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 BoldDesk to gather 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 also 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.

Check out this video tutorial for more details.

Different types of fields

There are three types of fields. They include:

• Ticket fields – A collection of system and custom fields that are used when creating or editing a ticket.
• Contact fields – A collection of system and custom fields that are used when creating or editing a contact.
• Activity fields – These are system fields that are used when creating or editing an activity.
• Contact group fields – A collection of system and custom fields that are used when creating or editing a contact group.

Custom field types

The following are the types of custom fields supported in 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 when creating or displaying a ticket.
There are two types of fields:

• System fields – A set of predefined fields that cannot be modified or deleted except for a few fields, i.e., Category, Priority, and Type.
• Custom fields – A set of user-defined fields that users can create on their own.

System fields are displayed with the tag “System”.

Using ticket fields

Follow the given steps to use ticket fields:

1. In the Agent portal, choose the Admin center.
2. Select Fields and Forms and click Ticket Fields.

Creating a ticket field

To create a new ticket field, go to the ticket field page and click Add Ticket Field.

Factors to be considered when 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 – The name of the field that appears in the create ticket form and ticket properties of the agent portal.
• Label for customer portal – 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 the information text for the field.
• Note message display – Displays the note message either 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 the 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 details 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

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.
Note the following factors when working with dropdown option values:

• 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 or customer portal.

Deleting custom field

Custom fields can be edited or deleted. If a field is deleted, the added field is deleted from ticket fields and ticket forms.

Activate/deactivate custom field

Custom fields can be activated and 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 that can be used 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.

• By adding a new field
• By adding the existing fields from the ticket fields module

Adding new/existing fields

Follow the following steps to add new or existing fields:

1. Open the Ticket Forms page and click the Add button.
2. Select Existing to add an existing field for the selected brand or select New to add a new field for the selected brand.

• You can select multiple fields when adding existing fields.

Reordering ticket form fields

To reorder the fields in the ticket forms page, drag and drop the fields to the desired position using the shown icon in the below image.

Removing a custom field

To remove a custom field, click the Remove icon on the tickets form page to remove the added custom field from the selected brand.

Activity fields

These are system fields that are used when creating or editing an activity. Users cannot customize activity fields by adding or removing the fields.

Contact fields

Contact fields are a collection of default and custom fields 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 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

The field display condition enables you to make a field visible only when the specified conditions are met.

Field Types supported
The table below summarizes the supported types of fields:

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 the “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 multi-select dropdown.

Creating field dependency

To create a field dependency, open the Field Dependencies page and click the Add Field Dependency button.

It has the following three properties:

1. Module – Displays a list of modules. (i.e., Ticket, Contact, and Contact Groups).
2. Parent Field – Displays a list of fields in the single-select dropdown list.
3. Child Field – Displays a list of fields in which both single-select and multi-select processes can be performed. The child field will be enabled upon selecting the parent field.

Note: A parent can have multiple child fields, but a child has 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

You can map the value of the child field to the parent field.
To do this, select a parent field on the right panel first, and then select the corresponding child fields on the right panel.
The same field options will be visible on the Create/edit ticket, Add/edit contact, and Add/edit contact group forms.

Deleting field dependency

You can delete the added field dependency by selecting the Delete option.

Note:
To access the fields and forms module, an agent should enable the Manage fields and forms permission checkbox first.