What are profile fields and how do I manage them?

Profile fields are elements included on user profiles to either simply display information about the user (read-only); create a field visible only to admins (such as a number),  or provide a way for the user to specify unique information about him/herself. You can also include these fields on the registration form to capture the information at the moment someone joins your community rather than waiting for them to update their profile.

To include profile fields on user profiles, you must add the field(s) to a group and the group to a User profile fields widget on the user profile. You need to customize the widget to show the profile fields in the profile field group. If users have not yet specified information for these profile fields, the fields are not visible on the user's profile. But when a user edits the profile, he or she is able to add content to each profile field. You can also decide, for each profile field, whether community members should be able to search for similar members via that profile field by selecting Yes for search indexing question.

The profile fields for birthdate, gender, public email, website, location can't be deleted or changed by admins (thus prevented from breaking the site). You can pull only what has changed in a particular user's profile via the platform and in-process APIs.

The only fields indexed by search are plain text fields such as those entered in the profile. The default searchable fields include Birthday, Department, Education, Gender, Hobbies, Language, Occupation, and Title. HTML, URL, or check box fields are not indexed by Telligent Community Server.

To support commas for searchable custom profile fields, change the field's data type to comma-separated list in User Profile Configuration.

By default, we include a set of profile fields grouped together in three groups:

1. About: location, birthday, gender, language
2. Contact: public email, blog, gallery, Web site, Facebook, AOL IM, Yahoo IM, Google IM, Windows Live IM
3. Interests: occupation, hobbies, education

As an administrator you can modify these defaults, add additional fields to these existing groups, or create new groups to add to or replace these.

Add a custom profile field

1. Navigate to Administration > Membership > Profile Fields.
2. Click Create New Field at the bottom of the list of existing profile fields. The Add User Profile Data Field dialog box appears.
3. Add a key - this is to uniquely define the profile field
4. Add a label
5. Determine if you want the profile field to be searchable
6. Determine how you would like users to enter content

Edit a custom profile field

1. Click Edit next to the profile field you want to change. The edit dialog box appears.
2. In the dialog window, specify:
   
   • Key - The name of the field.
   • Label - How the field is labeled in the Profile page.
   • Searchable - Whether or not the field is searchable.
   • Type of Input - field as it is displayed on a user's profile (for example, comma-separated list, URL, etc.).
3. Click Save. The profile field list is updated to display the changes you made.

Delete a custom profile field

1. Click Delete next to the profile field you want to delete.
2. Confirm the deletion and the list now no longer includes this profile field

Profile field groups

Add a custom profile field to a user profile group

For this procedure to work, you have to have the User - Banner widget on the home page.

For a custom profile field to be visible, it must be included in a profile field group. An existing profile field will already be part of a group (for example, the existing Google IM name is part of the About group). A new field is not, by default, a member of any group and needs to be added - to either an existing group or a custom group. The process is the same for adding to either kind of group.

1. Navigate to Administration > Membership > Profile field groups.
2. Click Edit for the profile field where you want to add the new field. (In this example, we're using the About profile field group.) The Add/Edit User Profile Field Data dialog box appears.
3. Drag the custom field from Available fields to Current panel fields.
4. Click Save. Now, when you or your user edits a user profile, this field will appear in the group where you placed it. (To edit a profile, see Configuring the available profile options.)
5. Go to your site (by clicking Go to site in the upper-right corner).
6. Click your user avatar, in this case Admin.
7. Click Profile.
8. Scroll down. You should now see your additional field in the area you added it to.

Add a custom profile field group

1. Click Create New Field Group at the bottom of the list of existing profile field groups. The Add/Edit User Profile Data Panel dialog window appears.
2. In the dialog window:
   1. Specify a unique Name for the profile field group. This will be displayed on the profile field widget for selecting groups to include on the profile. You cannot edit this name once it is created.
   2. Select one or more profile fields from the Available Fields list and drag and drop them in the Current Panel Fields list. Fields are displayed in the order they are listed.
   3. You can remove profile fields from the group by dragging and dropping any fields from Current Panel Fields to Available Fields.
3. Click Save. The new profile field group is displayed in the list of all profile field groups. You must include the profile field group in a profile field widget on a page (typically the user profile page) before it is visible for editing/viewing.

Change an existing profile field group

1. In the dialog window, click Edit next to the profile field group you want to change.
2. Click Save.

Delete a profile field group

1. Click Delete next to the profile field you want to delete.
2. Confirm the deletion and the list now no longer includes this profile field group. Any profile field widgets that include this profile field group are reset to nothing so that this information no longer shows.

Use caution when deleting profile fields or profile field groups. If you remove a profile field, it is automatically removed from the profile field group and the profile field widget (if enabled). Community Server does, however, save any user-entered values for that profile field so that if you create a profile field with the same name and input type, that information will be displayed for the user again (as long as you've re-added the profile field widget). If you remove a profile field group that is included in a profile field widget, the profile widget is automatically removed from its page.