As the number of custom fields grows, managing permissions for a large number of fields is very tedious, time consuming and inefficient. Each individual field must be edited, irrespective of whether the field has the same permissions as other nearby fields within a People Category.

This is compounded when new Access Permissions are created, such as a new or slightly different team. I have found myself spending hours and days updating hundreds of field permissions - double-checking to ensure one doesn't get missed in the endless activity.

The feature allowing permissions on a field to be copied across to other People Categories is good, but this is still only "per field" and doesn't save a whole lot of time if your People Categories are all very unique, as ours are:

We maintain this structure because this is the only way to ensure the personal details of a child or young person for example cannot be accessed by other ministries unless absolutely necessary. Same goes for the rehab. Overall there are fields which we globally allow access to for ministry leaders or pastors and leadership.

This proposal is for an overlay or block which can be applied to a group of fields - to which Global and People Category access can be managed. In much the same way a number of fields can exist inside a row container, a permissions container would encompass any number of rows. We would need to be able to apply a number of "permissions containers" to a People Category, as the layout permits. At least this might mean only 3 or 4 times we need to apply permissions.

The individual field permissions, naming etc can remain if you wish to go finer grained.

To use one example, we have 50+ custom fields for rehab and maybe more for a Child or Young Person, when taking into account a dozen medical related fields alone.