Custom Fields¶

With custom profile fields, platforms can customize what data they want to collect from registered users. This data can be used in reports / learning analytics, e.g. to measure metrics such as learner success or community engagement against demographic dimensions like age or occupation.

Once registered in the database, these custom fields will show up on users’ profile pages, where they can edit them.

Currently, we support the following types of fields:

Text: a free-text field where users can enter any text
Select: an auto-complete / dropdown field which lets users choose one value from a predefined list of values
Multi-select: like select fields, but users can select more than one value

Mandatory fields¶

Fields can be marked as required, meaning users will have to fill them out before they can access the learning content on the platform.

Configuring already-existing, optional fields as mandatory at a later time will also prevent previously-registered users from accessing most of the site content (by means of an “interrupt” page), until they have provided a value for these fields.

Setup¶

Configuring custom fields is currently only possible from the xi-account Rails console. Creating a field this way will also automatically schedule the “interrupts” for existing users who will need to fill out these fields before proceeding.

Text fields¶

CustomTextField.create!(
  name: 'affiliation',
  title: 'Affiliation',
  context: 'user',
  required: false # true for mandatory fields, false for optional ones
)

Select fields¶

CustomSelectField.create!(
  name: 'occupation',
  title: 'Occupation',
  context: 'user',
  values: %w[not_set scientist cab_driver],
  default_values: ['not_set'],
  required: false # true for mandatory fields, false for optional ones
)

Multi-select fields¶

CustomMultiSelectField.create!(
  name: 'languages',
  title: 'Languages spoken',
  context: 'user',
  values: %w[not_set ar de en es fr pt ru zh],
  default_values: ['not_set'],
  required: false # true for mandatory fields, false for optional ones
)

Update¶

In rare cases, custom fields may be updated, e.g. when adding further options to a multi-select field.

Danger

Please be careful with such operations and only update profile field if required. Always consider the implications thoroughly, especially when renaming / removing values from select fields. If possible, only add new values to select fields.

Scenario: Add new profile field options¶

Add the corresponding locale key with translations in config/locales/*.yml, e.g. profiles.settings.field_name.new_value, and deploy the new locales so they are available before adding a new option.
Connect to the Rails console for xi-account to edit the respective profile field.

Update the profile field options as follows:

# Make sure to edit the correct field.
field = CustomField.find_by(name: 'field_name')
# Make sure to include *all* existing options as well.
field.update!(values: [
  'value_1',
  'value_2',
  'new_value',
])