Redmine › Extended Fields

The idea to write the Extended Fields plugin came to me when I was analyzing issues with the Extended Profile plugin (that’s why the name is so similar).

The Extended Profile plugin adds many new fields to user profile. Actually the same can be done using just custom fields but unlike custom fields the extended profile fields support “richer” content - links, social usernames which are made links to the social networks when displayed, projects displayed as links etc. Core custom fields cannot be used this way! So that’s why I wrote the Extended Profile plugin... But later I faced many issues related to the approach I chose. Some users wanted more fields, other users wanted less fields... Some functions conflicted with other plugins... I personally wanted more flexibility!..

When disputing with Daniel Seifert (see #1876) I came to the conclusion that the whole approach was wrong! Instead of adding new fields to user profile I should extend custom fields - to add support for new types, to give more control over displaying etc. Other things which were missing and hard to implement in the Extended Profile plugin were already implemented for custom fields e.g. visibility control, position etc.

So this was the story!.. Now meet the plugin! The Extended Fields plugin has the following features:

• Adds new custom field types:
  • Wiki text (can contain Textile code which is converted to HTML when displayed);
  • Link (hypertext link);
  • Project (shown as a project link).
• Adds new properties to custom fields:
  • Hint (adds specified text below the form element);
  • On registration flag for user custom fields (specifies whether the custom field should be asked on registration).
• Adds the possibility to customize how custom fields are rendered by specifying template files for custom fields and custom field formats;
• Improved the custom field form by changing the text field for the “Default value” of the “Text” type to the text area.

For more details on features check this Wiki page...