Guide
Every database in Fibery always has at least four fields:
Name
Created By
Creation Date
Modification Date
The Name field is the only one of these whose value can be changed; the others are out of the end-users' control.
So what exactly is the Name field? Or rather what exactly is the Namewhatever-you-have-named-it field?*
* it is possible for Architects to change the name of the Name field (see below) but this guide will largely refer to it as the Name field for convenience 😓
The Name field is primarily an entity label
The Name field is a field (of text type) that every database has to have, simply because there are some places in Fibery where an entity needs to be referred to, and there is no option to not show anything.
The most obvious examples of this are in
Entity View - the Name value is always displayed in bold at the top
Smart Folders - each folder in the hierarchy will be named according to the entity it represents
Search results - the Name value is always shown in search results
Entity mentions and bi-directional links - if I mention an entity, it is the Name field which gets shown as the text of the clickable hyperlink. In other words, a mention is somewhat like an html hyperlink:
<a href="https://workspace.fibery.io/spaceName/databaseName/entityId">Click here</a>
where the Click here part is whatever the value of the Name field is for the mentioned entity.
Note however, there are many places where the Name field can be hidden if not needed.
The value of a Name field can be generated using a formula
It is possible to Generate Entity Name with Formula. This is particular useful when there is no obvious 'label' for the entity other than what is already contained in the values of other fields.
If you have created a 'helper database' it is quite common that the entity's meaning is a function of the entities that it links together.
Remember though, the Name field value has to be a text string, so you might need to make use of ToText() function if you're incorporating dates or numbers into the formula.
Changing the name of the Name (!)
Sometimes, the word name carries semantic meaning that you don't intend. For example, if you have a database of Customers, you might want to store their first name and surname as separate fields for clarity. What should you do with the Name field? The answer probably depends upon how you want Customers to be 'labelled'.
One good idea is to create two new text fields (called First name and Surname) and then use a formula for the Name field, perhaps Surname + ", " + [First name]. At this point, it makes sense to rename the Name field as Full name.
In another situation, you might want to use a unique identifier to reference each entity in the Project database, in the format PROJ-xxxx. You could do this using a formula like "PROJ-" + Right("000" + [Public Id],4). At this point, it makes sense to rename the Name field as Unique ID.
Names can be required to be unique
As with any other text field (or numbers, dates, single-selects, to-one relations …) the Name field can be made one of the database's Fields with unique values. Currently, the Name field can't be one of the Required fields but ping us if this is important to you.