🛑 IMPORTANT: The Profile Extender add-on and previous method of managing custom fields has been deprecated and replaced with the process discussed in this article. Any existing profile fields will be retained and migrated to the new system.
Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) user profiles feature a default set of profile fields (e.g., username and email address). If needed, your organization can expand these default fields with one or more custom profile fields, giving your users more ways to express themselves with information suitable to the goals and theme of your Vanilla community.
Users can fill out these custom profile fields:
- During the registration process
- From their user profiles
Custom profile fields overview
In this section, we'll look at a group of custom profile fields in action, from the Dashboard, to a user filling them out on the registration form, and how they then display on their profile page.
Custom profile fields - Dashboard
Custom profile fields - Registration form
- Blue highlighting indicates default profile fields.
- Red highlighting indicates custom profile fields.
- Notice how the Biography field in the image above is public but set to inactive, so it doesn't show on the Registration form below.
- Also notice how the Plan field in the image above is active but set to internal, so it also doesn't show to the non-admin user in the image below.
Custom profile fields - User profile
As you can see below, custom profile fields display in the About Me section of a user's profile.
- Notice the lock icon on the Last Name field; this is because that custom field has a Visibility set to Private, so only the user (and anyone with the
Garden > Personal Info > View permission) can see it.
Access custom profile fields
- Access the Dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings > Membership > User Profile.
From here, Admins can:
- Create profile fields
- Enable/disable profile fields
- Edit profile fields
- Delete profile fields
- Reorder profile fields
Create a custom profile field
On the Settings > Membership > User Profile page:
1. Click the Add Field button.
2. In the dialog, configure the following options:
- Type: Choose the type of profile field to create:
- Single Textbox: Users can enter a single line of text.
- Multi-line Textbox: Users can enter paragraphs of text.
- Single Checkbox: Users indicate a preference via a simple checkbox.
- Single-Select Dropdown: Users can select a single option from a list of preconfigured choices.
- Multi-Select Dropdown: Users can select one or more options from a list of preconfigured choices.
- Date Picker: Users can select a date via a date picker.
- Numeric Input: This is a simple text field that only accepts numbers.
- Description: Allows you to provide helper text to explain the purpose of a profile field.
- Label: The title displayed for this profile field on the front end of your Vanilla community.
- API Label: The unique identifier to use when calling our API. This label cannot be changed once saved!
- Options: Enter, one per line, the options you want available to users upon clicking the dropdown. This option is only available if your Type is set to either of the dropdown field types.
- Visibility: Determines who can see this profile information on user profiles:
- Public: Visible to all users with the
Garden > Profiles > View permission. - Private: Only visible to users with the
Garden > Personal Info > View permission. - Internal: Only visible to users with the
Garden > Internal Info > View permission. 📝 NOTE: Fields with this visibility setting will automatically set Registration Options to Hidden and not allow the Editing option to be set to Allow. Instead, you can set internal field editing to either Restricted or Blocked.
- Editing: Controls who can edit this profile information:
- Allow: Users can edit this field on their profile.
- Restrict: Only users with the
Users > Edit permission can edit this field. - Block: This field cannot be updated by any user (use this when the info is being passed via SSO).
- Optional: Users have the option to provide this information, but can complete registration without doing so.
- Hidden: This field will be hidden to users on the registration form. There are two use-cases for this: first, it's perfect for internal fields that should only appear to staff members; second, it's for fields that are being passed via SSO that should not be changed by the user when they connect for the first time.
- Registration Options: Lets you control how this field functions during registration:
- Required: Users must provide this information to complete registration.
- Show on posts: This option allows you to include this profile field in the meta info included on user posts. You can only enable this option for Single Textbox fields. Visibility Options are respected.
3. When finished, click Save to create the profile field.
Custom profile fields and Member search
Vanilla's latest search experience, Elastic Search, features a Member search feature.
- On the right side of the page is the Filter Results area, where you can apply several default filters, including Username, Email, and Role.
- In addition, you can click the More Filters button to access any custom profile fields you've created and set to specifically appear in the Member search. These can then be used as filters to provide a powerful filtering capability.
Configure a custom profile field to be a filter in Member search
While creating or editing a custom profile field:
- Check the Show in Member Directory box.
