.
Contact Fields
Contact fields are a collection of default and custom fields for an organization that can be used when creating or displaying a contact.
To add a new contact field, click the Add Contact Field button, and follow the same steps as for adding a ticket field.
Contact Group Fields
Contact group fields are a collection of default and custom fields for your organization that can be used when creating or displaying a contact group.
To add a new contact group field, click the Add Contact Group Field button, and follow the same steps as for adding a ticket field.
Field display condition
By using the field display condition, you can show a field only when the specified conditions are met.
For example, the created field called “Office Location” will be visible only if the type is “Leave Request.”
You can add up to 5 conditions by clicking the Add new condition button. If multiple display conditions are added, they will be considered in “And” condition.
Field dependency
Field dependency helps in creating a parent-child relationship (cascading effect) between two fields. The parent field can be selected only by single select dropdown and the child field can be selected by single-select dropdown or multiselect dropdown.
Creating field dependency
To create a field dependency, open the Field Dependencies page and click the Add Field Dependency button.
It has three properties,
- Module – Displays a list of modules. (Ticket, Contact, and Contact Groups).
- Parent Field – Displays a list of fields in the single-select dropdown list.
- Child Field – Displays a list of fields in which both single-select and multi-select processes can be performed. Only after selecting the parent field, the child field will be enabled.
Note: A parent can have multiple child fields but a child have only a single parent field.
There is an option to Edit, Deactivate and Delete a field dependency.
You can also reactivate a deactivated dependency.
Mapping field dependency
Select a parent field on the right panel first, and then select the corresponding child fields on the right panel. You can map the value of the child field to the parent field. The same field options will be visible on the create/edit ticket, add/edit contact, and add/edit contact groups forms.
Deleting field dependency
Delete the added field dependency by selecting the delete option.
Note:
For accessing the fields and forms module, an agent should enable the Manage fields and forms permission checkbox.