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Bring your company onto the same vocabulary and report effectively with custom fields
Bring your company onto the same vocabulary and report effectively with custom fields

How to set up and manage custom fields in Atlas for projects and goals

Mark Parnell avatar
Written by Mark Parnell
Updated over a week ago

Custom fields are available in the Standard and Premium plans in Atlas.

Every company has their own unique language; one that helps to define it’s identity and culture. For example, in Atlassian we call our problem-solving sessions “sparring” 🥊 (no Atlassian’s were harmed in the making of this!) and love acronym-ising everything, even our values (“BTCYS, OCNB, DFTC…”)

Being able to use your own vocabulary is important when communicating about projects and goals, so you can really make Atlas feel like your own. Within your company, there may be specific pieces of information you want to capture that our default fields just don’t cover.

Custom fields give your admin control over building your very own vocabulary when it comes to how you talk about projects and goals, so that you’re capturing the same standard critical information and able to report on it.

How to turn on custom fields

To enable custom fields, you need to be on the Atlas Standard or Premium plans. To learn more about how to upgrade, check out this article.

You can also request or start a free 14-day trial from the settings cog in Atlas.

Create custom fields via Workspace Settings

Atlas admins have control over custom field creation for the workspace. To configure custom fields, go to the settings cog > Workspace settings > Fields. You can add custom fields that will display on all Projects or Goals in the workspace.

Custom fields are intended to create a common vocabulary across the organisation, rather than added on a project-by-project basis, which would fracture vocabulary further.

Click + Add field to create a new custom field for your workspace. Fill in the name of the field, the field type and a description.

Users can create 6 different types of custom fields:

Type

Description

Example

Text

Freeform string, up to 250 characters long.

Client

Number

A numerical figure.

Budget

Single user

A user from the Atlas workspace.

Project sponsor

Multi-user

One or more users from the Atlas workspace.

Key approvers

Single-select text

One option from a pre-defined list.

Project lifecycle: Explore, Make, Measure

Multi-select text

One or many options from a pre-defined list.

Departments

Click Save to display the custom field on all projects or goals.

Each workspace can create up to 10 custom fields, across projects and goals. As best practice, we recommend being deliberate about what custom information you are requiring your team to keep updated, so good communication hygiene can be maintained.

If you require more custom fields, please let us know! We’re keen to hear about your use cases and why this is important for you.

Displaying and reporting on custom fields

Once an admin has specified which custom fields to display on projects or goals, they will display in the details panel on a project or goal page.

Custom fields can be filtered on in the project and goal directory, for reporting purposes and saved in tailored views to revisit easily.

Managing custom fields

Admins can manage custom field configuration in Workspace settings via the settings cog ⚙️, where additional fields can be added or existing fields edited.

To remove a field from displaying on projects or goals, click on the field and hit Remove on the bottom left. The field will no longer display on projects or goals, or be filterable in the directories.

If you’d like to delete a field completely from the Atlas workspace, hit the Add Field menu in the Field configuration screen and click the 🗑️ icon next to the field you'd like to delete.

These will no longer appear anywhere in Atlas and any populated data will no longer be retrievable.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens to my custom fields if I downgrade my instance back to Atlas Free?

Existing custom fields will continue to be displayed and can be filtered on in the directories. Your admin can choose to remove or delete the custom field from the project or goal view.

You will not be able to add any additional custom fields or edit existing ones. Users will also not be able to edit the values in the custom fields, until the workspace is upgraded to a Standard or Premium edition.

Can I sync data to populate the options for custom select fields?

Not yet. This is something we will explore as part of future improvements.

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