--- title: "Editing governance fields on a role or a circle" description: "Every role and circle page carries four core governance fields plus your organisation's custom fields. Core fields change through a proposal, custom fields are usually typed straight in." category: structure-governance section: chart-and-circles type: Tutorial lastUpdated: 2026-08-05 locale: en canonical: https://support.talkspirit.com/en/structure-governance/how-to-edit-core-and-custom-governance-fields-for-roles-and-circles --- # Editing governance fields on a role or a circle ## Editing governance fields on a role or a circle Every role and circle page carries the same governance fields: four core fields, **Purpose**, **Domains**, **Accountabilities** and **Policies**, plus any custom fields your organisation has added. Core fields can only change through a governance proposal. Custom fields are usually typed straight into the page, and this article shows which is which. ## What you see on the General tab Open a role or a circle and stay on the **General** tab. Each field is its own card, in the order an administrator chose: - **Purpose**, a single block of text. - **Domains** and **Accountabilities**, lists that show one entry per row and a count. - **Policies**, which holds documents rather than text. - **Custom fields**, one card or one row each, depending on the type. - **Relations**, at the bottom, which is derived from where the role or circle is referenced elsewhere and is never editable. ![The General tab of the Product Development circle. Purpose, Domains, Accountabilities, a Policies list with one document, a Strategy custom field reading No value, and a Relations card showing a dash.](/images/structure-governance/how-to-edit-core-and-custom-governance-fields-for-roles-and-circles/01-general-tab-fields.png) An administrator can rename any of the four core fields and hide the ones your organisation does not use, for the whole organisation at once. A hidden field disappears from every role and circle page and from the edit dialog, and its stored content comes back untouched if it is shown again. So your own pages may use different words, or show fewer than four cards. ## Who can change them In the interface, the edit affordances appear when you are a **decision maker** of the circle concerned: - To change a **role's** fields, you need to be a decision maker of the circle that holds it. - To change a **circle's** own fields, you need to be a decision maker of its **parent** circle. Being an organisation administrator is not enough on its own, and there is no bypass. Most circle members do qualify, though: a member newly assigned to a circle counts as a decision maker of it until someone sets them as a non-decision maker. An **(invited)** role is the exception. It is edited from the circle that owns it, not from the circle it was invited into. ## Change a core field 1. Open the role or circle page and stay on the **General** tab. 2. Hover the **Purpose**, **Domains** or **Accountabilities** card and click **Propose changes**. ![The Accountabilities card on the Developers role, listing three accountabilities. Hovering it reveals a Propose changes control at the right of the card header, next to an AI sparkle icon.](/images/structure-governance/how-to-edit-core-and-custom-governance-fields-for-roles-and-circles/02-propose-changes-hover.png) 3. Change the field in the dialog that opens. Domains and accountabilities are lists: use the **Add** control to create an entry, so each one stands on its own. 4. Click **Submit for review** at the bottom of the dialog to send the change to the circle, or **Save as proposal** to keep it as a draft you can add to. The same dialog opens from the three-dot **More actions** menu in the page header, under **Edit**, and it holds the name of the role or circle as well. Whichever way you open it, the change does not land on the chart when you save. It travels as a governance proposal and applies once that proposal is adopted, except on the top-level circle, which has no parent circle to propose to and saves directly. [Editing a role or a circle](/structure-governance/how-to-edit-a-role-or-a-circle) follows that journey step by step. This is not a setting: the four core fields always require a proposal, and there is no switch anywhere to turn that off. **Policies** work differently from the other three. They are documents, added with the **Add** control on the card rather than typed into the edit dialog: see [Adding or editing a policy](/structure-governance/how-to-add-or-edit-a-policy). ## Change a custom field Custom fields come in two flavours, and the administrator who created the field decides which: - **An ordinary custom field is edited in place.** Click its value, type, then click away. The change is saved at once and a **Saved** confirmation appears. There is no proposal and no governance history. - **A governed custom field behaves like a core field.** Hovering it offers **Propose changes**, which opens the same edit dialog, with the governed custom fields listed under the core ones. Resting on the field shows the reason: *This field can only be edited via a proposal*. Two kinds of value cannot be typed at all. A **calculated (formula)** field is worked out by the product, carries a lock, and says so: *Calculated automatically, read-only*. A field you have no rights on shows its value with no edit affordance at all. An empty field you can edit shows a clickable **No value** placeholder instead. Which fields exist, what they are called, whether they require a proposal and whether they appear at all are all set by an administrator in **Structure settings** > **Governance fields**: see [Managing custom fields for roles and circles](/structure-governance/manage-custom-fields-for-roles-and-circles). ## What's Next? - [Managing custom fields for roles and circles](/structure-governance/manage-custom-fields-for-roles-and-circles) - [Editing a role or a circle](/structure-governance/how-to-edit-a-role-or-a-circle) - [Adding or editing a policy](/structure-governance/how-to-add-or-edit-a-policy) - [Submitting and tracking a proposal](/structure-governance/how-to-submit-and-track-a-proposal)