User-defined fields (UDFs) in CM are created differently, and serve a very different purpose, than user-defined fields in iMIS contact records:
■ The UDFs found in iMIS contact records enable you to collect custom information about a contact. These contact UDFs are not available for use in CM.
■ The UDFs found in CM are primarily useful as a way to capture additional properties of the content in content records, and to provide a controlled list of search criteria for use in CM only. These CM UDFs can be used in three ways:
□ As a value added to the "keywords" <META> element in the rendered page for the content record, which enables searches performed through the CM search engine (but not by typical external web-based search engines) to locate the content record by searching for this value. This behavior is controlled by the Use in Search? property of a CM UDF.
□ As a search filter in AdvancedSearch iParts, applied to the initial result set based on the tags and keywords specified in the search.
□ As both filtering criteria and sorting criteria in ContentTaggedList iParts. A date-oriented UDF can be used to filter the initial result set based on the chosen tags, and a different UDF of any type can be used to sort the the final result set.
Every UDF defined in CM is added as a new custom property to every content record, and can be displayed in a wide variety of formats from a simple text field to a drop-down list to a calendar control to a set of radio buttons, and so on. In the advanced search panel rendered from an AdvancedSearch iPart, the user-defined field appears exactly the same way that it does in content records. This enables CM website users to specify UDF values for advanced searches in the same manner that the UDF values are chosen when authoring content. For example, a date-oriented UDF will have a calendar control that makes it easy to select a date.