Screen Fields
Last updated 11/04/2025
What are Screen Fields?
Screen fields are fields that are not attached to a database. Adding screen fields enables you to add fields that can be used as arguments for your process. You can use the screen fields for tasks such as filtering data, getting data that is required for your process to work, and entering data into your database.
A process does not have to have any screen fields, however, if you need additional values, screen fields can be used to get this data.
Add Screen Fields to a Process
1. Click the Screen Fields tab.
2. Click the Add Screen Fields button.

3. Type a caption in the Caption field.
4. Click the lookup icon in the Display Type field and select a type.

5. Click the Save button in the form app bar.

6. Click the Save button in the form app bar on completion.

Data Entry Screen Fields
Let's take a look at the Send Message process in an application. In the image below, three screen fields have been added to the process: Name, Email, and Message. These fields are not tied to a database they are purely to enter values and the recipient will receive an email with the message.

The

This function will validate that the values entered into the Name, Email, and Message fields are valid. If the values are not valid an error will be created using
Five's
function ValidateData(five, context, result) {
if (five.field.Name === '') {
return five.createError('Please enter the name for the recipient');
}
if (five.field.Email === '') {
return five.createError('Please enter an email address to send the message');
}
if (five.field.Message === '') {
return five.createError('Please enter a message to send to : ' + five.field.Email);
}
return five.success(result);
}
An error is created when the Run button is clicked as no value is in the Email field.

Using Screen Fields to Filter Data
Let's take a look at the Find Books dashboard, it holds a process at the top which has three screen fields: Title, ISBN, and Search. The Title and ISBN fields can take a value and when the Search button is clicked the filtered results that correspond with the values entered into the Title and/or ISBN screen fields will be returned.

This is because the Find Book process (positioned at the top of the Find Books dashboard) has the Title, ISBN, and SEARCH screen fields.

The Search screen field has a display type of Button.

When a screen field has a display type of _Button, it requires a function to be attached to the On Click event. For this scenario, the process will execute when the Search button is clicked.

The function attached to the On Click event for the Search screen field is called
function SetSearchISBN(five, context, result) {
five.setVariable('ISBN', five.field.ISBN);
five.setVariable('Title', `%${five.field.Title}%`);
five.setVariable('UserKey', five.currentUserKey());
five.refreshTable('Book');
five.refreshTable('iUser');
return five.success(result);
}
When the Search button is clicked in the application, the filtered results using the screen field values will be returned.
