Configuring Fields

Adding Fields

All entity types have some default fields but you can also add your own. To add fields to a person type, a case type or an activity type:

1. In the OpenCase Admin menu, click on "Manage person types", "Manage case types" or "Manage activity types" respectively

2. Find the one you want to work on and select "Manage Fields" from the dropdown next to it.

3. Click "Add Field".

4. Click "Reuse an existing field" to see if you can copy the field configuration from somewhere else in the system. This is easier than creating a new one, although the names are not always very clear.

5. If you can't use anything from that list, use the "Add a new field" drop-down and pick the type you want. These are the most useful types:

   • Boolean: a checkbox
   • Date: a date formatted field
   • Email: a field which will only accept well-formed email addresses
   • List (integer): a dropdown list where the options are numbers
   • Number (integer): a text box which will only accept whole numbers
   • Number (decimal): a text box which will accept numbers with a decimal point
   • File: Allows uploading a file from the user's computer
   • Image: Allows uploading an image, which will be displayed
   • List (text): A normal dropdown list
   • Text (plain): A text box
   • Text (plain, long): An area where a few lines of text can be written

6. Click "Save"

7. You can now configure various things about the field, depending on what kind of field it is. See the following section on editing fields, for some tips on this.

Editing Fields

You may wish to change an existing field, for example to add more options to a dropdown, or to change which file formats are allowed to be uploaded to a file field.

1. In the OpenCase Admin menu, click on "Manage person types", "Manage case types" or "Manage activity types" respectively.

2. Find the one that you want to work on.

3. From the dropdown to the right of it, select "Manage Fields".

4. Click "Edit" next to the field you want to change. This will take you to a screen with two tabs:

5. On the "Edit" tab you can change the field label, add or edit the help text, set a default value or make the field required or not, and set which file formats are allowed for a file field.

6. On the "Settings" tab you can make other changes, most notably this is where you add, edit or delete dropdown options. You can also configure whether the field can have more than one value (for example, a field showing which languages a client speaks will have more than one value if they are multilingual). Some settings cannot be changed once a field is in use.

Changing the order and appearance of fields

To change what order fields appear in or change things like date formats:

1. In the OpenCase Admin menu, click on "Manage person types", "Manage case types" or "Manage activity types" respectively.

2. Find the one that you want to work on.

3. From the dropdown to the right of it, select "Manage Display". This controls how the fields appear when you are viewing the case, activity etc.

4. Drag and drop the fields into the order you choose.

5. For each field you can change some aspects such as label position and format, and some fields have more complex changes you can make by clicking the gear icon.
6. Click the "Manage Form Display" tab. Here you can make similar changes to how the fields appear on the form for editing or adding a new entity of that type.