Info Types are a powerful extensibility feature in Norce Commerce that allows you to add custom fields to customer, company, supplier, and physical store entities. This flexible system enables you to capture additional business-specific information beyond the standard entity fields.
Info Types serve multiple purposes in Norce:
- Entity Extension: Add custom fields to customers, companies, suppliers, and physical stores
- Business Logic: Store additional information required for your specific business processes
- Data Flexibility: Store any type of data as strings with the ability to cast to different types
- Integration Support: Provide custom data points for external system integrations
The Info Types section in Settings provides four separate tabs for managing custom fields:
- Customers: Custom fields for individual customer records
- Companies: Custom fields for company/organization records
- Suppliers: Custom fields for supplier entities
- Physical Stores: Custom fields for store location records
Note: All four tabs work identically - the same functionality and management options are available across all entity types.
To create an info type, you need three essential pieces of information:
- Name: Language-specific display name (required)
- Description: Language-specific description (optional)
- Code: Language-independent identifier for the info type
- Navigate to Settings > Info Types
- Select the appropriate tab (Customers, Companies, Suppliers, or Physical Stores)
- Create a new info type with name, description, and code
- Save your changes
When editing an info type:
- Modify the name, description, or code as needed
- Use the translation view to manage multilingual content
- Both name and description fields support translation
- Remember to save your changes
To remove an info type:
- Click the "X" button next to the info type in the list
- Confirm your decision when prompted
- The info type becomes inactive but remains in the system
- Click "Show deleted" to view deactivated info types
- Deleted info types can be restored if needed
- This prevents accidental permanent data loss
- All info type data is stored as strings in the data layer
- You can use the data as any type you want in your applications
- Type casting must be handled in your implementation code
- There is no technical limit to how large an info type value can be
- Large values may impact performance in both the API and admin UI
- Consider performance implications when designing your data structure
Most common are "string", which is how Norce store the data.
But, many customers use JSON format for info types because:
- JSON provides a versatile and structured solution
- It allows for complex data structures within a single field
- It's easily parseable by most programming languages
- It maintains data relationships and hierarchy
- Info type names and descriptions support full translation
- Use the translation view to manage content across languages
- Language-independent codes ensure consistency across markets
- Store additional customer preferences or classifications
- Capture industry-specific customer data
- Track customer lifecycle information
- Store integration keys for external systems
- Add company-specific business information
- Store regulatory or compliance data
- Track company relationships and hierarchies
- Maintain custom classification systems
- Store supplier-specific terms and conditions
- Maintain supplier classification data
- Store integration-specific identifiers
- Add store-specific operational information
- Track store performance metrics
- Store location-specific custom business rules
- Maintain store classification systems
Important: Info types provide powerful extensibility but should be used thoughtfully. Consider the impact on system performance, data management complexity, and long-term maintainability when designing your custom field strategy.