Custom Profile Category
The Custom Profile Category is used to add a custom, searchable field to Profiles, making it easier to search for specific members within your organization. When used, the Custom Profile Category is displayed on the Info tab of a user's Profile, under Other.
This field is best used for something that you would not find useful as a targeting filter (that's where the Custom Filter comes in handy) but could be helpful for when you need to search for people with a specific quality.
For example, say you set your Custom Profile Category to indicate an employee's Seniority Level, with values such as “Level 001”, “Level 002”, etc.
This wouldn't be useful as a targeting filter because:
- It applies across your whole organization, regardless of someone's role or position.
- It does not group similar people in the way that targeting an Org-Unit or Team does.
This would be useful as a Search term if:
- You were researching how many people were at each level of seniority within your organization.
- You needed to find an employee with a certain level of seniority needed for a task.
To create a Custom Profile Category
- Go to Administration Settings > User Profiles > Configure Custom Profile Category (Status)
- In the Label fields, enter a singular and plural name for your Custom Profile Category (eg. "Seniority Level"/ “Seniority Levels”) and click Save.
- In the Category name field, enter the applicable categories for your field (eg. "Level 001", "Level 002"). Click Save after each entry.
- Your current categories will be listed below the Category name field. If you need to edit or remove a Category, just click the Edit or X to the left of the Category in question.
Once saved, the Custom Profile Category feature will be added to the Other section of every user's Profile, along with a drop-down selector on their Profile Edit screen they can use to set their proper individual category.
Once in place and in use on your users' Profiles, your Custom Profile Categories can be used as search terms in People or any other view. (Search can be accessed from the top of the Main Navigation).
Custom Profile Field
The Custom Profile Field is located right below the Custom Profile Category in the Other section of the user Profile.
This has been designed as a single label with an associated free form ID value (meaning there are no pre-set selections to choose from— anything can be entered for the value).
An example of what this can be best used for is any type of “Favorite” item. For instance, the label can be set as “Favorite color” and then any value could be entered (for example, “red”, “bluish-green”, “the orangey-yellow of a setting sun”).
The label can be set on an individual basis by the System Admin:
- directly from the Other section on a user's Profile Edit screen
- on the Edit user screen (Administration Settings > User Accounts and Data > Edit, Invite, Disable Users) under "Custom Profile Field Label":
Or it can be set up in bulk across a large number of users via the “CustomProfileFieldLabel” field in the Jostle Users CSV template.
Managing Profile fields
Both features can be set as User-owned or Organization-owned. For more information on these settings, see this article.
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