Mobile Commons: Custom Fields

Provided information on Custom Fields

The Mobile Commons platform allows you to quickly create & store custom data fields. These Custom Fields can help you learn more about your subscribers and enable more refined targeting. While all profiles in Mobile Commons are equipped to save some standard data fields-First Name, Last Name, Address, and Email- Custom Fields allow you to capture the data that is important to your organization.

There are a number of types of custom fields you can create.  Mobile Commons offers Age, Date, Gender, Number, Text, Time of Day and Yes/No type fields. For all but “text” Mobile Commons normalizes the field. By accepting a wide variety of inputs and normalizing them to a more standardized output you can easily utilize these fields in liquid and mail merges. Please note that when using custom fields in liquid you must replace any spaces with an underscore. If your custom field name is birth date then in liquid you will need to write birth_date in your liquid or mail merges.

You can create your Custom Fields by navigating to the “Custom Fields” tab under the Home navigation in the platform.

Once you’ve created these fields you can save content to them within any subscriber’s profile. Simply click the pencil and paper icon to edit or add content to that field. You can also remove a value by clicking the red X next to the field.

You can also add Custom Field values to profiles in bulk by uploading them via Groups. The CSV template provided will include columns for all of your standard and custom fields.

The primary way our customers capture and store Custom Fields however is right from an SMS conversation with their subscribers. You can store any response as a Custom Field in Broadcasts, Opt-In Paths or Message Schedules.

Most of the Custom Fields can only be saved one at a time. This is because the platform would not be able to discern which content sent in a response should be assigned to which field. Date Type fields MUST be the only field saved. However, there are a few fields that can be saved in addition to other fields. These fields contain very specific types of formats that allow the platform to easily discern which content in a response is meant to be saved as that field. These Custom Fields are Age, Email, Gender, Number, Time of Day or Zip Code. For convenience we also allow you to captures Name & Address together (these are standard fields). These fields may be saved by themselves or in conjunction with Address, Name, Name & Address, Text type or Yes No type fields.

Field Normalizing:

You can create as many custom profile fields as you like. Once set up, you can use the names as headers in your CSV files. Note that deleting a custom field will clear all profile information associated with that column.

• Text Format: Accepts any input
• Date Format: Accepts any input, even relative words like 'Tomorrow', and converts it to a date.
• Anniversary Format: Accepts any input, even relative words like 'Tomorrow', and converts it to a date. Year is stripped when used in filtering groups. See more in Release 17.9.1 announcement.
• Gender Format: Accepts M, MALE, BOY, DUDE, MAN, MEC, GARÇON, GARCON, GARS, GUY, NINO, HOMME, HOMBRE, CHICO, MASCULINE, MASCULIN, MASCULINO, and MACHO for 'male' F, FEMALE, GIRL, WOMAN, DAME, MUJER, GAL, FEMME, FILLE, FEMININE, FÉMININ, FEMININ, FEMENINO, CHICA, and HEMBRA for 'female'. Case Insensitive.
• Identity Format: CISGENDER, CIS, for 'cisgender' PREFER NOT TO SAY, PREFER NOT TO ANSWER, DON'T WANT TO ANSWER, DONT WANT TO ANSWER, DON'T WANT TO SAY, DONT WANT TO SAY, DECLINE TO ANSWER, NO ANSWER, NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS, and DECLINE TO SAY, for 'prefer not to say' TRANSGENDER, TRANS, TRANS(.*), TRANS-MAN, TRANS MAN, TRANSMAN, TRANSFTM, FTM, F2M, F TO M, FTOM, FEMALE-TO-MALE, FEMALE TO MALE, TRANS WOMAN, TRANS-WOMAN, TRANSWOMAN, MALE TO FEMALE, MALE-TO-FEMALE, MTF, M2F, and M TO F for 'transgender'. Case Insensitive
• Number Format: Accepts numbers (e.g. '1') or words (e.g. 'one' or 'uno'). Also recognizes the abbreviations K, M, and B (e.g. '1K').
• Age Format: Accepts numbers (e.g. '1') or words (e.g. 'one') between 0 and 120.
• Yes or No Format: Accepts 1, ABSOLUTELY, CORRECT, DEFINITELY, HM SURE, I DID, I CAN, OK, OKAY, SURE, TOTALLY, TRUE, T, Y, YA, YAS, YASS, YASSS, YASSSS, YASSSSS, YASSSSSS, YESS, YESSS, YESSSS, YESSSSS, YESSSSSS, YES, YEA, YEA SURE, YEAH, YEP, YUP, HELL YES, HELL YEAH, OUI, OUé, OUAIS, SI, S, Sí, SO, and CLARO for 'Yes'; 0, F, FALSE, HELL NAW, I CAN NOT, I CAN'T, I DIDN'T, I DID NOT, INCORRECT, N, NAH, NAH BRO, NAH BRUH, NAW, NEVER, NEVER AGAIN, NO, NOT, NOPE, SORRY, NOOO, NOOOO, NOOOOO, NOOOOOO, NOOOOOOO, HELL NO, NAH FAM, NAH BREH, NON, MAIS NON, DES CLOUS, QUE NON, and NON MERCI for 'No'. Case Insensitive.
• Time of Day Format: Accepts many time formats (e.g. 9am, 13:30) and stores in a standard format (e.g 09:00, 13:30).

Yes/No types of fields make for a very simple way to store information and utilize it to deliver a more relevant message with Liquid. For a bit more information around Yes/No fields in liquid check out our Yes/No troubleshooting article.  

Importing and Exporting Your Custom Fields

You can import or export your custom fields via csv. Simply go to Custom Fields > Custom Fields Set Up > Bulk Upload (to import) or Download All Custom Fields (to export). The csv template is attached to this article, to see how to format all types of custom fields use our all types template. The template has 3 columns-one for your custom field name (we recommend using a name with no spaces, if you want to have multiple words use an underscore instead of spaces when naming your field); one for your description (optional) and one for your data type.  

Below are the data types available:

• Text Type: "string"
• Age Type: "all"
• Date Type: "date"
• Anniversary Type: "anniversary"
• Gender Type: "gender"
• Identity Type: "identity" 
• Number Type: "number"
• Time of Day Type: "time_of_day"
• Yes/No Type: "yesno" 

Mobile commons sample commons.csv

Custom columns all types.csv

Question: Product How-To / Training