Managing custom fields

Custom fields provide you with a way to include additional information to help you manage open source software in your company or organize large projects. For example, to help you organize your development teams, you may want your projects to include the responsible business unit.

You can create custom fields for:

  • BOM components

  • Components

  • Component versions

  • Projects

  • Project versions

Custom fields

A custom field is a system-wide property that will apply to all BOM components, components, component versions, projects, or project versions.

Users with the Custom Fields Administrator role can:

Note the following:

  • Custom fields can be optional or required.

    When creating a custom field, you can select whether the custom field is required.

    For required custom fields:

    • You can determine the enforcement of required custom fields as they can be mandatory or not mandatory. By default, if you select that a custom field is required, it is not mandatory: users can still view and save non-custom field information and information for non-required custom fields on the page if data is not entered for the required custom field. With mandatory custom fields, users must enter values when editing objects which have required custom fields.

      To enable mandatory required custom fields:

      1. Click and then select System Settings.

      2. Select Custom Fields from the lefthand menu.

      3. Enable the Force Entry of Required Custom Fields option.

    • A warning message "* Custom fields are required" appears when viewing custom field information, as described in the next section.

    • An asterisk (*) next to the custom field label on the page indicates the required custom field.

    • Use the "Missing Custom Field Data" filter in the BOM to view those components in the project version BOM which are missing information.

  • A custom field option is available for the Project Version report. Selecting this option lists the project version custom field labels and values.

  • You cannot change the type of custom field once it has been created. For example, suppose you created a multiple choice custom field. If, after you created the field, you want to change that custom field to a single choice custom field, you must create a new custom field.

  • You can create a policy rule for project or BOM component custom fields for any field type.