Managing field-feature types (enterprise)

Platform: Portal

Customising the field-feature taxonomy is an Enterprise capability. On an Enterprise organisation you can tailor the categories and types that appear when someone captures a feature — add your own, hide the defaults you don't use, and define the structured attributes each type prompts for. This is the same taxonomy that drives the type picker in the Archer Setup mobile app, so changes you make here flow straight through to what testers see in the field.

If your organisation isn't on the Enterprise plan, the Feature Types screen isn't available and you'll work with the platform default taxonomy described in Field features.

What you can configure

The taxonomy is two levels deep, plus a schema on each type:

• Categories — the broad grouping (for example, Irrigation, Hazards & Safety). Each category has a colour so features are easy to tell apart on the map.
• Types — the specific kind within a category (for example, "Irrigation → Pump"). Every type has a geometry — Point, Line, or Area — and an icon.
• Attributes — the structured fields a type captures (for example, a pump's flow rate or a hazard's minimum clearance). Each attribute has a data type, an optional unit, and can be marked required.

Platform defaults appear automatically. Anything your organisation adds is layered on top and tagged with a Custom badge, so you can always see what came from Archer versus what your team created.

Open Feature Types

1. In the portal sidebar, select the Settings icon (the gear, at the bottom of the sidebar).
2. In the Settings sub-menu, select Feature Types.

📷 Screenshot: Portal Settings sub-menu with the "Feature Types" item highlighted (visible alongside Themes, Trouble Spot Types, Weather Stations).

The screen lists every category, with a count of visible types on the right. Select a category to expand it and see its types; select a type to expand it and see its attributes.

📷 Screenshot: Feature Types screen with one category expanded, showing its types and the geometry badge (Point/Line/Area) and attribute count on each row.

Add a category

1. Scroll to the bottom of the list and select Add Category.
2. Enter a Display Name (for example, Monitoring).
3. Select Add Category in the dialog.

The new category appears with a Custom badge. It won't be saved until you commit your changes (see Save your changes).

📷 Screenshot: "Add Category" dialog with the Display Name field filled in.

Add a type

1. Expand the category you want the type to live in.
2. Select Add Type.
3. Fill in:
   • Display Name — for example, Rain Gauge.
   • Geometry Type — Point, Line, or Area. This decides how the feature is placed on the map and can't be changed after capture, so choose the shape that matches the thing on the ground.
   • Icon — a Bootstrap icon name (for example, bi-geo-alt) used for the type's map marker.
4. Select Add Type.

📷 Screenshot: "Add Type" dialog showing Display Name, the Geometry Type dropdown (Point/Line/Area), and the Icon field.

Add an attribute to a type

Attributes are the structured fields someone fills in for a feature of that type.

1. Expand the type you want to add a field to.
2. Select Add Attribute.
3. Fill in:
   • Display Name — the label testers see (for example, Diameter).
   • Data Type — Text, Number, Select, Boolean, or Date.
   • For Select, enter the Options, one per line.
   • For the other data types, enter an optional Unit (for example, mm or kg).
   • Required — tick this if the field must be filled in.
4. Select Add Attribute.

📷 Screenshot: "Add Attribute" dialog with Data Type set to Select, showing the one-per-line Options box and the Required checkbox.

Each attribute row shows its data type, any unit, the number of options for a Select, and a Required marker where applicable.

Hide, show, and delete

Use the three-dot menu on any category, type, or attribute row:

• Hide — keeps a default item but removes it from the capture picker, so testers only see what's relevant to your organisation. Hidden items stay in the list with a Hidden badge and a strikethrough, and you can Show them again at any time. You can hide built-in (default) items as well as your own.
• Delete — only offered on Custom items you created. Built-in defaults can't be deleted, only hidden.

📷 Screenshot: An open three-dot menu on a category row showing "Hide category" and (for a custom category) "Delete category".

Save your changes

Edits aren't applied until you save.

1. Make your changes. A You have unsaved changes bar appears at the top of the screen.
2. Select Save Changes.

A confirmation appears once the taxonomy is saved. The updated categories, types, and attributes then drive the feature type picker for everyone in the organisation — including the mobile app.

📷 Screenshot: The "You have unsaved changes" bar with the Save Changes button.

How this connects to capturing features

When a tester captures a field feature, they pick a category and type from this taxonomy, and the type's geometry decides whether they place a point, line, or area. After capture, the type's attributes appear as the structured fields to fill in. So the work you do here directly shapes:

• which feature types are offered (and which defaults are hidden),
• the shape each feature is captured as, and
• the structured data collected against each feature.

See Field features for the bigger picture, Adding a field feature for capture on mobile, and Managing field features for working with features in the portal.