The request detail rail and custom fields

The right-hand rail on a request is configurable. You choose which panels appear, in what order, and you add any fields your agency needs that Govflo does not ship.

How to configure the rail

1. Go to Settings, then Workflows, then Request Details.
2. Turn panels on or off, and drag them by the grip to reorder. The shipped set is AI Summary, Request Details, SLA, Requester Details, Tags, Submitted Form, Attachments, Custom Fields, Similar Closed Requests and Where This Came From.
3. Click Add field to create an agency custom field.
4. Watch the Live preview beside the editor, which shows the rail as officers will see it.

Changes save automatically.

Order the rail by what gets used

The rail is long, and officers work top down. Put the panels your office touches every day above the ones consulted occasionally.

For most records offices that means Request Details and SLA near the top. The Submitted Form is read once at the start and rarely again, so it can sit lower without costing anyone anything.

Unplaced fields are not lost

Below the rail there is an Unplaced, not on the rail list. Custom fields that are hidden from staff or retired sit there rather than being deleted, and turning one on places it back on the rail.

That is where to look first when a field someone remembers has stopped appearing. It is usually parked, not gone.

Custom fields

A custom field captures something your agency needs on every request that Govflo does not have a home for. Fields appear in the Custom Fields panel on the request.

Add them sparingly. Every field is something an officer has to look at on every request, and a rail with fifteen custom fields is a rail nobody reads.

Before adding one, check whether an existing field already does the job. Tags handle loose grouping, and Topics handle subject classification on documents.

The live preview is the point of this screen

Configuration screens that describe an interface are hard to reason about. This one renders the rail as you change it.

Use it. Turning a panel off and seeing what remains tells you more about whether the rail still works than any amount of thinking about the list.

What this does not change

The rail is where officers read and set values. It does not change what the citizen fills in, which is the Request Form under Channels, and it does not change what the product does with any value.

Adding a custom field gives you somewhere to record something. It does not make Govflo route, filter or act on it.