- Guide To Custom Fields #201903820

What Are Custom Fields?

Custom Fields are a great tool for customizing Spark Pay online stores to meet your company's needs. They allow you to store information about customers, orders, products, or stores for use elsewhere in Spark Pay online stores . Here are just a few of the potential uses:

Your company has multiple departments and must label which department a particular order is for
You need to obtain a license number from your customer
Each product has a unique number of connecting points that you need a dedicated field for

Types of Custom Fields and Where They Appear

Customers
- When creating an account with your store, customers will be asked to enter this information
- In your administration console, the value will be visible on the "Edit Customer" page.
- To display this field in your customer emails, add the following merge code to your template:
Orders
- When customers place an order, they'll be asked to provide this information.
- In your administration console, the value will be visible on the "View Order" page.
- To display this field in your order emails, add the following merge code to your template:##ORDERCUSTOMFIELD[FieldName]##
Products
- To assign a value to a product, open the Product Editor and click the "General" tab, then scroll down to the "Custom Fields" section.
- To display this field anywhere that product information is available, use the following merge code:
Stores
- To view or change the value for each store, navigate to "Stores > {Store Name} > Store Settings". On the next page, click the "Custom Fields" tab.
- Store Custom Fields cannot be displayed in other locations.

Accessing the Custom Field Editor

Navigate to Tools > Power Features > Custom Field Setup
From here you can either edit an existing custom field by clicking the Edit button, or create a new one by clicking the New button in the top, right corner.

Creating a Custom Field

To create a custom field, first navigate to the custom field editor. Make sure you are working with the correct type, fill out the following fields, and then save your changes. Here is the interface for adding custom fields:

These are the fields for working with custom fields:

Name - This is the title/name of the custom field, which is used throughout the site in your merges.

Be sure to assign a unique name so it will be easily identifiable.

Label - When customers or admins are asked to fill out your custom field, this text will appear next to the field.
Field Type - Specified whether the custom field is for Orders, Customers, Products, or Stores.
Input Type - When customers or admins fill out the custom field, this controls how your field appears. The graphic below displays examples of each Input Type:
Value Type - This determines what type of data can be entered. Options include String (plain text), Integer (whole numbers), boolean (true/false), or Date.
Field Width - Field Width determines the maximum length of the data that can be entered.

This only affects fields using the "String" Value Type.
Entering 0 will disable the limit.

Sort Order - This controls the order in which each custom field is displayed.

Fields with lower numbers will appear first. For example, if you have five fields with the sort orders set to 0, 20, 8, 1, 15, these fields will display (from top to bottom) 0, 1, 8, 15, 20.
This field is optional. If left blank, the fields will display in default order.

Show on Stores - This allows you to limit the visibility of Custom Fields on the frontend by store.

This option only appears if you have multiple stores.

Private - If set to private, the field will only be accessible to admin users. It will be used for manual order or customer creation through the admin console.
Required- Determines whether this field is required or optional. If a Customer Custom Field is set as required, the customer account cannot be created until it is filled out. Likewise, if it is an Order Custom Field, your store will not allow customers to continue ordering until the field is filled out. The following describes what triggers the Required field:
- String fields: empty string triggers validation.
- Integer fields: -999 or leaving a field blank that expects a number.
- Boolean fields: false triggers validation. (accepting terms, etc).
- Date fields: leaving the field blank.
Searchable - If this option is enabled, admin users can use it as a search field in the admin console. For example, if there's a searchable Customer Field that's labeled Driver's License #, an admin user can search for customer accounts with DL# 55555555.
Display Location (Order Custom Fields Only) - Changes where the custom field will appear.

This only affects Order Custom Fields.

Read Only– Restrict the places that this field can be written to. This will disable validation of the field.

How To Add A Custom Field Once It Has Been Created

NEW FEATURE: You will see the following on the top of the custom field once it's been created -

You can then copy and paste this merge code accordingly.

MANUAL ADDING:

In this example, we have created a custom field for orders and it is called "Pickup Date".

This will now show on the order screen in the back of the admin panel.

It will also now show on the order page of One Page Checkout.

Adding A Custom Field To An Email Template

You can also add custom fields to email templates by use of the merge codes.

You will use the following merge code:

##ORDERCUSTOMFIELD[FieldName]##

Our field name is PickupDate so we will use the following:

##ORDERCUSTOMFIELD[PickupDate]##

And here is the completed email featuring the merge code:

NOTE: When you are testing an order to see custom fields in the email template, make sure that these fields are filled out. Otherwise, they will not show. Also, if the custom field merge code is not placed correctly to begin with, the email template, product or order will not show this information.