Manage fields

Fields let you manage metadata in your Optimizely Content Marketing Platform (CMP) instance. A field is a piece of your team's shared taxonomy and represents a structure that helps organize your data in a unified manner.

For example, if you call your stakeholders by their department names, you can create a field called Department to organize content by stakeholder department names. You can apply the Department field to content, tasks, events, and campaigns on the platform.

Each field type has distinct features. For example, radio buttons ensure only one option selection, such as Yes or No.

When you enable Read Only during field creation, the field becomes a protected field. Protection controls who can edit the field's values. It does not hide the field or change the field type.

Only an Admin can freely edit, add, and remove protected fields. A lock icon displays next to the field as a visual reminder that it is protected for other users, but these admins have no restrictions on it.

All other users view a lock icon on protected fields and cannot edit the value, add the field manually, or remove it. On creation forms, CMP automatically populates protected field values from the sources the user selects. See Automate metadata for details.

You can also protect label groups. When you create a label group, the Read Only toggle is available in the group settings.

Workflows can have preselected field values that display for workflow-created tasks. 

When you create a task, campaign, or event, CMP automatically carries field values over from attached sources, such as a workflow, parent campaign, template, or work request. How those values are resolved depends on whether the field is editable or protected.

CMP merges field values from sources one at a time. If only one source has a value for a field, CMP applies it automatically. If two sources have different values on a single-select field, CMP shows a conflict modal where you choose which value to keep. For multi-select fields, CMP combines values from all sources automatically. If you attach multiple sources, CMP works through each one in sequence and shows the conflict modal for each disagreement. This behavior applies to all editable fields for all users and is unchanged.

Because users without the Manage Organization Configuration permission cannot edit protected fields, CMP resolves their values automatically from all attached sources at once, using the fixed precedence order: Workflow > Parent Campaign > Template > Asset > Work Request

For single-select fields, CMP uses the value from the highest-priority source that has a value. The conflict modal does not display. For multi-select fields, CMP combines values from all sources, as it does for regular multi-select fields.

Users influence the outcome by choosing which sources to attach, for example, which workflow or parent campaign to use. CMP derives the protected field values from those selections. Users cannot set protected field values directly.

When copying a resource, the original resource's protected field values take the highest priority above all other sources.

Once a resource is created, protected field values are locked for users without the Manage Organization Configuration permission. They cannot be changed through the edit modal, inline editing, kanban, timeline, or any other path. Only a user with the Manage Organization Configuration permission can update a protected field value after creation.

For users with the Manage Organization Configuration permission, protected fields behave like regular fields during creation. They appear in the conflict modal alongside other fields, and the user can choose values manually.

When adding a field to a task or a workflow, click More (...) and select Edit or Delete.

When you select Edit, a window displays where you can add, edit, or remove field options and edit the name. The Read Only toggle does not display when editing existing fields. Protected status can only be set at creation time.

For the Label field type, you can adjust colors for the timeline calendar and click Advanced Settings to designate which modules display those options. You can apply only fields relevant to respective modules and eliminate unnecessary options for simpler filter navigation. You can also deactivate a label from Advanced Settings.

You can add options to Labels, Checkbox, Dropdown, and Radio Button. You can only edit names in Rich Text, Text, Image, and Video.

You can remove certain values by toggling them as Active or Inactive. This maintains historical data but prevents users from selecting the value. You can still filter and report on that field's data.

Instance administrators can enforce single or multiple selections for field types such as Labels and Dropdown.

Click Single-Select or Multi-Select, then click Update.

From that point, single selection applies to the Label or Dropdown field type. Work requests, tasks, campaigns, or events using that field type before the rule was applied continue having multiple values. However, editing existing fields within a module enforces the single selection rule.

Administrators can deactivate fields across the entire platform so they no longer display for data entry. This displays only organization-relevant fields. Deactivated fields do not affect analytics or historical data.

This applies only to the Label field type. To deactivate a label field, change Status from Active to Inactive.

You can specify which fields display in the filter panel for Calendar, Tasks, Library, Requests, and Analytics.

This applies only to the Label field type. Go to Advanced Settings on the label edit form to show or hide a label from the filter panel.