What are Custom Fields?

Custom Fields let you extend Atender’s data model to capture the information that matters to your business. Out of the box, Atender tracks the essentials — contact name, channel, conversation status, and so on. Custom fields fill the gap between that baseline and the data your team actually works with: order numbers, contract tiers, escalation reasons, affected systems.

Once a custom field exists, every part of the product can read from it. The conversation panel shows it. Automations branch on it. Analytics group by it. The Agent Stack uses it as context.

Where they apply

Custom fields can be added to three areas:

• Contacts (CRM) — Customer profiles — industry, account number, contract type, preferred language, account manager
• Conversations — Conversation metadata — order number, product category, issue severity, resolution type
• Cases — Case tracking — project code, department, priority classification, business impact

The same field type catalogue is available in each area; what changes is the entity the data is attached to.

Field types

Six types cover most needs:

• Text — single-line input (account ID, order number)
• Textarea — multi-line text (notes, descriptions)
• Number — numeric values (contract value, quantity)
• Date — date picker (contract start, renewal date)
• Select — single choice from a defined list of options (product category, priority)
• Checkbox — true/false toggle (VIP flag, opt-in consent)

For Select fields, you define the option list and can reorder or update it later. See the Field types reference for picking the right type.

Why this is more than just data entry

Three integrations make custom fields powerful, not just another form to fill in:

• Automations read custom-field values as conditions and write them as actions. A rule can route every conversation where custom_fields.product_category = "Hardware" to the hardware team automatically.
• Sidekick can auto-populate custom fields from message content. When a customer mentions an order number in their email, Sidekick extracts it and writes it to the conversation’s order_number field — no copy-paste from the agent.
• Analytics filters and groups by custom fields. Reports like “average resolution time by product category” or “first-response time by VIP tier” become trivially easy once the data is structured.

CRM custom fields plus sections plus tabs equals an in-house CRM

If you organize CRM contact custom fields into sections and custom field tabs, the contact detail view becomes a structured customer profile. Industry, contract details, account manager, purchase history, preferences — all in one place, all searchable, all readable by automations.

Where to start

• Build your first one: Create a custom field
• Pick the right type: Field types reference
• Group related fields: Organize with sections
• Make agents’ lives easier: Auto-populate from conversation content
• A worked example: Order tracking field set