- Click Save to apply the change.
Now, when using the Member search, all custom profile fields configured this way will appear in the More Filters dialog, as shown below:
Check out the article below to learn more about accessing and using Member search.
Custom profile field filters and privacy
The Visibility setting for each custom profile field determines whether users can use it as a filter (e.g., regular users can't use a custom profile field as a filter if its Visibility is set to Private).
Custom profile fields set to:
- Public are visible to all users with the
Garden > Profiles > View permission. - Private are only visible to users with the
Garden > Personal Info > View permission. - Internal are only visible to users with the
Garden > Internal Info > View permission.
Manage custom profile fields
On the Settings > Membership > User Profile page, you can manage your custom profile fields in the following ways:
- Enabling/disabling
- Editing
- Deleting
- Reordering
Enable/disable fields
Use the Active toggle to control whether a custom profile field is enabled/disabled.
- This controls whether a field is available to users on your Registration form and user profiles.
- When enabled, pay attention to a field's Visibility setting, as this impacts who can see it.
- Public: Visible to all users with the
Garden > Profiles > View permission. - Private: Only visible to users with the
Garden > Personal Info > View permission. - Internal: Only visible to users with the
Garden > Internal Info > View permission.
- Disabling a field is a great way to hide it without deleting the field and its data.
Reorder fields
You can manage the order in which your custom profile fields display to your users.
- Click the Reorder button.
- In the dialog, all of your fields are listed in their current order. To reorder them, drag and drop them to the desired locations.
- Click Apply to save your changes.
This updated order is represented on your community's registration form and on user profiles.
Edit fields
- Click the pencil icon.
- Make your desired changes. Refer to the Create a custom profile field section above for descriptions of each field.
- Click Save to apply your changes.
🛑 IMPORTANT: Certain edits cannot be made. Refer to the section below for more information.
What can be edited?
- The API Name cannot be changed
- The field Type can be changed, but you're restricted in the available options because the data-type must stay the same to maintain consistency. For example:
- Single Textbox, Multi-line Textbox, and Single-Select Dropdown are all text data types, and they can be swapped amongst each other. This means you can update a Single Textbox to a Multi-line Textbox or Single Select Dropdown, for example.
- Date Picker, Single Checkbox, Multi-Select Dropdown, and Numeric Input fields cannot be changed.
Delete fields
- Click the trashcan icon.
- In the confirmation popup, click Delete to confirm the action. 🛑 IMPORTANT: This action cannot be undone!
Impact of deleting profile fields
- No new data will be collected or displayed for a deleted profile field.
- Any data previously collected through this field will continue to be associated with community members.
- If a deleted field was active, it will no longer display on user profiles.
- You can continue to pass profile data into Vanilla via SSO as described in this article.
Update custom profile fields on your profile
Check out the article below to learn how to update the custom profile fields on your user profile.
Export user lists
With our previous custom profile process, Profile Extender, Admins could export a CSV file of their users. This function, along with Profile Extender, has been deprecated; in its place, you can leverage our CSV output for API V2 to export the data you need.
The Profile Extender export included basic profile info, such as:
- Username
- Email
- Roles
- Rank
- Posts
- Visits
- Date last active
- Date registered
- Register IP
- Last IP
With our API V2 CSV Output, you can filter or expand the data included in the export. For example:
Fetch user profile data via API
You can continue to use the “expand=extended” parameter on API V2 calls to include custom profile info in user fragments of our API response.
Filter users by profile data via API
You can filter the API V2 /GET /api/v2/users endpoint by profile field.
FAQ
Q: What happens to custom profile fields when a user is deleted?
A: They are backed up. If a user is restored, profile fields are restored as well.
Q: How are profile fields managed via the API?
A: Profile fields can be added and edited via the API using the /api/v2/profile-fields endpoint.
Q: How are profile fields mapped via Salesforce Contact Sync?
A: The mapping of custom profile fields to Salesforce fields will be done in the Salesforce settings UI. Admins will be provided with a list of all configured profile fields and provide the associated Salesforce ID for each field they wish to sync.
Q: What happened to my existing custom profile fields created via Profile Extender?
A: All of your existing profile fields have been migrated to the new system.
