Person Variables, or Person Descriptives, can be created from either Variable Manager page or the Manage People Descriptives page. The main advantage of using Variable Manager instead is that you have visibility of all variables in the Module or Instance you’re working in.

GideonSoft strongly recommends using a logical and consistent naming convention for variables. See Variable Naming Conventions for a full explanation.

From the Variable Manager screen, click the green “New Variable” button and select “Person Variable”.

• You can either add an existing descriptive (exists at the organization level) or create a new one:
  • (default) Select “Pre-existing variable” and select a descriptive from the drop down list.
  • Select “Add New Variable” and type in the name of the descriptive (ex. Age).
  • Description (optional) … you can provide a description for internal reference.

• Under Variable Settings:
  • Format … select from the drop down: Text, Date, Date/Time, or Time.
  • Add quick-edit for the following roles (optional) … select one or more Role(s) to show this Descriptive on the user Profile page for, as a quick-edit. If none are selected, the field will be displayed, but it will not function as a quick edit field.
  • Encrypt variable (optional) … if you want this item to be encrypted in the database.
  • Include this variable in summaries (optional) … This will make the variable available for the Homepage ‘Show Information’ list, or as a People page column as well as for the Roster View for reports & exports. Limiting the number of variables with this property enabled will improve performance on the homepage and people page.
  • Include this variable for in-processing (optional) … displays this variable as a field during the new user creation wizard.
  • Allow users to edit their own values (optional) … off by default.
  • Syncing Options … There are three options.
    • None … No data will be synced from other sources in GideonSoft.
    • AutoFill most Recent Value … GideonSoft will automatically search for a descriptive in another instance attached to that person and pull that data into the current instance.  If there are multiple descriptives with data, it will pull the most recent.
      • For this to work, the descriptive variables must have the same name.
      • You can also check “Auto-fill most recent values after saving”, if the variable has the same level of encryption, to import/save values immediately.
    • Link to Global Profile Field … This will allow you to sync with data in the Global Profile.  Choose a field to link to in the ‘Global Profile Type’ dropdown.
      • If it is a custom field, a second dropdown will appear with all of the custom fields that are in the Global Profile list.  Global field name and descriptive name do not need to match, but may be helpful for analyzing data later.
      • Once you have selected the appropriate field (when editing) or saved the new variable (when creating), click on ‘Synchronize Data’.  This will open a window with the people in the Instance and the data in the global field and the descriptive.
        • You can choose for each person which data you want synchronized.  Use caution with this.  Whatever data you choose to sync from will update the other field.
        • If you select the instance data and click sync, it will update the global field with that data.

Additional Format Options … Depends upon the format selected above. There are similarities, but each format has unique settings.

• Text Options
  • Style … Single Line (short) or Multi-Line (long)
  • Validation Type … None, Email, Phone, Zip code or URL
  • Show Picklist? … Enter items separated by commas, semi-colons or line breaks. This appears on the user’s profile in the Instance Data section.
  • Limit Value Length? … Enter the maximum length allowed.
• Number Field Options
  • Show Picklist? … Enter items separated by commas, semi-colons or line breaks. This appears on the user’s profile in the Instance Data section.
  • Decimal places … Enter/set a number.
  • Minimum value … Sets a lower boundary value.
  • Maximum value … Set a maximum boundary value.
• Date Field Options
  • Date values … Select ‘Any Date’, ‘Future Dates’ or ‘Past Dates’.

Click “Save” (or “Add” if adding a new variable).

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Version(s): GideonSoft 2025 Release 1 and later