Get the object right the first time
HighLevel has two homes for a custom field. Contact fields belong to the person. Opportunity fields belong to one deal. A call outcome is about the person you rang, so it goes on the contact.
This choice is hard to undo. A field can't switch between Contact and Opportunity after it's made. If yours went on the Opportunity object, the fix is a new field on Contact.
The giveaway is a field that won't appear where you expect it. Contact custom fields work in Smart Lists and in contact workflows. If your disposition field is missing from a contact workflow, check which object it was created on.
Why it's a multiple dropdown
A contact collects more than one outcome over time. They miss the first call, miss the second, ask for a call back, then book. A single dropdown keeps only the last answer and throws away the history. HighLevel's Dropdown (multiple) type keeps them all.
In our builds, callers set each outcome after the call. No stage automation overwrites them. The one exception is the first value, new_lead, which the build sets once when a contact enters the first stage of the first pipeline, and guards so a later pipeline doesn't reset the history.
This field records what has happened to a contact. It isn't the contact's current status.
The values we use
Our value names are lowercase with underscores. That's our house style, not something HighLevel asks for, and the names matter less than everyone using the same ones.
Seven of them count unanswered attempts, no_answer_x1 through no_answer_x7, so the field shows how many tries a contact has had. Others record what a live call produced, such as call_back_later. Whatever names you choose, agree the list before callers start, and keep earlier selections when you add a new one.
Setting it up
The field takes a few minutes. Agreeing the values with the people who will use them takes longer, so do that first.
- Go to Settings > Custom Fields and open Fields.
- Click Create field and choose the Contact object.
- Pick Dropdown (multiple), name the field and enter the agreed outcomes as its options.
- Check the Live preview, then click Create custom field.
- Build a contact Smart List for each lead source, filtered by the disposition values your callers work from.
What the field can't tell you
It holds which outcomes a contact has had. It doesn't hold when each happened, what order they came in, or that the same outcome happened twice. If you need a dated record of every attempt, that's a separate logging job.
Smart Lists are what make the field useful day to day. A contact joins a Smart List as soon as its values match the filters, so a source list filtered by attempt count refills itself as callers log outcomes.
Rather have it set up for you?
We'll set up the disposition field, its values and the smart lists your callers work from, on the right object the first time, after a 30-minute 1:1 with Rob about how your team calls.