Item fields and properties

Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.usecustory.com/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Fields are how Custory turns a journey into something you can review, filter, prioritize, automate, and hand off. The goal is not to fill every property because the UI allows it. The goal is to make each item actionable enough that the team can trust it later.

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How fields work in Custory

Each item group has its own allowed field set. That matters because the right metadata for a touchpoint is not the same as the right metadata for a solution or a metric. Every group starts with a shared core:

• Description
• Status
• Owners where supported

Then each group adds the properties that make sense for that type of work.

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Core fields

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Description

Use the description to capture the usable context, not just a longer title. Good description content:

• What happened
• Why it matters
• What evidence supports it
• What the team still does not know

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Status

Status is the quickest way to understand maturity. It should answer one question clearly: where is this item in its lifecycle right now? Each group has its own status set because “Validated” makes sense for an insight, while “Shipped” makes sense for a solution.

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Owner

Owner is supported where follow-through matters operationally. In practice, owners are most useful for:

• Opportunities
• Solutions
• Metrics

Use owners when someone should move the work forward, not just because a field is available.

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Group-specific properties

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Touchpoint properties

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Channel

Defines the surface or interaction channel. Available options:

• Website
• App
• Email
• Sales call
• Support
• Docs
• Store
• Other

Use channel to answer where the experience is happening.

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Actor

Identifies the persona or personas involved in the touchpoint. Use this when different people experience the same step differently, such as a buyer, admin, and end user.

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Insight properties

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Type

Available options:

• Pain
• Need
• Gain

Use:

• Pain for friction, confusion, or failure
• Need for requirements, expectations, or missing capability
• Gain for positive value, delight, or a successful pattern worth understanding

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Confidence

Available options:

• Low confidence
• Medium confidence
• High confidence

Confidence is about how sure you are the learning is true, not how important it feels.

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Severity

Scale:

• 1 to 5

Use severity to describe how painful or consequential the issue is for the affected customer. Keep this separate from business priority.

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Affected segment

Use personas here when an insight affects a specific user type rather than everyone.

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Opportunity properties

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Impact

Scale:

• 1 to 5

Impact estimates how much solving this problem could matter for the customer or the business.

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Effort

Scale:

• 1 to 5

Effort estimates the rough cost or complexity of acting on the opportunity.

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Priority

Available options:

• High
• Medium
• Low

Priority can be set directly, but it is most useful when it reflects real discussion rather than default enthusiasm.

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Confidence

Use confidence on opportunities when the problem framing is still developing and the team is not equally sure across the whole backlog.

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Solution properties

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Solution type

Available options:

• Idea
• Experiment
• Feature
• Process
• Content
• Service

Use this to distinguish what kind of response you are considering.

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Impact

Use impact on solutions to estimate likely upside if shipped successfully.

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Effort

Use effort on solutions to estimate delivery cost, complexity, or organizational burden.

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Priority

Use priority to decide sequencing among candidate solutions.

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Target date

Use target date when timing matters operationally. Do not add dates to every idea by default.

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Metric properties

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Metric type

Available options:

• Customer
• Business
• Operational

Use these to distinguish outcome categories:

• Customer: value experienced by the customer
• Business: commercial or growth outcome
• Operational: process or internal execution signal

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Unit

Available options:

• %
• Score
• Count
• Time
• Currency
• Other

The unit keeps the metric readable without relying on teammates to guess.

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Baseline

The starting value before a change or before active tracking began.

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Current

The most recent known value.

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Target

The outcome you are trying to reach.

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Direction

Available options:

• Higher is better
• Lower is better

This prevents common confusion around metrics like time-to-value, churn, refunds, or support volume.

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Group-by-group field availability

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Property visibility

Custory lets you control which properties are visible in the editor. Use that intentionally:

• Show fewer fields during collaborative mapping
• Show more fields during prioritization and cleanup
• Keep the visible properties aligned with the job of the current review

This helps smaller teams avoid making the map feel heavier than it needs to be.

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How to keep fields valuable

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Use just enough structure

If a property never affects a decision, it will decay. Keep fields that support prioritization, ownership, review, or automation.

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Separate customer truth from team intent

Insights describe what you learned. Opportunities describe what is worth doing. Solutions describe how you may respond. The fields are designed to preserve that distinction.

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Review stale fields during weekly maintenance

Properties become valuable only if they stay current. Table view is the fastest place to maintain them in bulk.

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Related guides

• Linking items
• Table view
• Rich item details