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Customize your CRM

Owned by Helen Gosper
Last updated: Apr 15, 2024 by Denise McGettigan
4 min read

Customize your CRM module for your own business by adding new tabs, tables, and fields to the entity screens. For example, you might want to add social media fields to a contact or a position field to an account. These custom additions allow you to record the exact details you need to manage those entities more effectively. If you map the custom fields to your CRM Analysis database, you can analyze the data entered against those fields in your Analytics module.

While this customization capability is straightforward and flexible, it’s suitable for adding basic additional fields only. It's not designed as a database or inventory management tool and there’s a limit to the number of fields you can add.

Add the custom item in CRM

You can add the following items to the CRM Account, Activity, Campaign, Contact, and Lead screens:

  • Tab of fields: An additional tab in which you can add custom fields.

  • Table of rows: An additional tab containing a table (grid) in which you can add a list of items.

  • Fields on the main tab: Additional fields on the entity's main tab.

     

  1. Click the Phocas menu button > Administration > CRM Customizations.

  2. Click New.

  3. Enter a name for the custom item, and a description if required.

  4. Select the entity from the dropdown list: Account, Activity, Campaign, Contact, or Lead.

  5. Select the customization type: Tab of fields, Table of rows or Fields on main tab.

  6. Select whether the customization is editable. If it is editable, the Entity and Type cannot be changed.

  7. Click Save.

  8. Click the Fields tab and add the fields:

    1. Click New.

    2. Enter a name for the field, and a group if required.

    3. Select the field type: Date, Date Time, Integer, List (dropdown list), Number, Text, or Text Area. After you save the Field form, you cannot change the field type. If you select the List option, enter the options into the box that displays, separated by a pipe (|) character without space, illustrated in the image below.

    4. Either click Save and New (if you want to add another field) or Save and Close as required.

  9. Click Save and Close. The new custom item displays in the list on the Customization screen and when you open the corresponding entity screen. Your CRM users can now add data against the new item.

  10. (Optional) Proceed to map the custom fields to your CRM Analysis database.

Map the custom item to the CRM database

To enable the analysis of data entered against custom CRM items, you need to map those items to the CRM Analysis database in Designer. Generally, the Phocas Implementations team does this type of work for you but if you are familiar with using Designer, you can do it yourself. The steps are summarized below. See the following Designer pages for more information: Add (connect) data to a database and Map data to the database.

  1. Open the CRM Analysis database in Designer.

  2. Open the applicable entity (the data displays in the stream section).

  3. Open the data sources panel > locate the CRM custom file in the Auto Generated CRM folder > drag it into the Drag here box in the stream section.

  4. Map the ID in the file (the activity data that you capture in the CRM) to the ID in the database.

  5. Map the new custom item to the required item in the Dimension or Property section and edit the name of the mapped item, if required.

  6. Save and build the database.

  7. Proceed to view the custom item in Analytics.

View the custom item in Analytics

After you build your CRM Analysis database with the custom CRM items, so long as data has been entered against those items in CRM, you can analyze that data in Analytics. Depending on how you mapped the custom items, they might display as a dimension or property.

See the following Analytics pages for more information: Filter data (use dimensions) and Change the properties.