Record traits allow you, as a partner, to configure and store custom attributes about an individual or business in your Parallel environment. Traits are private, visible only to you and your team, and give you the flexibility to store metadata specific to your business processes.
Creating & Configuring Traits
Users with the "Admin" or "Controller" role at a partner business can add and configure traits for their environment. Once traits have been enabled in your environment, click Settings > Record Traits in the navigation bar. From there, click the "+ Add Trait" button to configure your first trait. You'll need to give it a human-readable name and a type. Based on the name you provide, the system will also generate an ID to be used when referencing the trait via API. You can also provide a description to help explain the purpose to other team members. The ID and type cannot be changed once they are set, but you are free to change the name and description over time.
By default, a partner environment supports up to twenty (10) enabled traits at a time. If you need to add more traits, please disable some or contact success@parallelmarkets.com to request a limit increase.
Trait Types
A trait can have one of five types:
- Boolean: A single true, false, or "none" value.
- Date: A single date or timestamp value.
- Number: A single integer or decimal value, with optional currency formatting.
- String: A single text value, optionally restricted to a set of specific values.
- Multi-String: Multiple text values, optionally restricted to a set of specific values.
Number Formats
When using the Number type, you can specify an optional format to apply to the underlying number value. The system is pre-configured with three common numeric formats (Numeric, Currency and Percentage), as well as supporting custom formats. Below are some examples to illustrate how custom formats work.
| Name | Example | Format | Value | Output |
| Number | 1,234.56 | #,##0.## | 12.3456 | 12.34 |
| Currency | $1,234.56 | ¤#,##0.## | 100000 | $100,000 |
| Percentage | 33.33% | #,##0.##% | 0.1234 | 12.34% |
| Custom | N/A | #.####º | -33.8688 | -33.8688º |
For currency trait formats, the ¤ symbol represents where the currency symbol will be located. For percentage trait formats, the underlying percentage value should be between 0.0 and 1.0.
By default, all numbers will be formatted using the us-en locale. Contact success@parallelmarkets.com to inquire about custom locale support for number formatting.
Requiring Specific Values
Both String and Multi-String types allow you to specify one or more specific values. This will allow the trait value to be assigned via a dropdown rather than a free-form text field. As an example, if you wanted to create a "Priority" field with type String, you could restrict the allowed values to Critical, High, Medium, Low.
Adding or removing allowed specific values will not affect existing trait assignments.
Assigning Trait Values
On any individual or business record, find the "Record Traits" section towards the bottom of the page. There, any user with edit privileges can assign values to any of the system configured traits, according to the traits' rules.
Searching Traits
On the individuals or businesses record list screens, you can add additional filters for any configured traits in your environment. Under "Filters" click the "+ Add" button and select the trait you'd like to filter for.
When searching for String values using free text, use an asterisk (*) to match any string. This is useful to find all records that have a non-blank value for a particular String or Multi-String trait.
Filters settings are saved in the URL bar of your browser, so you can bookmark specific filters, searches, and sort criteria for quick access to frequently used workflow states.
Exporting Records with Traits
Enabled traits are included in CSV exports by default. To indicate that a column is derived from a trait, an asterisk (*) is appended to the end of the column header name.
Using Traits via API
See our developer documentation on fetching and assigning trait values via Records in the Case Management API.
We do not currently support programmatically configuring traits via the API. Traits can be configured in your partner dashboard.