Person custom fields

Most organisations track something Cobber does not ship with — a party membership status, a legacy ID from an old database, a local nickname. Person custom fields give those a proper home: typed inputs on every contact, values stored on the person record, and a mapping target when you import a spreadsheet.

This article is about fields on people. Page custom fields — the ones that power editable sections on your website templates — live on the same Custom Fields screen but are a separate thing.

Who can set them up

Open Custom Fields from your avatar menu (top right). You need the Custom Fields permission, or access to manage organisation settings. If you do not see the menu item, ask a national admin to add the permission to your role.

Anyone who can edit people can fill values in on a profile once the fields exist.

Create a field group

Every organisation already has a default group called Custom Fields. You can add fields there, or create more groups if you want separate sections — for example Party details and Volunteer notes.

1. Open Custom Fields

   Avatar menu → Custom Fields. Under Person fields, open an existing group or choose + New person field group.

2. Name the group

   Give it a name admins will recognise on the contact form — that name becomes the card heading on Add/Edit and on the profile. An optional description shows under the heading. Lower Sort order numbers appear higher on the form.

3. Add fields

   Inside the group, use Add New Field for each one. Set:

   • Label — what admins (and members, if self-service) see.
   • Field key — the stable internal name. Cobber suggests one from the label; you can edit it, but changing it later breaks imports and integrations that already use the old key.
   • Type — see the table below.
   • Instructions — optional help text under the input.
   • Required — when ticked, the field must be filled on Add/Edit.
   • Allow self-service editing — when ticked, the field appears in the member portal so a member can update their own value. Leave it off for internal-only data.

Person field types

Type	Use for
Text	Short free text — membership number, nickname, job title.
Textarea	Longer notes that still belong in a structured field.
Select	A fixed list of options. Enter one option per line when you save the field.
Boolean	Yes/no — financial member, media contact, and so on.
Number	Numeric values — years of membership, household size.
URL	A link — LinkedIn profile, personal website.

Tick Active on the group. Inactive groups and their fields are hidden from contact forms until you turn them back on.

Using fields on a person

Once defined, fields show up automatically — you do not add them person by person.

Add or edit a contact. Each active field group appears as its own section on Add New Person and Edit Person, with the right control for each type (text box, dropdown, checkbox and so on).

View a profile. The same groups appear as read-only cards on the person’s profile, labelled with the field name and the stored value. Empty fields show a dash.

Values are stored on the person under their field keys. Saving a profile merges what you typed with anything already there — so data from an import or a signup form is not wiped just because a field was blank on the screen.

Additional Fields (one-off values)

Add New Person also has an Additional Fields section below your defined groups. That is for ad-hoc key/value pairs on a single record — handy for a one-time note during data entry, but not for something you want every contact to have or to filter on later. For anything recurring, define a proper field under Custom Fields instead.

Fill them from an import

When you map columns in a People import, the destination list includes your person custom fields alongside the standard Cobber columns. Point a spreadsheet column at the field key you need; on commit, each row’s value is written onto the matched person.

If a column header matches a field key closely, Cobber may suggest the mapping for you. See Importing a spreadsheet for the full import walkthrough.

Let members update their own

Tick Allow self-service editing on a field if members should be able to change it themselves after signing in to the portal. Fields without that tick stay admin-only — they never appear on the public member Your details page, even if they show on the dashboard profile.

See The member portal for how sign-in and portal emails work.

Tips

• Plan field keys before you import. Imports and the API address fields by key, not by label. Renaming a key later means updating every integration.
• Use select for anything you might segment on later. A dropdown keeps values consistent; free text drifts (“Member”, “member”, “Financial member”).
• Groups are for layout, not access control. Every person in the org sees every active person field group. Division permissions still control who can open the person’s profile to edit them.
• Page fields are separate. The Custom Fields screen also lists page field groups for your website templates. Those do not appear on person records.