Copy an attribute within a schema

There might be times when you want to have attributes that possess same properties (e.g., searchable and required string attributes with a maximum length of 100 characters), but are intended to store different sets of data. For example, by default the user entity type includes a single attribute for storing email addresses: email.

For many organizations that’s fine. However, other organizations might benefit from having additional email attributes, maybe one for a user’s personal email address (personalEmail) and another for the user’s business email address (businessEmail). The quickest way to create these two attributes? Copy the existing email attribute, something that copies everything from the attribute data type and case-sensitivity to whether or the attribute can be employed in Console searches.

To copy an existing attribute, complete the following procedure:

1. From the Manage Schemas page, click the Actions icon next to the attribute you want to copy and then click Copy:

   

2. In the Copy Attribute dialog box, enter a name for the new attribute:

   

   Note that, by default, the Console creates a name for the new attribute simply by appending _copy to the name of the attribute being copied (e.g., email_copy). You can either keep that name or, as shown in the preceding screenshot, create your own name for the new attribute.

3. Click Copy to create the new attribute.

Tip: Copy attribute names to the clipboard

This might not be the most important thing you need to know about the Manage Schemas page, but it could come in handy from time-to-time. (Plus it’s something to be aware of if you have data on your clipboard that you haven’t done anything with yet.)

When you’re looking at a schema on the Manage Schemas page, the second column in the schema listing is the name of the attribute:

If you click on an attribute name, that name is automatically copied to the clipboard. That explains why you see this notification:

Need to copy an attribute name for use in a search query or an API call? This is a quick and easy way to do just that.