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Adding flexibility to Property management data
A Custom fields system that let customers track their unique data right in the platform, helping over 100 customers ditch their external spreadsheets and move everything into one unified system.
The problem
Property management companies handle diverse portfolios with unique data requirements based on property types, business models, and regional regulations. The standard platform provided core functionality but couldn't accommodate the specialised data needs of different customers.
Pain points:
- Maintain critical business data in external spreadsheets, making it difficult to centralise information
- Forced to use workarounds using generic platform fields
- Manually maintaining data across multiple sources
- Missing opportunities for comprehensive reporting and analysis
The solution
Custom Fields allowed users to create their own data fields, letting them capture and organise information specific to their business needs. Providing the flexibility to track anything from property-specific details to custom tenant requirements without relying on external systems. The system has continued to expand with additional field types and supported entities, demonstrating the value of designing extensible solutions.
100+
Customers using custom fields
1500+
Fields in the platform
Process
Discovery & Problem Definition
I started by digging into customer support tickets and feature requests to understand what people actually needed. Also looked at how competitors handled custom fields since this is pretty common in other platforms—I wanted to see what worked and what didn't.
From all this research, we learned what types of data customers were tracking in external tools, which helped us prioritise our approach.
Ideation & Technical Collaboration
Worked with our technical lead to figure out how we could actually build this. We needed to understand the technical constraints and figure out how to accommodate everything we'd discovered.
We defined where custom fields could live in our platform and designed what the migration path would look like for existing customers.
Phase breakdown & Planning
This was an ambitious, exciting project, so we broke it into phases where we could ship quickly and get feedback:
Phase 1 → Test custom fields on properties first
Phase 2 → Extend to tenancies and contacts based on feedback
Phase 3 → Let customers migrate their existing data into the system
Outcome
Supporting custom fields in our main entities
I designed the complete experience to create and manage the needed data points for their company based on their portfolio, process and individual needs.
Highlights:
Create and manage custom fields
Multiple field types supported
Field scoping and references for merge fields
Migration is essential: Allow customers to import existing data
Recognised that customers had years of valuable data in external systems that needed to be preserved, I also designed a flow for them to import their data into the platform.
Highlights:
Pre-populated templates ready to start
Easy recovery from data formatting issues
Back home
Back home
Adding flexibility to Property management data
A Custom fields system that let customers track their unique data right in the platform, helping over 100 customers ditch their external spreadsheets and move everything into one unified system.
The problem
Property management companies handle diverse portfolios with unique data requirements based on property types, business models, and regional regulations. The standard platform provided core functionality but couldn't accommodate the specialised data needs of different customers.
Pain points:
- Maintain critical business data in external spreadsheets, making it difficult to centralise information
- Forced to use workarounds using generic platform fields
- Manually maintaining data across multiple sources
- Missing opportunities for comprehensive reporting and analysis
The solution
Custom Fields allowed users to create their own data fields, letting them capture and organise information specific to their business needs. Providing the flexibility to track anything from property-specific details to custom tenant requirements without relying on external systems. The system has continued to expand with additional field types and supported entities, demonstrating the value of designing extensible solutions.
100+
Customers using custom fields
1500+
Fields in the platform
Process
Discovery & Problem Definition
I started by digging into customer support tickets and feature requests to understand what people actually needed. Also looked at how competitors handled custom fields since this is pretty common in other platforms—I wanted to see what worked and what didn't.
From all this research, we learned what types of data customers were tracking in external tools, which helped us prioritise our approach.
Ideation & Technical Collaboration
Worked with our technical lead to figure out how we could actually build this. We needed to understand the technical constraints and figure out how to accommodate everything we'd discovered.
We defined where custom fields could live in our platform and designed what the migration path would look like for existing customers.
Phase breakdown & Planning
This was an ambitious, exciting project, so we broke it into phases where we could ship quickly and get feedback:
Phase 1 → Test custom fields on properties first
Phase 2 → Extend to tenancies and contacts based on feedback
Phase 3 → Let customers migrate their existing data into the system
Outcome
Supporting custom fields in our main entities
I designed the complete experience to create and manage the needed data points for their company based on their portfolio, process and individual needs.
Highlights:
Create and manage custom fields
Multiple field types supported
Field scoping and references for merge fields
Migration is essential: Allow customers to import existing data
Recognised that customers had years of valuable data in external systems that needed to be preserved, I also designed a flow for them to import their data into the platform.
Highlights:
Pre-populated templates ready to start
Easy recovery from data formatting issues
Back home
Back home
Adding flexibility to Property management data
A Custom fields system that let customers track their unique data right in the platform, helping over 100 customers ditch their external spreadsheets and move everything into one unified system.
The problem
Property management companies handle diverse portfolios with unique data requirements based on property types, business models, and regional regulations. The standard platform provided core functionality but couldn't accommodate the specialised data needs of different customers.
Pain points:
- Maintain critical business data in external spreadsheets, making it difficult to centralise information
- Forced to use workarounds using generic platform fields
- Manually maintaining data across multiple sources
- Missing opportunities for comprehensive reporting and analysis
The solution
Custom Fields allowed users to create their own data fields, letting them capture and organise information specific to their business needs. Providing the flexibility to track anything from property-specific details to custom tenant requirements without relying on external systems. The system has continued to expand with additional field types and supported entities, demonstrating the value of designing extensible solutions.
100+
Customers using custom fields
1500+
Fields in the platform
Process
Discovery & Problem Definition
I started by digging into customer support tickets and feature requests to understand what people actually needed. Also looked at how competitors handled custom fields since this is pretty common in other platforms—I wanted to see what worked and what didn't.
From all this research, we learned what types of data customers were tracking in external tools, which helped us prioritise our approach.
Ideation & Technical Collaboration
Worked with our technical lead to figure out how we could actually build this. We needed to understand the technical constraints and figure out how to accommodate everything we'd discovered.
We defined where custom fields could live in our platform and designed what the migration path would look like for existing customers.
Phase breakdown & Planning
This was an ambitious, exciting project, so we broke it into phases where we could ship quickly and get feedback:
Phase 1 → Test custom fields on properties first
Phase 2 → Extend to tenancies and contacts based on feedback
Phase 3 → Let customers migrate their existing data into the system
Outcome
Supporting custom fields in our main entities
I designed the complete experience to create and manage the needed data points for their company based on their portfolio, process and individual needs.
Highlights:
Create and manage custom fields
Multiple field types supported
Field scoping and references for merge fields
Migration is essential: Allow customers to import existing data
Recognised that customers had years of valuable data in external systems that needed to be preserved, I also designed a flow for them to import their data into the platform.
Highlights:
Pre-populated templates ready to start
Easy recovery from data formatting issues
Back home