What is a primary field anyway? Not all fields on a record are created equally. The primary field represents the record and helps differentiate between records of the same record type. It's the key way your team can identify that record when using Beacon. Ask yourself:

This article will go through all of the basics of primary fields:

Primary fields are not set in stone. You can change a record type's primary field any time you like. However, we don't recommend changing the primary field on any core record types. We feel like we've done a good job setting them up correctly! For custom record types, the choice is yours. Read more about creating a good primary field here

The primary field will always be in the header of a record when you open it. For example, here's where to find the primary field for the Person record type:

Similarly here is the primary field on the Event attendee record type. Notice how it is a combination of the attendee and the event:

The primary field will also be what is displayed on the pill in point to another record fields. Here's what the Person record type's primary field looks like when viewed through the primary contact field on an organisation:

For example, in the People record type, the primary field is the person's name. Simple enough so far right?

Similarly, the Event record type's primary field would be the event name.

What about the Event attendee record type? The person's name or the event name wouldn't be enough to tell the difference between different event attendee record types. You would want to know specifically who is going to what event. So the primary field of the Event attendee record will be a combination of the person's name and the event name.

Similarly with an Activity, you might want to know what the activity is and the date it occurred. So the primary field of the Activity record type is the activity "Type" and the date of the activity

Changing a record type's primary field is easy! Simply head to Settings > Record types in your sidebar and then select the record type you want to edit.

You will be brought to this page where you can easily select a primary field from any of the fields on that record type:

When you create a new record type, the primary field will be set to the "Name" field by default. You can change it by following the steps above 👍

Since a primary field helps you to identify a record, you may want to combine different fields on that record so you can display as much information as possible about the record. Smart fields are a fantastic way to do this 👍

Let's say we have created a new custom record type to track enquiries made by supporters. The key pieces of information on this record would be:

Let's combine these into a smart field and then select that as the record's primary field!

Create a short text smart field on the Enquiry record type and reference the person, enquiry date, and enquiry type.

Here what the set up looks like:

Now let's select this field as the Enquiry record type's primary field by heading to Settings > Record types and selecting the record type:

And here's what it looks like in action:

This means that the field you have selected as the primary field does not have any data in it. This can sometimes happen when you've just created a new record type and haven't set the primary field yet.

To solve this, follow the steps to change the primary field here