Field name guidelines

Whether you add suggested fields, Copilot manual or proposed fields, lasso fields, or add table fields, all fields require a name. Suggested fields pre-populate the name field with a value based on the selected field, but other field types require users to enter a name. The field name is mandatory and must be unique.

When a field is created, a display name is provided that is used throughout production. In the background, a technical name is created that is used by the system for reference purposes, with the following behavior:

Any lowercase characters in a field display name are converted to uppercase
Any allowed non-alphabetic characters or spaces in the display name are converted to underscores

Names and their technical name must be unique. If there is a duplicate, a message is displayed.

In some circumstances, two different display names can result in the same technical name. In these cases, a message explaining that the display names are too similar is displayed. For example, "Account-Number" and "Account Number" both result in a technical name of "Account_Number" because both the hyphen and space are replaced with an underscore.

If the name contains one or more characters that are not allowed, a message is displayed.

Field name restrictions

There are also some characters that are restricted in field names. These include:

Characters	Description	Error examples
Words starting with numbers	A name cannot start with a number.	1stName 9Lives 2025Report
Computer language tags, such as HTML, XML, and XSLT	When creating a field, the name is parsed to ensure that it does not include < and > characters in this order. If both are found in this order, whether they surround text or not, an error is returned.	<script>alert(1)</script> <img src=x onerror=alert(1)> <xsl: text>
Numbers after @ character and mathematical operators	When the @ character is used it is assumed to be part of an email address. As a result, a letter is expected after the @ symbol. No numbers can be used after a mathematical operators. This includes +-/*=.	If a number occurs in either of these locations, an error is returned.

Characters

Description

Error examples

Words starting with numbers

A name cannot start with a number.

1stName
9Lives
2025Report

Computer language tags, such as HTML, XML, and XSLT

When creating a field, the name is parsed to ensure that it does not include < and > characters in this order.

If both are found in this order, whether they surround text or not, an error is returned.

<script>alert(1)</script>
<img src=x onerror=alert(1)>
<xsl: text>

Numbers after @ character and mathematical operators

When the @ character is used it is assumed to be part of an email address. As a result, a letter is expected after the @ symbol.

No numbers can be used after a mathematical operators. This includes +-/*=.

If a number occurs in either of these locations, an error is returned.