Every piece of information you keep in Ontraport lives in a field. In this lesson, you'll shape your contact records to hold exactly what your business needs, from simple text fields to file uploads and fields that do the math for you.
Go to Contacts, then Settings, then Field Editor. Records are built in three layers. Fields hold the data. Sections group related fields. And tabs, down the left side, group related sections. If you use custom objects, each one has its own Field Editor under its Settings.
To add a field, click the tab where it belongs, then click Add Field at the bottom of the section. Give it a name, choose a field type, add a description if you like, and click Save. The label on your forms can be different from the field name, so name fields in a way that makes sense to your team.
A description explains what the field is used for, so your team knows what belongs in it. And if you need a field's ID for an API request or an integration, open the saved field. The ID is at the bottom of the dialog, and you can click it to copy it.
There are more than twenty field types. Text and Long Text are for words. Numeric holds numbers up to three decimal places, and Price holds money, up to two. Use Date, or Date and Time when the time matters. Checkbox is for yes or no. Dropdown lets you pick one option, and List Selection lets you pick several. Color is a dropdown where each value has its own color.
Some types are built for specific data: Email, Phone, SMS for numbers that can receive texts, Address, Country, State, and URL. Rich Text holds styled text. Related Object Data shows a field from a related record.
You can also store files and images right on a record. File fields take common documents, video, audio and images, like PDFs, spreadsheets and MP4s. Image fields take PNG, JPG, GIF, SVG and WEBP. Upload limits depend on your plan: 200 megabytes on Plus, 500 on Pro, and 1 gigabyte on Enterprise.
Rollup fields calculate for you. They can count related records, or find the sum, average, median, minimum or maximum of their values. For example, you could count the calls logged on each contact. Add a field, choose the rollup type, then pick the relationship it rolls up. Add a condition if you only want certain records included.
For anything other than a count, pick the numeric or price field to calculate from. Then choose whether the column in your collection shows a total, an average or nothing at the top, and click Save.
Rollup values update on their own. You can't edit them by hand, and you can't use them in triggers or goals. But you can use them in conditions, groups, merge fields, dashboards and exports.
If your account has custom objects or Ontraport Apps turned on, you can also make a field required or unique. Ontraport recommends this only when you have a specific need. If you do require a field, include it in every form, import and API call that creates records, because records can't be saved without it.
A few fields come with every record and can't be edited or deleted: Date Added, Date Modified, Last Activity, the contact ID, and Unique ID.
Sections keep long records tidy. A fitness coach might group lifestyle, physical and mental goals into a "Client goals" section. Click Add New Section, click UNTITLED to name it, add a description if you like, and click Save.
To control who sees what, click Permissions at the top right of a section and choose which roles can view or edit it. Save the dialog, then save the Field Editor.
To add a tab, click the add button at the bottom left, click UNTITLED to name it, and click Save.
To rearrange things, drag the move icon. You can move fields to another section or tab, and drag sections and tabs into a new order. Then click Save. To delete a field, click its trash can, type DELETE, click Okay, then Save. Deleting a field erases all the data in it, so export that data first if you need it.
So: tabs hold sections, sections hold fields, and the Field Editor is where you shape all three. Next up, we'll import your contacts into these fields.