When your administrator creates a custom address type or phone number type in CRM setup, under Address Types and Phone Number Types, Rhythm adds a matching field for contacts and organizations. This article explains where those fields appear, how Rhythm stores staff and member entries, how preferred values work, and where you can use those values in Rhythm.
Where the Fields Show Up
After a custom address or phone type is defined, Rhythm adds one field for that type to each contact or organization form where it applies. A custom type can apply to contacts, organizations, or both. If a type applies only to organizations, it does not appear on contact forms, and the reverse is also true. Each form layout controls which fields appear and in what order, so creating a type does not automatically add it to every form.
The same fields appear in the Console and, for a member’s own record, in the Portal.
Rhythm's built-in Other Addresses field is not supported on a CRM contact form. Even if someone adds it to a configured layout, it will not appear there, so add the specific address type field you need instead.
Custom types are useful when a standard field does not match what you need to track. For example, an administrator can create an address type such as Mailing Address and add it to a form instead of using Work or Home. An administrator can also create a custom field for something Rhythm does not track out of the box, such as SMS opt-in consent. If a contact's organization-linked work address is not reliable for that person's actual workplace, use a dedicated contact address type with conditional fields on the form. That setup captures the true work address directly on the contact record, where it stays properly linked and visible in Contact Details.
Some contacts show only a physical address, with no way to edit it directly. That usually means the address comes from, or is linked from, somewhere else, such as the contact's organization, rather than being entered on the contact record. An address type that belongs to the contact remains editable on the contact's own form.
How the Values Are Stored
Rhythm stores completed custom fields in two lists on the record: one for custom addresses and one for custom phone numbers. Each list entry includes the custom type and the value entered for it. Rhythm does not store empty custom fields, so the record includes only the custom values it has.
Custom phone numbers stay exactly as entered. Rhythm does not reformat them the way it reformats standard phone fields. If a record has two values for the same custom type, Rhythm keeps both values.
A standard phone number field uses the +1 country code by default, and you cannot currently override that from the phone-entry workflow itself. If your members or contacts are mostly outside the United States, treat changing that default as a product enhancement request rather than something you can configure today. Because a custom phone number is stored exactly as typed, you can use one to record a number in a different country-code format.
Rhythm will not save an address with only a state filled in. A complete address is required, and that rule applies across Rhythm rather than to one screen.
Warning
Separately, some Rhythm accounts have seen a contact record refuse to save because of a validation error on a work or home address field, even when that field was not meant to be required. This has been reported as a known issue, not expected behavior. If a contact won't save and the error names an address field you did not intend to require, treat it as this defect rather than something wrong with your data, and contact Support if it blocks you.
If you import addresses instead of entering them directly, they do not get latitude and longitude right away. Rhythm adds those values only after the address record is opened and saved again. If you plan a bulk update to fill in latitude and longitude for existing imported records, decide up front which address to target when a contact has more than one, such as home, work, or a custom type. A contact's preferred address is not necessarily the only one that needs geocoding.
Choosing a Preferred Address or Phone Number
A contact’s Preferred Address and Preferred Phone Number choices list the standard options first. For addresses, those options are home, work, and school. For phones, they are mobile, home, work, work mobile, school, and fax. Rhythm then lists each active custom type. When you choose a custom type as preferred, Rhythm uses that value anywhere the contact’s preferred address or phone is read, including the region a contact is placed in, which is based on the contact’s preferred address.
Only active custom types appear as preferred choices. If you deactivate a type, Rhythm removes it from that list.
Tip
If changing a contact’s Home address does not change the address or phone Rhythm treats as primary, check whether the contact’s preferred address or phone is set to a custom type. The Home field matters only when Home is the contact’s preferred choice.
If the contact’s preferred choice is empty, such as when the custom value it points to was cleared, Rhythm uses the first address or phone number it finds in this fixed order: work, home, school, then custom-typed values. This prevents a contact from having no preferred value just because their selected preference is blank.
Preferred choices are recorded for contacts. Organizations do not have an equivalent preference setting.
Because Preferred Address Latitude and Preferred Address Longitude are calculated from whichever address is currently marked preferred, you cannot change those two fields directly through a mass update. Update the preferred address itself instead, and the coordinates follow it.
Preferred Address is not a separately entered address field. It is a choice that tells Rhythm which stored address type to read. Save an actual address in one of the available types first, such as home or work, then mark that type as preferred. Rhythm reads the chosen type's value wherever a preferred address is needed.
To change which type is preferred, the Preferred Address Type field must be on the contact's form. Having address fields on the form is not enough by itself. Without the Preferred Address Type field, a user has no way to explicitly switch from Home to Work or to a custom type, so the prior preferred choice stays in effect. If that field is not on the form or does not get updated, downstream results that rely on preferred address, such as mailing-related queries, keep using the old value.
A mass update can change the underlying address-type fields themselves, such as a contact's Work address, but it cannot target the calculated preferred-address value directly. If you need to update preferred addresses in bulk, first isolate the records by whichever address type is currently marked preferred for each contact, then update that specific type's fields.
Viewing Custom Values on an Organization
An organization’s 360 page shows its custom addresses and phone numbers in the details panel, alongside its main address, billing address, and standard phone numbers. Staff can see a value such as a “Warehouse” address without opening the edit form.
Picking a Custom Address Elsewhere in Rhythm
When another part of Rhythm uses the shared address picker to choose one of a contact’s addresses, the picker includes that contact’s custom-typed addresses. It also includes the contact’s preferred, work, home, and alternate addresses, plus the organization’s main address. For an organization, the same picker offers only the main and billing addresses; it does not include the organization’s custom addresses.
Using Custom Values in Queries and Templates
Contact queries can include a column for each custom address type and each custom phone type. Custom address columns are split into their individual parts, such as line 1 and postal code, and the columns are grouped under headings for other addresses and other phone numbers. This applies to contact queries. For organization queries, availability can differ by your Rhythm account. Organization queries have not always offered the same per-type columns for a custom address type configured for organizations, though some Rhythm accounts have also seen this made available. If you do not see a custom organization address type as a query column, contact Support to confirm what is available for your account.
Contact addresses display full country names rather than two-letter codes, except for the United States. A query can use a Country Name field to return that full name.
Custom address types can be queried and exported for contacts, but they may not appear as mappable fields when you import contacts or run a Contacts Mass Update. Treat those as separate capabilities rather than assuming import or mass-update support wherever query and export support exists. Address component fields, including custom ones such as home, work, or school, can also be rejected during a Custom Data Task import. There is no reliable single-step workaround for this today. If you are importing contacts and need custom address values in place from the start, plan to import the contacts first and add their addresses afterward. If any contact import you prepare includes phone numbers, decide which phone type each spreadsheet column represents before you start, whether standard or custom, so it can be mapped correctly.
Letter and email templates can merge a custom value by referencing the type’s identifier. If you later rename a custom type’s display name, the identifier and merge field stay the same, so existing templates keep working. Only changing the identifier itself would break them.
How These Values Are Treated
Rhythm treats a custom address or phone value as personal contact information, the same way it treats a standard address or phone value wherever record data is classified or protected.
Related
For query columns generally, see Query Types and Field Selection.