How to Find Fields

Overview 

This guide will help you learn how to search for fields on your site!

Who can access this feature?

Admin Account Types: System Admin and Admin
Permissions: Data

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Quick Note

Fields are the containers that store specific data about students, parents, or other contacts in the system. This article dives right into the steps of finding a field. If that's not what you are looking for, this might help:

• If you are new to understanding fields you might want to check out our Fields Overview article.
• If you are looking for a guide on how to create fields, our Creating and Editing Fields article is for you!

Options for Finding Fields

We have two options to recommend for exploring your fields. Click the links below to be brought right to that section!

• On the Fields Page: When you navigate to Settings > Fields & Data > Fields, you will see a list of all of the fields on your site. Use the filters to make searching a breeze!
• In a Form: Another option is to go right into the backend view of one of your forms (like your application!) This is helpful because it just might contain all the info you need in one easy place.

On the Fields Page

1. Open your fields page: Settings > Fields & Data > Fields
2. Expand the Filter Options to type in a search, or apply a Grouping or Field Type.

Pro Tips 

• If you are completing a Data Dictionary, you can either use the Display Name or the Canonical Name in the Finalsite Enrollment Field Name column of the dictionary.
  
  
• If you building a search with a specific field, you will choose the Contact Record Data (Everything Else) option and then type in the Display name of the field as seen here on the fields page.

Searching by field Display Name within a Search.

In a Form

Usually, the application includes the fields that you are looking for so we are going to look at the application in the steps below.

However, if you need to look at the field names on any of your other forms, you'll follow pretty much the same steps. The only real difference will be that you will choose a different form group in the Forms dropdown.

1. Open your Application forms page: Settings > Forms > Application Forms
2. On the Active application form, select Show Form from the select dropdown in the Actions column.
3. Select Show to open any of the pages.
4. You will find the canonical (internal field name) in the Field column.

Additional Notes

• If you are completing a Data Dictionary, you can use the canonical (internal) name of the field as it is listed here in the Finalsite Enrollment Field Name column of the dictionary.
  
  
• The canonical name is everything listed after "CHILD." For example, in CHILD.is_international, is_international is the canonical name of the field.
  
  
• You can search by the canonical name in the text search option of the fields page.

Try it yourself

Practice this yourself in the interactive tutorial below!

16 STEPS

1. Complete the following steps to learn how to find the name of a field by looking it up in a form.

This tutorial uses an Inquiry form as an example. You can use the same steps on any of your forms.

2. You'll need to start by navigating to the Forms pages. From the Dashboard page, select Settings.

3. Click Forms to open the forms menu.

4. Click Inquiry Forms.

5. Within the Active form section, click Select to open the menu.

6. Now you will open the backend of the form. Click Show Form.

7. Click Show.

8. This page lists all of the questions and fields within your form.

The Prompt column contains the question as it appears on your form. The Field column contains the backend name of the field. Click Next to continue.

9. Once you locate the question or prompt from your form that holds the information you are looking for, make a note of the internal name of that field.
You only need to copy the text after the dot. For example, custom_inquiry_events.

Click Next.

10. Now, you can navigate to the Fields page to look up the field by it's backend name. Click to open the Fields & Data menu.

11. Click Fields.

12. Within the Fields page, use the Filter options to search for the backend name of the field. Click Filter options.

13. In the search box, enter custom_inquiry_events to search for the field.

14. Scroll down and click Apply Filter.

15. And here it is! Now you have both the display name (that you see on the student record) and the backend name of the field.

16. That's it. You're done. Congratulations on finishing this tutorial!

Here's an interactive tutorial

** Best experienced in Full Screen (click the icon in the top right corner before you begin) **

https://www.iorad.com/player/2516155/How-to-find-a-field-in-a-form

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Additional Resources

• Office Hours & Past Session Recordings
• Fields Overview
• Field Types
• Creating and Editing Fields