Introduce field name aliases for displaying in Table and Entity views

It can be difficult to work with views especially with complex databases and relations. Field names usually get long to keep them meaningful. But long names are not ideal for all contexts.

When setting up views for specific tasks, shorter field names that are context-specific would be better. You’d currently need to create duplicate names that then use a formulas and automations to combine together to work - but this could all be resolved if we could have field name aliases.

The best use cases I can see for this are in Table views and in Entity views. I’d see the alias feature as something you set up in that specific view only - not as an inherent attribute of that field.

You should be able to see the original name and description on hover.

The way it could work is to add a new “Alias” option in the field click menu and a pop-up or a field that shows up to edit the Alias.

Not sure if this could work automatically, but when creating an alias in a view that shows multiple databases with the same info, it would be great if the Alias could act as a way to show data from differently-named columns but with the same type of ino in the same column.

Possible extension of this feature:

  • It could be a nice touch to be able to reuse aliases in multiple views - I can see how this would make things possibly much more complex and it would need to become more closely related to the field itself, not just the view.

Have you considered just using short names for the fields and the adding extra info to the field description (which will show when you hover over the field name in the various views)?

I have but it would make it incredibly difficult to build these views and I tend to use the description fields already in a different way - to either provide instructions for what to add to the field or to describe how it’s generated. I use a naming convention for field names to manage them and would make it messy to move it to the description. An alias I could add to the view once the view has been built would be the perfect solution.