Custom Product Fields
Products can carry fields of your own, defined the same way as any other field in the platform.
Where to find it
Architect Panel → Commercial:
- Carts — the cart itself and its options
Architect Panel → Data:
- Datastores — then View Data on the cart table, and look for the row actions
What a field carries
A name, a friendly name, a description, a type, a default, validation, whether it is required, its order, whether it is encrypted, whether it is visible to the public, its scope, and which information group it belongs to.
Public visibility is the important one
Some product fields are for buyers — material, dimensions, certification. Others are for you — supplier reference, cost, margin band, a note about a difficult line.
The public flag is what separates them, and getting it wrong publishes your cost price. Check it explicitly on every field you add rather than trusting the default.
Information groups make the page readable
Fields are grouped, and each group has a name, an order and a placement. That turns a product page from a flat list of twenty attributes into "Specifications", "Materials and care" and "Delivery" — which is the difference between information a buyer reads and information they scroll past.
Scope
A field can apply to part of the catalogue rather than all of it. Dimensions matter for furniture and not for software; scoping keeps each product’s field set relevant.
Required fields are a loading obligation
Marking a field required means nobody can add a product without it. That is often right — a shop where half the products lack dimensions is a shop with a filter that does not work — but it is a commitment for whoever loads the catalogue.
They feed filters
Structured product data is what makes filtering possible. A field held as free text cannot be filtered on usefully, so choose a constrained type where the values are known.
Add fields sparingly
Each one has to be populated for every product, forever, including every product a vendor adds. A field that is empty on most products is worse than no field, because the page shows a gap.
Worked example
A furniture shop holds dimensions, material and assembly time as public fields grouped under "Specifications", and supplier reference and cost band as private fields. Dimensions are required and scoped to furniture categories only. A review before launch caught one field flagged public that held a cost.
Recommendations
- Check public visibility on every field individually.
- Group fields so the page reads as sections.
- Constrained types where you want to filter.
- Scope fields rather than applying them catalogue-wide.