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New custom field formats
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We've added a range of new field formats to the Custom Fields that you can create in the Address Book, Children and Small Groups modules. Now you can select from Single sentence, Paragraph, Drop-down lists, Radio lists, Checkbox lists and Date types. And in the Address Book only, you can create linked Contact custom fields, ideal for assigning a link to a contact's mentor or primary pastoral care contact.

Here's a short video to give you an overview of how to easily create and deploy custom fields.

Creating a custom field is really simple

Give your custom field a name, select a field type from the drop-down list, and set the field options (for drop-down list, radio list and check-box list only), and finally set whether the field is 'required'.

Setting a field as 'required' displays a Batch Update option that can be used to update your existing contacts, children or small groups (depending on the module) with a default value. And if you ever need to change an existing custom field to a new type, in many instances ChurchApp will automatically create the list of drop-down, radio or checkbox options based on all the unique values that already exist in your data.

Get the right answers to your questions

Custom fields are fully searchable in the module's Advanced Search feature, making it really easy to filter your Address Book to view just your electoral roll members who live in the Parish, or all the contacts assigned to a particular member of your pastoral care team.

Custom Fields can also be used as criteria within Smart Tags, meaning you can return a list of contacts matching or not matching the custom field values you choose.

The Missing Data report in the Address Book and Children module reports can help you identify contacts with missing custom field values. So if you want to get a list of all the contacts in your Committed Tag who don't yet have mentors assigned, this report gives you the answers.

You can even generate lists of contacts and their custom field values using the new Table Generator report - ooh, did we mention that there's a new Table Generator report!? Now you can produce a custom list of all those DBS Certificate numbers for your contacts at the press of a button and select just those columns of information you want included in the report. We think you'll love this handy new addition to ChurchApp's reports.

Need a hand?

The Creating Custom Fields support article includes everything you need to know to create and deploy Custom Fields. All our support articles are available online via the "Ask a Question" beacon in ChurchApp - just search by keyword, phrase or topic.

We've got lots more new and exciting developments planned this year - watch this space!

In the meantime, if you have any feedback or suggestions for us, please don't hesitate to get in touch we'd love to hear from you.

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