User Profiling

Chamilo allows you to define custom profile fields (extra fields) to capture additional information about users beyond the standard name, email, and role.

Extra Profile Fields

The extra profile fields list showing custom fields with name, type, and visibility settings

Extra fields let you store metadata specific to your organization, such as:

• Employee ID

• Department

• Job title

• Location/office

• Phone number

• Custom identifiers

Creating Extra Fields

1. From the administration panel, navigate to Extra fields or Profile fields

2. Click Add

3. Configure the field:

   • Name — The field title shown to users

   • Description — Optional description

   • Helper text — To be shown under the field in any form including it

   • Field type — Text, dropdown, date, checkbox, etc.

   • Field label — The internal name of the field, for plugins integration

   • Possible values — If the field is a selector between those values

   • Default value — An optional default

   • Visible to self — Whether the field is visible on the user profile by the user itself

   • Visible to others — Whether the field is visible to other users of the platform

   • Can change — Whether the user can change its own field by himself (or whether only the admins can)

   • Filter — If this is a selector-type field, whether to include it as a filter in administrative pages (e.g. to subscribe users to courses or sessions)

   • Order — If you want to manage the display order of the fields, you will have to give a numerical order to each field

   • Remove on anonymization — Important for privacy rules & laws: If the user is anonymized but not deleted, should this field be considered as potential holder of personally identifiable data?

4. Save

Field Types

The extra-field engine supports a broad set of input types. Common ones include:

Type	Description
Text	A single-line text input
Textarea	A multi-line text input
Radio	A single-choice radio group
Dropdown / Dropdown multiple	A list of predefined options (single or multi-select)
Double select	Two dependent dropdowns (e.g., country → city)
Checkbox	A yes/no toggle
Date / Date and time	Date or date+time picker
Integer	A numeric input
Tag	Multiple free-form tag values
File	File upload field
Video URL	A URL pointing to a video
Mobile phone number	A formatted phone number field
Timezone	A timezone picker
Social profile	A link to a social network profile
Divider	A visual separator inside the form (no value)

The exact set of usable types depends on the Chamilo version; the field-type dropdown in the Extra fields admin page is the source of truth.

Using Extra Fields

Extra fields appear:

• In the user creation (if visible to self) and edit forms

• On user profile pages (if visible to self)

• In user imports (you can include extra field values in CSV imports)

• In exports and reports (filter or group by extra field values)

Tips

• Plan before creating — Define what information you need before creating fields, as changing field types after data has been entered can be problematic

• Use dropdowns for consistency — When a field has a known set of possible values, use a dropdown instead of free text to ensure data consistency

• Use for reporting — Extra fields are useful for filtering reports (e.g., "show all users in Department X who completed Training Y")