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 up 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:

  1. 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.
  2. Data Import - It is mandatory to map required fields on data imports. 
    1. You cannot proceed with import if your .CSV does not have a mapping for a required field. 
    2. Records which don’t have a value in mandatory fields would fail and be reported in an error log report sent via email.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Code Library - Mandatory field validations are bypassed while using these libraries.
  6. 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,

  1. Go to Admin settings > Leads, Contacts & Accounts > Contact/Account > Add Fields.

  2. For deals navigate to Admin settings > Deals & Pipelines > Deals

  3. You can make a field mandatory either while adding a new field (custom fields) or while editing an existing field (default and custom fields).

  4. Enable the Required checkbox for the desired field.

  1. Alternatively in the Add / Edit Field overlay, you can enable the Make this a required field checkbox.

  1. Click Save.

  2. 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.