Custom tags let you define your own custom information to include in LAC. A custom tag is essentially a user-defined field that is available for use in both the web-based UI and the LAC SOAP API. Custom tags are associated with a particular LAC object (Customer, Product, License, etc.). Currently, custom tags can be created only for Customer objects, but will be extended to other objects in the future.
For example, you might like to track the technical support level that a customer purchased when adding your customers to LAC. To do this, you would add a custom tag called, for example, "Support Plan." This tag is then available from the associated object's web-based UI forms (for our example, in the Create New Customer and Edit Customer dialogs) and the LAC SOAP API. (Also see Soap_CustomTag for information about adding custom tags using the API.) You can then use the Support Plan field to enter the customer's level of support; for example, Bronze, Silver or Gold.
Custom tags are most powerful when used in API calls, in order to locate and manipulate objects based on their associated data (see FindCustomerByCustomTag). For example, using our "Support Plan" example, you can use the API to get a list of all your customers that have Gold level of support.
When you create or edit a customer using the web-based UI, the Custom Tags tab in the Create Customer or Edit Customer dialog contains all the custom tags that you or other LAC administrators have added to LAC. When you create or edit a customer, you can open the Custom Tags tab to enter the appropriate information for any given custom field.
You create custom tags using the Custom Tags tab from the Administration page.
To create a custom tag:
You can edit or remove custom tags at any time using the edit and delete icons under the Action column in the custom tags list. Note that if you delete a custom tag, it will be removed from all objects that use it, so you will lose any information that has already been entered into LAC using that custom tag.