Managing Fields in Roadmunk
This feature is only available to Collaborators and Account Administrators.
Exploring Field Types - Roadmap-Level & Account-Level
In Roadmunk, teams are able to better segment and contextualize their roadmaps using multiple levels of fields. There are two levels of fields that users can use in Roadmunk: Roadmap-Level Fields and Account-Level Fields.
Roadmap Fields in Roadmunk belong to one specific roadmap on your account. This means the field is unique to that roadmap, which allows for greater granularity in your roadmap data without having to worry about cluttering up your team's field selection menus in their Roadmap and Items Table views.
Roadmap fields can be promoted to Account Fields at any time, providing teams with the freedom to surface useful fields that they would like to be common across their teams' Roadmunk account and available in any roadmaps where necessary. Using these Account-Level fields across roadmaps not only avoids duplication, but also allows for consistency in field nomenclature and roadmap structure, which facilitates cross-roadmap alignment and, ultimately, alignment across your entire organization.
If necessary, Account Admins can request to have the ability to promote fields to Account-Level locked for non-admin users. In order to activate this on your account, please reach out to support@roadmunk.com or connect with us via the chat.
Field Setup - Defining Field Values & Field Description
When creating or updating a field, users are able to define both the Field Values and Field Description to provide better context into the purpose of the field that they've created.
Creating and Updating Field Details & Values
Field Details & Values are originally added from the New Field modal that appears when creating a field in your roadmap; however, those details and values, including the Field Name and Team Members, can be easily updated at any time from inside the Field Card.
The Field Card can be accessed either through the settings icon (⚙️) menu in the Column Headers on your Items Table, by clicking into the active header on your roadmap visualization, or by clicking into the fields shown in the lists on your Roadmaps homepage. Once inside the card, you can make any updates needed and also view a list of changes that have been made to the field through the Activity tab in your Field Card.
At this time, field types (List, Numeric, etc.) are static and cannot be converted into other field types. While certain field types can have their sub-formats changed (e.g. a “Currency” field can be converted into a “Percentage” field, because technically they’re various formats of a Numeric field), there is currently no way to convert one field type to another.
Creating and Updating a Field Description
Users are able to generate a Field Description from inside the Field Card of any existing fields, or from the New Field modal that appears when generating a new field on their Roadmap. The description has a maximum length of 200 characters, and will populate the description in a tooltip:
Items Table View: When hovering on Column Headers in your table and in the Field Selection (+) drop down.
Roadmap Visualization: When hovering on the Axis Labels and in the field selection drop-downs in the Format and Filter panels.
Roadmapping Homepage: When hovering on the respective field's line item in the Fields lists.
Field Descriptions can be easily updated from the Field Card at any time by any team member with update permissions on the particular field and will display as view-only for members who have not been given permissions on that field. For more details on field permissions, please visit our article on setting up user permissions in Roadmunk.
Favorite Fields
Only Account-level fields can be added as a Favorite Field at this time. Roadmap-level fields must be promoted before they can be used with this feature. For steps on how to promote fields, please view our article on Promoting & Archiving Fields.
With different teams creating roadmaps finding the field you need from the list of fields can become challenging. By favoriting your frequently used fields you can make this selection easier.
You can favorite any field from the Account Fields list on the home page or from within the Field Card for any Account-level field. Once you've favorited fields, you will be able to review all your active favorites from the Favorite Fields list on the Roadmaps homepage.
Favorite a Single Field From the Roadmaps homepage:
Click the Roadmunk logo in the top-left corner to pull up the Roadmaps module homepage.
From the Account Fields list, hover over a field you’d like to favorite and select the star.
From the Field Card:
From either the Roadmaps homepage or a roadmap with fields populated, select the field that you would like to favorite to open the Field Card.
Select the Star icon beside the Field Name at the top of the card to Favorite the field.
Favorite Multiple Fields
From the Account Fields list, select the checkbox that appears when you hover over a field you’d like to favorite.
Once the checkbox is selected, a toolbar will appear in the top-right. Select the Favorite option on this toolbar and the field will be added to your favorites.
Field Setup - Importing Fields from a CSV
When importing items from a CSV file into your roadmap, existing Roadmap- or Account-Level Fields will be automatically mapped to any matching fields in your CSV document. If there are no matches found when running the import, the Import Wizard create a new Roadmap Field to house that data. System fields, such as Item Name, Description, Start & End Date/Buckets, and Milestone Type will be mapped accordingly to the appropriate fields.
Field Order - Defining and Reordering your Roadmap Headers
The default order of your roadmap headers is defined by the order of the field values in your field card, but this can be manually adjusted from the visualization if needed. To change the order of your header values and ensure your roadmap aligns with your team’s vision and workflow, you can use one of two update methods:
Drag & Drop the Values from the Roadmap Visualization
Note: You are unable to change the order of date fields in the Swimlane view; these will always be displayed in chronological order. Default bucket order can be adjusted from the bucket card - learn how in our article on Working with Buckets.
Adjust the Default Order of Field Values in the Field Card
One thing to note is that the default order is only applied when the field is initially set as a header on the roadmap and is not dynamically updated to reflect the changes. To apply a new order to a field that has already been set as a header, you will need to swap the header values from the Format panel and then switch them back to your original header for the desired formatting.
While reordering and updating header values can help to better prepare your field values for visualization, please note that this is a global change. This means that any changes to the default order of field values, the names of field values, or ownership of that field will be carried over to all roadmaps currently using that field.
Portfolio Roadmaps - Working with Common Fields
When pulling fields into Portfolio Roadmaps, it is encouraged to pivot by fields listed in the auto-detected Common Fields list, which contains Account fields that appear on two-or-more roadmaps in your Sources list. While Roadmap-Level Fields are useful for providing more detail on the source roadmaps, the lack of commonality across multiple roadmaps can prove to make pivoting and sorting your data more complicated than necessary.
Merging Fields - Manual & Suggested Merges
In Roadmunk, the ability to merge fields allows users with Admin access to quickly remove duplicate fields and to merge potentially superfluous fields into easy to locate and user Account fields, without disrupting the setup of existing fields on their users' roadmaps.
Merging Fields - Manually Merge Fields
From the More Options button in the bottom-left corner of the Field Card for the respective field they're looking to merge, account admins are able to merge existing Account Fields with other Roadmap-Level & Account-Level Fields. In order to perform this merge, the fields must meet the specific criteria below:
Users are only able to merge fields in which they are a member of
Both fields must have the same field type in order to be merged
Fields must not be actively present in the same roadmap (excluding Portfolio Roadmaps)
One of the fields must always be an Account-Level Field
Merging Fields - Using Suggested Merges
As an Account Admin, you can also view a generated list of up to 500 potential field merges suggested by Roadmunk based on similarity in both field values and field name from the Suggested Merges list in your Roadmaps homepage. From this list. you can easily view the recommendations and the level of similarity and opt to completed the recommended merges or dismiss them.