Introduction
Smart Fields allow you to tailor forms in Sage Sales Management so they behave intelligently depending on the context.
With this feature, a field can change its behaviour (for example, become mandatory or read-only) based on the value selected in another field.
This enables forms to adapt automatically to each scenario, improving efficiency and reducing data entry errors.
Smart Fields can be configured in the following entities:
Accounts
Contacts
Opportunities
Activities
Orders and Order Lines
Products
Calendar
Task
Context: types of fields in Sage Sales Management
Before diving into Smart Fields, it’s important to understand how field types are organised within the system, as this feature builds on personalised fields and their relationships.
There are two main types of fields in Sage Sales Management:
Standard fields: predefined by the system and cannot be deleted. They use common business terminology such as Company name, Rating, Owner, etc. They can be hidden if not needed, but their structure cannot be modified.
Custom fields: created manually by each business to adapt the application to their internal processes. These fields are fully configurable: you can define their data type (text, number, list, date, etc.), visibility, mandatory status, order and more.
Among custom fields, there are more advanced functionalities that allow you to create relationships between fields based on logic:
Dynamic fields: fields that are shown or hidden automatically depending on the value selected in another list-type field.
Dependent fields: fields that change their available options based on the value selected in another field. In this case, both the reference and dependent fields must be of the list of values type.
Smart Fields build on these concepts, allowing not only visibility rules, but also control over behaviour in more detail.
How do conditional relationships work?
In Sage Sales Management forms, any field of the list of values type (single or multiple selection) can act as a trigger to condition the behaviour of other fields.
The field that sets the condition is called the reference field.
The field that responds to the condition is the affected field.
Example:
If the Company type field has the value Distributor, it can trigger the Company status field to become mandatory and visible.
What configurations can an affected field adopt?
An affected field can adopt different behaviours based on the value selected in the reference field:
Read-only
Mandatory
Visible / Not visible
Default value
The default value depends on the field type:
Field type | Allowed default value |
Text | Free text field |
Integer number | Only integer values |
Decimal / Currency | Integer or decimal values |
Boolean | Selection between true/false |
List of values | Any option from the associated list |
Date / Time | Calendar and time selector (if applicable) |
Address | Does not allow a default value |
Rules for field relationships
Smart field relationships follow a series of rules to ensure forms behave consistently and without contradictions:
1. One field can influence several others
A reference field can control multiple affected fields.
Example:
Company type can configure:
Address → mandatory
Company status → visible
Comment → read-only
2. An affected field can only have one reference
Each affected field must respond to only one reference field.
This avoids conflicts if two fields try to control the same behaviour.
Incorrect: Company type and Customer status both attempting to configure Priority.
3. Using multiple-selection lists
If the reference field allows more than one selected value:
If the selected values do not conflict → all conditions apply.
If conflicting conditions exist → the general configuration applies.
4. What is general configuration?
The general configuration is applied when:
No specific rule is set for the selected value.
The selected value has no defined behaviour.
Chained field relationships
It’s possible to chain relationships: an affected field can itself become a reference field for others.
Example:
Company type → configures → Vehicle type → configures → Vehicle insurance
Special cases: Orders and order lines
Smart Fields also support relationships between different entities.
A field in the Order form can configure the behaviour of fields in related order lines.
This relationship is one-directional: from the order to its lines.
Example:
If the order status is Paid, all fields in the order lines can be set to read-only.