Field types: session, people & group

When creating a form (i.e. Session submission form, intake form, or portal form) you have the ability to add fields to collect information. The data retrieved is then stored in one of three areas:

Below, you will learn the difference between the three fields and where you can retrieve the stored data.

Training video · 5:36Fields: organization and eventThe two levels of fields, organization fields every event shares and event fields for one event, where each lives under Settings, Library, Fields, the Contact, Group and Submission tabs with their Profile, Communication, Attribute, Custom and Hidden Fields sub-tabs, standard fields with the lock against custom fields, Add Field with the full type list, Field Level and Contains Personal Data, Copy from another event, the edit sidebar with rename, options, colours and Language variants, the row menu with Edit, Archive and Delete and the Hidden Fields tab, the organization Fields page with Field Rules and the Formatting, Calculation and Assignment rule types, and a custom field turning up as a column in the Contacts directory.

1. 0:02Two levels of fields
2. 0:40Contact, Group and Submission
3. 1:19Add a custom field
4. 2:02Copy fields from another event
5. 2:33Edit a field
6. 3:09Hide a standard field
7. 3:42Organization fields
8. 4:23Field Rules
9. 5:00A field in the directory

Note

Difference between Text vs Text Area field types

Text Field: Text fields have a character limitation of 255. This field type is great when collecting single-word or single-sentence responses.

Text Area Field: Text Area fields have a default character limit of 5,000, configurable up to 50,000. This field type is great when collecting 3 or more sentences within a response.

For both Text and Text Area fields, Admins can provide their limitations within the range listed above.

Note

Number fields and IDs

A Number field keeps a value exactly as it was typed, so an ID with a leading zero, such as a member ID 0755092, keeps its zero when it’s edited on a profile, in a grid cell or on a form, and in the Report Builder preview and Excel download. Number values still sort, filter and add up as numbers.

If you open a CSV export directly in Excel, Excel drops leading zeros itself. Use the Excel (.xlsx) download to keep them. A value saved before November 4, 2026 that already lost its zero isn’t changed; type it again to correct it.

Session Fields

Session fields are used when creating your session submission form on the page “Session Information”. These are fields that relate back to the session such as:

• Title

• Description

• Tags

• Tracks

• Location

Data from these fields can be retrieved by navigating to the Sessions module. To easily access this information, we recommend creating a dashboard view that includes the questions/fields on your session submission form.

Speaker/Individual Fields

Speaker/Individual fields are used when creating your session submission form (on the page “Speaker Information”), Intake Form (on the page “Contact Information”), or portal form. These are fields that relate back to the speaker contact profile, such as:

• Name

• Email

• Social Media Handles (i.e. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook)

• Address

• Bio

• Photo

Data from these fields can be retrieved by navigating to the Contacts module. We recommend creating a dashboard view that includes the questions/fields included on your form(s) to easily access this information.

Group Fields

Group fields are used when creating your sponsor/exhibitor intake form (on the page “Group Information”) or portal form. These are fields that relate back to the group (i.e. sponsor and exhibitor organization) such as:

• Name

• Description

• Address

• Social Media Handles (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn)

• Logo

• Website

Data from these fields can be retrieved by navigating to either the Sponsor or Exhibitor module. We recommend creating a dashboard view that includes the questions/fields included on your form(s) to easily access this information.

Copy fields from another event

Rather than recreating the same custom fields event after event, copy them: in the event, go to Settings → Library → Fields, click Add Field → Copy from…, and pick fields from any other event you have access to. Filter by source event or search by name, select one or more fields, and click Import.

Copied fields land as event-level fields in the current event. If a field with the same name and type already exists here, Sessionboard reuses the existing field instead of creating a duplicate. If a field with the same name exists but as a different type, that item is skipped with an explanation — rename one of the two first, since attaching answers of a different shape would corrupt data.