Creating and using custom lists

You can create custom (or sublists or groups), of users, speakers, sponsors, or sessions within your workspace, based on the information (metadata) in their profiles (or pages for sessions).

For example, in the event you may wish to create a custom list that groups together:

• Only the app users that are all from a specific organization or have the same job title.
• Only sessions around a specific criteria, such as a topic.
• Only sponsors that are gold level.
• etc.

You can use any type of metadata you want in order to identify specific app users, sponsors, speakers, or sessions, and include them in a list. This includes the default fields, for example the organization or position for users, or levels for sponsors, and custom criteria (metadata) that you can create using the Metadata manager.

Tip: Whenever possible, we do not recommend creating custom lists. Instead, we recommend for example applying targeting to sessions, or encouraging app users to use the filtering options available in the app (user filters, session tags, sponsor levels, etc.).

Note: For a list of common use cases for custom lists, please refer to the Examples of how to use custom lists article.

Creating custom lists

Custom lists are created using conditions. This means that you will create conditions that participants, sponsors, speakers or sessions need to meet in order to be part of the custom list.

To use the custom list builders in Backstage:

1. Navigate to the relevant module (Users, Sessions, Speakers, Sponsors).
   
   
2. Go to Preferences.
   
   
3. Click on + next to Custom lists.
   
   
4. Enter the name of the list and optionally configure an icon (it will be used when participants open the list from a link in a page).
   
   
5. Configure the conditions for building the list:
   - Select a metadata field from the dropdown by which you wish to build the list.
   - From the second dropdown, select how the system will verify whether an item should be in the list or not, for example:
   Equals: value in the metadata field will have to match the specified value.
   Contains: value in the metadata field must contain the specified value (for text this means a part of the string must be contained, while for lists it appliers to all selected items).
   Is defined: a value in the metadata field must be defined, i.e. the field must not be empty (if the field contains no text or no item is selected in a dropdown list, this is considered not defined).
   
   
6. On the right, select or type the desired value to apply the condition to.
   
   

Multiple conditions can be used together to create more specific custom lists

Once you have created a custom list, it can be made accessible to app users via the app menu or quick links, or any link on a page. You can then configure who will be able to see the actual link to the custom list, by applying targeting.

More information on using targeting to create custom lists is available in the Targeting article.