Some basic information on a contact/account/deal is certainly needed to reach out and pitch a product to a prospect. Also sometimes, to distinguish one contact from another, at least one key piece of info like the contact’s last name or so is required. That’s when the option of making a field mandatory comes in handy.
By making a field required, you can collect the most important information from your prospects, understand them better, and eventually strike better conversations.
Some important fields are mandatory by default across different modules:
- Accounts: Name
- Deals: Name and Deal value
- Contacts: One of the three fields - Email, Mobile or external ID
This property for the above fields can’t be modified i.e this field needs to be filled in for a record to be created. For other fields, the option to mark them required or not is up to the choice of the admin.
You can make a field mandatory while creating or editing an entity’s field under Admin Settings. Making a field required makes it mandatory for the user to enter a value while saving a record. This feature is available for Contact, Account, and Deal fields.
Note: Making a field mandatory affects your data imports, mobile app, and integration. The implications are listed below.
Before you make a field mandatory, ensure to check the following areas:
- Record Save - If you make a field mandatory, users cannot save a record if the field is empty. Make sure you make only those fields mandatory for which users should have a value to input. Otherwise, your sales process would be hindered, or users would input junk values to save the record. For existing records, make sure you do a bulk update or import update on the required field for the application to run properly.
- Data Import - It is mandatory to map required fields on data imports.
- You cannot proceed with import if your .CSV does not have a mapping for a required field.
- Records which don’t have a value in mandatory fields would fail and be reported in an error log report sent via email.
- Mobile App - Apps with iOS version 1.2 (and above) and Android version 1.1.2 (and above) are compatible with this feature. Make sure your team upgrades to this version.
- Integrations - Mandatory field validations are triggered for integrations as well. Make sure you have handled these fields in all your integrations. Any integration which creates or updates a record (contact/deal/account) should include mandatory fields.
- Code Library - Mandatory field validations are bypassed while using these libraries.
- Auto forwarding - Contact creation on email auto-forwarding is not affected if there are required fields on Contacts. However, when the user tries to edit the record, mandates a value in required fields on save of record.
To make a field required,
Go to Admin settings > Contact/Account/Deal module > Add Fields.
You can make a field mandatory either while adding a new field (custom fields) or while editing an existing field (default and custom fields).
Enable the Required checkbox for the desired field.
Alternatively in the Add / Edit Field overlay, you can enable the Make this a required field checkbox.
Click Save.
In the confirmation box that appears, click Yes
Note:
1. This feature is available for all field types.
2. If a check-box field is made required, then by default it stays enabled.