In Virtuous, you can track data and values specific to your organization by using Custom Fields, and even group them together for clear organization.
But what if you want to track a series of related values?
For example, let's say that your organization provides tutoring and support for low-income students. So, you'd like to track the students that are tutored by your volunteer tutors. As part of this, you'll be tracking the name and grade level of each student and the particular subject covered in their tutoring sessions.
Creating Custom Fields wouldn't really work in this instance, because you'd have to create a number of fields to track data for each student. And if a particular tutor works with several students, you'd either run out of fields or have to create even more fields to account for all of the data.
This is where creating a Custom Collection can help.
You could create a Collection called "Tutoring," and within that collection, you could define Custom Fields for "Name," "Grade Level," and "Subject."
Then, as tutors work with their students, you can add values for each to your collection.
When you add the first, you'll see something like this:
By clicking on the "add" button, you'll be able to continue adding values for additional students, all collected under the "Tutoring" header:
Each entry can be edited or even deleted, as needed.
Custom Collections can be added to Contacts or Individuals, for tracking any series of data where you may have an undefined amount of entries.
Now that you know what Custom Collections are for, check out this article to learn more about creating and working with them.