Set up custom field tabs in CRM

When the CRM contact view has 30+ custom fields, even sections aren’t enough — agents end up scrolling past sections they don’t care about for the current call. Tabs let you split the contact panel into separate views, each with its own set of sections and fields.

Tabs are a CRM-specific feature. Conversations and Cases use sections only.

Before you start

• Admin permissions on Custom Fields
• More than ~20 contact custom fields (below that, sections alone are usually enough)
• A sense of which fields naturally cluster into separate tasks: viewing the customer, billing them, planning their growth, looking at their history

Steps

1. Open Settings → Custom Fields → Contacts.
2. Click Tabs in the toolbar (or Manage Tabs).
3. Click New tab. Name it after a workflow, not a department — agents pick tabs by what they’re trying to do, not who owns the data.
   Good names: Account, Billing, History, Internal Notes, Compliance
   Less-good names: Custom Fields, Misc, Other
4. Set the tab order. The leftmost tab is the default — pick the one most agents look at first.
5. Save the tab.
6. Assign sections (and their fields) to the tab. Each section belongs to exactly one tab.

Repeat for as many tabs as your team needs. Three to five tabs is the comfortable maximum; beyond that, agents lose track of which tab holds what.

Verify it worked

Open any contact in the CRM. The contact detail panel should now show your tabs across the top. Click between them — each shows its own sections and fields.

Test with an agent who hasn’t seen the new layout. If they can find a specific field within ~5 seconds, the layout works. If they’re hunting, rename or reorganize.

A working layout for B2B SaaS support

• Account (default) — Account Details, Plan — Account ID, industry, plan tier, MRR, account manager
• Billing — Billing Contact, Payment — Billing email, currency, payment terms, invoice address
• History — Engagement, Notes — First contact date, last review, account notes
• Compliance — Legal, Data — DPA signed, data residency, retention agreement
• Internal — Risk, Tier Override — Internal tier, risk score, escalation contact

Each tab is one workflow. An agent on a billing call lives in the Billing tab. An account manager doing a quarterly review lives in History.

Reordering and renaming

Tabs can be reordered and renamed at any time without losing data. Sections and fields stay attached to their tab even when the tab is renamed; they only move if you explicitly reassign them.

Troubleshooting

• Symptom: A tab shows zero fields even though I assigned sections. Fix: Confirm the sections themselves have fields assigned. An empty section in a tab still results in a blank tab.
• Symptom: Tabs don’t appear on the contact view at all. Fix: Tabs require at least two tabs configured to be shown. With one tab, the system falls back to the flat sectioned view.

See also

• Organize with sections — sections are tabs’ building blocks
• Create a custom field