Case User Defined Fields (UDFs)

Case User Defined Fields (UDFs)

What are User Defined Fields (UDFs)

User defined fields (UDFs) are custom fields that can be added to LEX system records like cases or companies. They provide LEX users with an option to capture and store pieces of information they consider to be important, which would not ordinarily be available using the system’s default fields. They are a key feature and are one of the many flexible configuration options provided by LEX.

How might UDFs be useful?

A common use for UDFs is to capture additional ‘Case’ related information. For example, some chambers who receive regular instructions from large insurance providers, have requested the addition of fields like ‘Insurance Reference’ or ‘Insurer Name’ to their case records. By recording this additional information chambers can provide custom management information (MI) reports, which are often required by their insurer clients.

What are ‘Case Type’ UDFs?

A limitation of case UDFs has been the inability to choose which ‘Case Types’ the fields added to cases related to. In the example of insurance related fields above; the additional ‘Insurance Reference’ and ‘Insurer Name’ fields would have shown regardless of whether the matter was an ‘Insurance’ type case or not. This made it more difficult to provide simple guidance to data inputters.

Users can link UDFs to specific case type combinations. UDFs will now therefore, only show where they are absolutely needed. They may also be made ‘mandatory’ without affecting all case types. This configurability gives greater control to chambers administrators and help them build better processes to guide the entry of case data into LEX. 

Setting up Case Type UDFs 

User security profile will need to allow access to UDF and Group Edit, for those without access contact the LEX support team for assistance.

Within the UDF and Group Edit, select CASE form the dropdown stat states 'please select an entity'

Select 'Add new field' then complete the 'Field Details' section as required before saving

Each UDF field added to the entity of 'Case' shows an additional ‘Field Assignments’ option. Within this section, is an option to ‘Add New Rule’:

UDFs can now be linked to combinations of other key case related fields; Case Type, Funding Org/Arrangement, Funding, Court Type, Representation, Company, and Contact. In this example, the ‘Insurer Name’ field has been linked to the ‘Case Type’ of ‘Insurance:

The effect is that the ‘Insurer Name’ UDF will now ONLY appear when the type of ‘Insurance’ is selected.

UDF Reporting

Search Grids:

UDFs are available to add to the search screens in LEX via the configuration options, which makes fields like our ‘Insurer Name’ UDF example above, instantly accessible and exportable into Excel:

 Select the Excel icon to export this to Excel: 

Work Done ‘Enhanced’ Report:

The enhanced work done report, provides a ‘column selector’ feature, which can be used to build custom reports. UDFs are amongst the selectable columns in the report options.

Multiple UDF fields can be incorporated into the same report; and any selections can be saved using ‘Save Options’.

This feature makes the creation and regular/repeated generation of management information reports for specific insurer clients very easy.