InterAction allows you to store additional information about each contact in the form of additional fields.
Additional fields can be used to store any kind of information, such as client numbers, the name of a person’s spouse/significant other, educational background, or a list of his or her achievements. Almost any kind of information can be kept for a contact in InterAction using additional fields.
Additional Fields can be viewed and edited in both the InterAction Windows Client and the InterAction Web Client.
In the Web Client, additional fields are normally used to profile contacts. For example, fields for collecting client information (client number, revenue, etc.) appear on the Client profile. Fields can also appear for working lists and marketing lists.
In the Windows Client, additional fields appear in the Additional Fields view.
[A] The Additional Information view in the Windows Client.
[B] Additional fields on a profile in the Web Client.
Before you can set a value for an additional field, you must define the additional field using Windows Client or Administrator. When you define an additional field you specify the name, description, type and other settings for the field. For more information, see Creating and Editing Additional Field Definitions.
Controlling Additional Field Security and Relevance
Some additional fields may be valid for all contacts while others may only be valid for certain groups of contacts. For example, information such as client number, date became client and client status are only relevant for contacts that are clients. However, other information such as ticker symbol or gender can be tracked on all contacts in InterAction.
Similarly, some additional fields can be seen by all users (Stock Ticker and Gender, for example, while others should only be available to certain users (such as client financial data fields).
When creating additional fields, you can control their relevancy and security by making the field either folder-specific or global. A folder-specific field only applies to a particular InterAction folder; a contact must be included in the folder to have a value for the field. A global field is available for all firm contacts in InterAction, regardless of which folders include the contacts.
A “global” field is not necessarily available on all contacts. You can limit fields to only apply to people or only apply to companies. For example, Gender is a global additional field, but it only applies to people.
Therefore, you can prevent unauthorized users from accessing sensitive data by storing it in a folder-specific additional field, then restricting access to the folder. You can also restrict users from editing fields using access rights.
For more information about using folders for storing profile information, see Information Folders. For a detailed list of additional fields included with InterAction, see Out-of-the-Box Additional Fields.
For more information about access rights, see Configuring Folder Security.
How Do I Know When to Make a Field Global and When to Make a Field Folder-Specific?
In general, you will probably create more folder-specific additional fields than global additional fields. This is because folder-specific additional fields can be used to prevent unauthorized viewing as well as maintain context for the information. For example, an additional field that maintains the year-to-date revenue for a client is folder-specific to the Client Financial Information folder, because this data should not be seen by all users and it has no relevance for contacts other than your organization’s clients.
Does It Make a Difference for How Easy It Is for Users to Use the Field?
Selecting to make a field folder-specific or global has little effect on how easy it is for a user to locate an additional field in the Windows Client or Web Client.
In the Web Client, additional fields do not appear in an additional field view. Instead, they appear on profiles. Profiles appear both on the contact overview pages and as separate pages. Profiles must be manually configured to display relevant additional field information. You can configure a profile to display both global and folder-specific information, so it does not matter which visibility you choose.
In the Windows Client, users can view all additional fields at the same time by using the filters or only view a folder’s additional fields by using filters. When you create a new additional field, it automatically appears in this view.
Overview of Classifications
Classifications provide another way to categorize contacts. These are simple fields that are either “on” or “off” for a contact.
As with additional fields, classification can be either global (available from all folders that contain the contact) or folder-specific (only visible from a particular folder). For details, see Controlling Additional Field Security and Relevance.
Classifications are generally not useful at a global level. They are meant to categorize or classify contacts. At a global level, you normally use contact types and folders to categorize contacts. For instance, instead of an “Expert” classification, you would set up an Experts folder containing linked contacts.