Data and insight fields

Fields are metadata that help you consistently structure and visualize project data - like spreadsheet headers. They live on your Dovetail notes and insights to help build on the sort and filter experience across your workspace.

Managers and contributors can use note fields to capture information like research method, interview date, usability testing scores, segment, and Net Promoter Score. With insight fields, you can capture information like product area, team, key themes, confidence level, and criticality of your findings.

When you add a new field to a note, it will also be added to all other notes in that project. This will allow you to capture information consistently across your data and easily filter, sort, and locate your data.

Fields are located within the note sidebar and can be opened by pressing the field icon.

• To add a new field, click + New field, set a title, and select a field type from the dropdown list.

• When a note is editable, you can update field titles or values by simply clicking on the field itself.

• To rearrange the order of your fields, you can use drag and drop in your note.

When you add a new field to an insight, it will also be added to all other insights in that project. This will allow you to capture information consistently across your data and easily filter, sort, and locate your data.

• To add a field to your insights, open an insight and click + New field. Then, you can set a title and select a field type.

We currently support the following field types in notes and insights:

Select fields help standardize how data is categorized by limiting field values to a curated list to select from.

Single-select fields are limited to displaying one value from the list, while multi-select fields allow up to 100 values for a given note or insight.

• To create a list of values for single or multi-select fields, Open note or insight > Click field input next to field title > Type values in the text box. All values submitted in the text box of a field will automatically populate and save a list of values for you to use in the field.

After adding values, you can edit these to change text, change the color, or delete the value in Options (•••) next to the value itself.

You can update many fields quickly by editing field properties in bulk. From any notes or insights view, Select notes or insights > Edit field > Update. This will apply updates to all notes or insights selected.

You may decide to change the type of an existing field, such as a text field to a single or multi-select field.

• To do this in your note or insight, click on the field title > Hover over the field type > Select the new field type.

When converting to a select field (single or multi), all existing text becomes a list of values. For multi-select, commas create separate values in the list. Remember that single and multi-select fields have a maximum number of values allowed per field.

When converting a multi-select field to a text field, the options for each multi-select field will be converted to a comma-separated list, and select fields will be converted straight to text. This will not result in any data loss.

Workspace fields are global and help pull together related information across a series of projects to ensure they can be grouped, searched and filtered together.

Managers and contributors can create these groups in settings and link these to a template or individual projects.

• To do this, open ⚙️ Settings > Workspace fields > + New workspace field group. Once the group is created, you can + New field under Notes or Insights.

Managers can create a new project template with a group of workspace fields linked so they populate automatically in any project created from the template.

Learn how to create a project template with pre-populated fields →

Managers and contributors can create new, edit and use workspace field groups and individual fields.

• To do this, open ⚙️ Settings > Workspace fields > Open chosen field group > ✏️ Edit to update. Viewers cannot create or use workspace fields at all.

• To delete a single workspace field, go to ⚙️ Settings > Workspace fields > Open chosen field group > ✏️ Edit > Delete. Deleted workspace fields go to workspace trash where it can be restored for 30 days.

When a manager or contributor has Full access to a workspace field group, they can restrict access of a workspace field group. For example, you may want to limit usage of a specific workspace field group to users from your Design or Research team.

• To do this, go to ⚙️ Settings > Workspace fields > Open chosen field group > Share.

• From there, you can update access to the group by changing the workspace’s access to No access and proceed to add specific individuals or individuals to have Full, Edit or View access.