Object attributes

Object attributes add behavior and fields to an object. For example:

  • Objects with Task and/or Event attributes appear in the Platform calendar.
  • Objects with the Document attribute can store a file attachment. The file's contents are indexed in the full text search engine.
  • Objects with the Workflow attribute have fields for managing workflow processes, statuses, and actions, allowing you to model many kinds of business processes.
  • Objects with the Location attribute have fields to capture addresses.
  • Objects with the Contact attribute have fields to capture phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

During object creation, you have the option to select which attributes to include. These are divided into two categories: Attribute and Advanced Attribute. If you use the Quick Create wizard, you can add attributes, but not advanced attributes. Once an object is created, you can add any type of attribute to it.

When you add an attribute during object creation or later, Platform adds a group of fields to that object. While you cannot delete these fields, except for the integration name property, you can modify all other properties. These new fields are added to the object view, create, and edit pages in a new section. When you remove an attribute from an object, Platform deletes these fields as a group.

Attributes

You can add the following attributes to an object definition:

  • Contact — Adds fields to store contact information for people or organizations. You can send contact records by email and export them in the standard vCard format. The following fields are added when this attribute is enabled: First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, Job Title, Phone, Mobile Phone, Fax, Email Address, and Contact Owner. :

    Note: Any object created with the Contact attribute enabled, do not support the country code prefixed to their corresponding phone number fields (i.e., Phone Number, Mobile Phone and Fax).
  • Location — Adds fields to store information about people, places, or organizations with associated location and street address information. The following fields are added when this attribute is enabled: Street Address 1, Street Address 2, City, State/Province, ZIP/Postal Code, and Country. Using the Location attribute allows you to add a Google Map component to view pages, as described in Google Maps.
  • Event — Adds fields to schedule activities or meetings that have an associated start time, duration and group of participants. You can display, create, and manage Event records in the Platform calendar and export them in the standard iCalendar format. The following fields are added when this attribute is enabled: Event Subject, Start Date/Time, Duration, All Day, Private, Description, Location, Assigned To and Pop-up Reminder.
  • Task — Adds fields to track deadlines, follow-ups, or to-dos that have a due date and one or more associated assigned users. You can display, create, and manage Task records in the Platform calendar and export them in the standard iCalendar format. The following fields are added when this attributed is enabled: Task Subject, Due Date, Priority, Private, Description, and Assigned To.
  • Document — Adds a field for file attachments and a description. Platform indexes attached files in standard Word, Excel, PDF, or plain text formats for full text search. The following fields are added when this attributed is enabled: Document File and Description.
  • Organization — Adds lookup fields for associating records with organizational Location, Department, and Function for use with location/department/function (LDF) permissions. See Location, Department & Function permissions for more information.
  • Search Tag — Adds a field to tag the records. A tag is a label used to describe one or more records. Records tagged with keywords show up as matches for searches on any of those keywords. In addition, when you view a record with tags, you will be able to see all the tags affixed to that record, along with how many different users tagged that record with the same keywords.
  • Object Type — Normalizes a complex object as a “Default” object and extended “Object Types” within that object. Objects created with the object types attribute enabled makes the object extensible. For more information, see Object Type Attribute.

Advanced attributes

You can add the following advanced attributes to an object definition:

  • Workflow — Objects with this attribute can be routed through an automated or manual workflow process defined by a set of workflow statuses and actions. The following fields are added when this attributed is enabled: Workflow Process, Workflow Status, and Workflow Actions (list of available actions). See Workflow overview for more details.
  • Portal User — Objects with this attribute represent registered users of one or more portals. The Portal User fields can be used to require portal authentication and enable the creation of rich interactive portals that expose specific capabilities of your Platform applications to external users. The following fields are added when this attributed is enabled: Login Name, Password, Is Active and portalLink_field. See Portal security for more details.
  • Approval — Objects with this attribute are subject to an approval process. See Approvals for more details.
  • Survey — Objects with this attribute enable a Questions Library, allowing you to create any number of questions that can then be attached to any record to form a questionnaire. You can rank each question's answer to assign an overall score to survey responses. See Surveys and quizzes.
  • Survey Taker— Objects with the this attribute contain fields to store responses to surveys.
  • Queue — Objects with this attribute can be marked to form a queue. Users can pick up records from queue for further processing. See Record queues.
  • Multi-Currency — Objects with this attribute include support for converting money amounts to and from different currencies. See Multi-currency support
  • Lockable — Objects with this attribute support locking of records Locked records cannot be edited or deleted unless they are unlocked by trigger or API.