Setting up Custom Properties

Reporting is crucial for project managers and PMO team members.  However, there's often a requirement for more granular/specific data to be captured than standard project templates allow. Custom properties enable you to create, configure and report on as many of your own additional fields as required. The use of custom properties therefore provides you with an easy way to capture your organisation's taxonomy.

With these custom properties in place, you can apply filters that will extract the data pertaining to all the fields you have.

In this article, we'll show you how easy it is to set these custom properties up.

Step 1. Navigate to Custom Properties in Fluid

Click on your Avatar (top right of your screen) and navigate to the Administration Console. 

NOTE: Only Application Administrators can set up custom properties. 

Navigate to the Data Administration section and click on Custom Properties.

Step 2. Select the entity you want to add a custom property to

Custom properties can be added to almost any element in Fluid. The image below displays a breakdown of these elements.

To add a new custom property, select the element you want to add a property to.

Step 3. Create a new custom property

Click on Add Property to open the dialog to create a new custom property. To edit an existing property, click on the pencil icon next the property name.

In the dialog that appears, provide all the necessary details for the custom property. Once complete, click Save. 

NOTE: For Impact and Person custom properties, the dialog will have additional settings. These fields are explained in Step 4 below. 

Property Details section fields

Data Type: The type of the property. You can select one of te following types:

• Date: Use this type if the custom property represents a date.
• Hyperlink: Custom properties of type hyperlink, are shown with two fields - the URL field and the text for the link.
• Multi Option: Use this type if the value of the custom property should be selected from a dropdown list and more than one value can be selected.
• Number: Use this data type if you want to restrict the custom property value to numbers.
• Option: Use this type if the value of the custom property should be selected from a dropdown list.
• Percentage: Use this data type if you want to limit the custom property value to percentages.
• Person: A Person custom property type allows you to set a user as a value.
• Project: A Project custom property type allows you to set a project as a value.
• Text: Text data type provides a single line of free text.
  
• Text Area: Select this type if the value should be a free text box.
• Rich Text: Text type provides a free text box with adjustable text options such as italics, bolding, numbered or bullet lists.
• ValuedOption: The valued option type is similar to the Option type, the only difference being that you can associate a weight value to each option.
• YesNoYesNo custom properties are represented by a switch.

Note: the custom property data types list also lists catalog types if you have defined any. To learn how to up catalog types, click here.

Once you have selected the data type for your property, you can set the other attributes for the new property.

Name: The name of the custom property. The name can only contain letters, numbers, underscores and spaces. This field is mandatory.

Label: This field is optional. If a value is set, the label value will be used instead of the property name when displaying the property. Labels can be used to give a more user-friendly name to the property if the name represents a technical term for instance. Labels can also use a wider range of characters than names.

Category: You can group custom properties by category. You can create new categories or select an existing one.

Property Value section fields

The fields listed in the Property Value section are dependent on the property type you have selected.

For 'Text', 'Date', 'Hyperlink', 'Number', 'Percentage', 'TextArea' and 'Yes/No' data types, you only need to set a default value if required.
 

For 'Option', 'MultiOption', 'ValuedOption' and 'ValuedOptionCalc' data types, you need to set the list of option values. You can either use the Add Option field to enter the option values or you can use the values of shared list.

Property Settings section fields

Required: Set the switch to 'Yes' if a value for this custom property is always required.

Reportable: Set the switch to 'Yes' if the custom property is a key property for the entity and should be displayed each time the entity is displayed. Reportable properties are also included in Excel reports.

Admin Locked: Admin locked custom properties can only be edited by administrators. The administrator role required to be able to edit the property depends on the type of the element the property is added to.

• Project Administrator role is required in order to be able to edit admin locked custom properties added to a Project, Impact, Schedule, Status Report, Community Plan, Financials, Benefits and Ongoing Costs.
• User Administrator role is required in order to be able to edit admin locked custom properties added to a Person.
• Application Administrator role is required in order to be able to edit admin locked custom properties added to an Action, Board, Meeting and Workhub.

For 'Impact' custom property, you can also select which impact types the property applies to. For instance, some properties may apply to risks but not to issues. In the case of 'Person' custom properties, you can set which engagement type the resource must be set to in order for the property to apply.

Conditional Property Section fields

Property Dependency: Sets whether the property is conditional to the value of another custom property. Please refer to the Conditional Custom Properties article for more information on this option.

Using Custom Properties 

The table below shows where you can set custom properties values for each entity.