Organizations constantly seek to collect more nuanced, relevant customer information in today’s data-driven marketing landscape. However, not all valuable data points have a predefined home in Dataverse. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys Custom Fields become essential when companies need to ask specific questions, such as “Preferred webinar time slot” or “Interest in eco-friendly packaging,” that go beyond standard demographic or engagement data. These tailored fields allow businesses to capture insights that drive personalized journeys, segmentation, lead qualification, and campaign effectiveness.
For more information on creating custom fields, check the Microsoft documentation.
Yet, adding custom fields is not always straightforward. The process typically requires customization expertise that is often outside the skill set of marketing teams. This dependency on technical teams can create bottlenecks, especially when the need is urgent or highly specific. Furthermore, introducing fields for ad hoc or one-time use can clutter the data model and decrease overall system maintainability. Therefore, organizations must weigh the business value of each custom field against the operational cost and complexity of implementing it. When done thoughtfully, custom fields can bridge gaps in the customer profile and unlock more meaningful engagement opportunities.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys Marketing Forms vs. Event Registration Forms
Before enabling custom fields, it’s essential to understand the difference between Marketing Forms and Event Registration Forms in Dynamics 365. Marketing Forms are used for general data capture—like lead generation or newsletter sign-ups—and map directly to entities such as Contacts or Leads. Event Registration Forms, however, are part of the Events module and are tailored to collect attendee details. Custom fields added to one form type may not automatically appear or behave the same in the other, so aligning your customization with the correct form type and data model is essential.
Enabling Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys Custom Fields
Before custom fields can be created and utilized in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys, the feature must first be enabled through the system’s configuration settings. Microsoft has provided this capability as part of a controlled feature rollout, which means it may not be activated by default in all environments. To get started, administrators need to navigate to the “Feature switches” area within the Customer Insights – Journeys settings. Here, they can enable the “Custom fields for Journeys” feature flag.
Enabling this switch unlocks the ability to add new fields to core entities such as Contacts, Leads, or custom event triggers used in journeys. This action requires administrative privileges and should be performed in coordination with IT or system governance teams to ensure alignment with the organization’s broader data model and compliance policies.
Creating Custom Fields in Marketing Forms
After enabling the custom fields feature, you can start adding new fields specifically to Marketing Forms in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys. To do this, open the desired Marketing Form in the Form Editor. In the editor, you’ll see the form connected to a data source—typically the Contact or Lead entity. Click on the section where you’d like to place the field and select “Add field.”
You can either choose an existing field from the data source or click “Create new field” to define a new custom one directly from within the form designer. When creating a new field, you’ll specify the display name, logical name, data type (such as text, option set, or date), and whether it is a required field. Once saved and published, the field becomes part of the underlying Dataverse entity and is available in all Marketing Forms that use that same entity.
It’s worth noting that while this streamlined approach empowers marketers to collect more relevant data without relying on developers, each new field permanently changes the entity structure in the system. Therefore, it’s essential to apply this capability thoughtfully and in coordination with any data governance policies in place.
Types of Custom Fields You Can Add to Marketing Forms
When creating custom fields in Marketing Forms, Dynamics 365 provides a range of data types to support different kinds of user input and business requirements. The most common types include Single Line of Text, which is ideal for short, free-text responses like names or job titles, and Multiple Lines of Text, used for longer responses such as comments or feedback. You can also use Option Sets (Dropdowns) to present predefined choices—useful for capturing preferences, interests, or consent responses in a controlled format. Date and Time fields allow users to select specific dates, such as preferred contact dates or appointment availability. For scenarios where you need binary input, the Two Options (Yes/No) field is available.
Each field type serves a unique purpose in structuring how data is collected and stored. Choosing the right type is essential not just for usability on the form, but also for effective segmentation, reporting, and journey personalization later. Additionally, the selected data type impacts how the information can be filtered, grouped, or used in customer segments and analytics.
Saving vs. Not Saving Custom Fields to Dataverse
When adding custom fields to a Marketing Form, Dynamics 365 offers two options: you can either store the field’s data in Dataverse, or keep it local to the form without saving it to the Contact or Lead entity. This is a significant improvement that gives marketers more flexibility. If you choose not to save the field to Dataverse, the value is still captured during form submission and can be viewed in form submission records, but it won’t be stored on the customer profile itself. This is ideal for ad hoc questions or campaign-specific data that doesn’t need to be reused or reported on later.
On the other hand, if you save the field to Dataverse, a new column is created on the corresponding entity, and the data is written directly to the customer’s record. This allows for reuse across forms, segmentation, journeys, and reporting—but it introduces the risk of clutter or environment drift if not managed carefully. Choosing whether to persist the field should be based on whether the information is valuable long-term or only relevant to a specific interaction.
Where Are Non-Saved Field Responses Stored?
When a custom field on a Marketing Form is not saved to Dataverse, the data doesn’t disappear—it’s simply stored in a different place. Specifically, the responses to non-saved fields are stored in the form submission record within Customer Insights – Journeys. These submissions are accessible through the form submission insights area, where marketers can review individual responses for each form entry.
However, because the data is not written to the Contact or Lead entity, it cannot be used for segmentation, journey triggers, or personalization in subsequent interactions. It’s also not accessible through standard Dataverse-based reporting tools like Power BI or Advanced Find. This approach is best suited for one-off questions or campaign-specific data where you only need to review results manually—such as “What did you think of today’s webinar?” or “How did you hear about us?”
If you realize later that the field should have been saved to Dataverse, you would need to recreate it as a saved field and update the form accordingly—previous responses from the non-saved version would not carry over automatically.
