There may be times when you want to make sure that records cannot be manually created without having data in certain fields. Perhaps you want to make sure that team members don't forget to enter a supporter's name and email address, so you can push these contacts to Mailchimp, or ensure that all person records have a 'type' set so you know what to contact them about.
In cases like these, you may feel that it's useful to make certain fields mandatory for record creation. However, mandatory fields are not a supported functionality within Beacon. This is because having fields required for record creation can cause issues, even at times when you think you should usually have that information. For example, if the Name and Email fields on the Person record are mandatory, this could prevent you from creating a record if you only caught someone’s surname at an event, or if that person doesn't have an email address.
Instead, there are a few different ways that you can identify what data you're missing, to keep track of what information you may need to collect. These are:
In this guide, we'll outline how to use each method to identify fields that are missing important data.
Using alerts
Alerts are a great way to highlight important information on a record - and this includes missing information! You can create an alert on any record type, to show when a certain criteria are met. For example, if you want to identify Person records that don’t have a first name, you could set the alert to show when the first name field is blank. Alerts are particularly useful when looking at specific records, as they show as a banner at the top - this is handy as it means you don't need to scroll and manually check fields to see if they have data in them or not.
Here’s how you’d set an alert up.
Enter customisation mode on the record type you want to add the alert to.
2. Click the alerts icon at the top right of the page.
3. An alert settings dialog will appear, showing you a list of all of the existing alerts. Scroll to the bottom and click Create new alert.
4. Give your alert a title, a message, and select which alert type you would like (we recommend using the Warning alert).
5. Set up the show conditions. These are filters just like those used for segmentation, except here, you're using them to determine whether an alert should show on a given record. For this example, you would want the alert to show when Name (first) = blank. Click create.
Your alert will now show on any records where the first name has not been populated, like this:
Using dashboard cards
Another option is to use dashboard cards. These are helpful if you want to see a clear overview of which records are missing certain data, across various record types, rather than having to click into individual records to see alerts.
To set up a dashboard card, enter customisation mode and click Add card.
2. Customise your card. Give it a title, and optionally, a description. Choose your card type (we’d recommend List of records), and select which record type you’re wanting to track missing data from.
3. Choose your Primary value (you can customise the secondary value, sort field and sort direction if you wish).
4. Now you need to set up some filters, to decide which records you want to see in your card. To use our earlier example, a list of person records with no first name, we will apply that filter here. Click Create.
And you're done! Your card will now show a list of records that meet that criteria.
Dashboard cards are a live lookup of data, so when the record no longer meets the criteria, it will automatically be removed. In this case, if we were to give one of these records a first name, it would no longer be pulled through to this card. The same applies when new records are added to your account, so any Person records created without a first name would automatically filter into the card above.
You can share dashboards with team members if you want others in your organisation to be able to track this information too!
Using list views
The final way that you can track missing data in your account is by using list views. These will allow you to see a list of records directly from a record type, that meet a certain criteria, as well as any fields that are relevant to you. From here you will be able to click directly into each record and make any changes as you wish. Similarly to dashboards, you can save views and share them with other members of your team.
To set up a list view, click into any record type. Click the views dropdown and select Create a view.
2. Give your view a name, and optionally, make it visible to others. Click Save.
3. Next, add your filters. We'll continue with the example from earlier, people without a first name. Click the filters icon to add these, and make sure you click Save to apply the changes to the saved view.
Now your view is all set up! As with dashboard cards, this list view is a live lookup of data, so any new/updated records that meet that criteria will automatically filter into it for you to review.