Custom objects overview

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This lesson breaks down custom objects and how they work with Ontraport’s Dynamic CMS so you can most effectively manage your data. From this foundation, you’ll eventually be able to build web applications.

In this lesson you'll learn:

How custom objects are similar to – but so much more than – an Excel spreadsheet
How custom objects can help you keep your data organized
Examples of how custom objects work in different business situations
How you could store information about a pet owner and her 47 birds, if you wanted to

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Transcript

Custom objects let you store almost any kind of information in Ontraport and connect it to your contacts. In this lesson, you'll learn what a custom object is, when you need one, and what you need to get started. You already know one object: Contacts. In the Contacts collection, each row is one contact, and each contact record holds fields, like name and email. To track something new about your contacts, like their hair color, you add a field, and every contact record gets it. A custom object is a new type of record that you design. You choose its fields, and you get a new collection to store its records, just like Contacts. A veterinarian might create a Pets object, with one record for each pet. A contractor might create Projects or Proposals. And if you run a lot of webinars, you might track Events. Setting up a custom object's fields works just like creating custom fields for your contacts. You add the fields you need and organize them into sections and tabs. Each object also gets its own item in the top navigation and its own collection, where you can search, sort and make groups. Hover over an object's item to find its automation maps, forms and messages. Once you add any object besides Contacts, the Automations item goes away, and those tools move under each object, including Contacts. So when do you need a custom object? Ask whether the information is really about the contact. If it is, like hair color, add a field to Contacts. If it's about something else, like a pet, a project or an event, give it its own object. Why not just add pet fields to your contacts? Two reasons. First, lots of people have more than one pet, and one Pet Name field can't hold three names. So you add Pet 1 Name, Pet 2 Name, and so on, for every detail you track. A client with a houseful of birds would need dozens of fields. Each object has a limit on how many fields it can hold, and when you start running low, the Support Center recommends moving fields into a custom object that's related to Contacts. Second, numbered fields are hard to use. If one bird's details could be in Pet 1, Pet 4 or Pet 9, searching and sorting them is close to impossible. And you can't improve your service with data you can't use. With a Pets object, every pet gets its own record with its own fields. Then you connect the records with a relationship. Each pet record has a Pet owner field that links to a contact, and the contact's record lists all of their pets. However many pets someone has, everything stays organized. Now your data is easy to use. Say you need to reach every bird owner. Make a group of the pets that are birds, then write a message for the Pets object. Its Send email to setting lets you send it to each pet's owner, because Pets is related to Contacts. The more relationships you set up, the more options you have. Later in this course, you'll use the Dynamic CMS to turn records like these into web pages, and show each logged-in client only the pages for their own records, like their own pets. Custom objects need a Dynamic CMS package. The account owner adds one from the Account Details page: click Add plan or Start trial next to "Add Dynamic CMS to your account." Each package sets how many custom objects you can have, how many records each one can hold, and how many records you can display each month. You don't have to build every object from scratch. Prebuilt objects, like Companies, Deals, Surveys and Virtual Events, come as apps that are already set up. Click your profile icon, then Apps, and toggle one on. Apps need a Dynamic CMS package too. Companies, for example, keeps everyone who works at one business together, which helps when you sell to other businesses. Next in this section, you'll learn the three types of relationships: one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many. Then you'll create your own objects, from your profile icon, then Administration, Data and Custom Objects, and put them to work. So: if information is about the contact, add a field. If it's about something else, especially something a contact can have many of, give it its own custom object and relate it to Contacts. Next up: the three relationship types.