Creating an Identification Field (Key Field)

What if…

There are so many ‘John Doe’s in your customer database?...

...Or you can’t determine which product was purchased because the information of each product in your database looks exactly the same?

If you have problem differentiating entries in your sheet, you might be missing a component in your form design, that is, something each of your entry possesses yet is “unique” enough for the system to accurately distinguish them.

What is a “Unique/ Key Value”?


A unique value can be a serial number, or “identification” sequence consisting of letters and/ or numbers in each entry.

The importance of Key field in data management

Since each sequence is one-of-a-kind, having a unique value field allows us and the system to detect a seemingly slight but distinctive feature of each entry. This unique feature holds your data together while at the same time allowing them to be identified at an individual level in data management and analysis. This identification method has been adopted in data management systems at large.

1. As a visual identification of an entry

With a quick look at the key value (Customer ID, for example), you'd be able to identify entries regardless of the overlapping information they carry.

E. g. Unique customer IDs for customers with the same name.

2. An identification property in file import.

For Ragic to map your information correctly to entries during file import, you will need to have a key field as entry identification, such as "Product Code" for products, or "Customer No."

3. An identification property in data linking

Ragic has several data linking tools, and key fields enable the system to correctly map data during linking.

In a link and load example, linking Customer ID field to Sales Order sheet enables the system to more accurately load the customer information in the target sheet (compared to linking Customer Name field).

(If you've already used a non-unique value field to link data with link and load tool, you can use this method to switch it into unique value field without deleting anything or reorganizing your table format).

Which field(s) can be used as the key field in my sheet?

Any field containing a unique value can be a key field, but the most common one is ID number field.

For example, in customer information entries, email address or ID number can be the key field; in company information entries, company code or VAT number can be the key field; in sales order entries, sales order numbers can be the key field, etc.

In addition, you may also set a "Unique" attribute to your key field to prevent users from duplicating entries.

If you don't find any field with a unique value in your sheet design, a quick way to add one is by creating an auto-generated field. This type of field will automatically generate sequential, unique numbers for each entry you add to the sheet.