Is there a way that we can get our original phone field back?

Yes, that can probably be done by reverting the alias field changes. Within _comprofiler_fields find the alias field. Now change the "name" and "tablecolumns" values to "cb_phone" (or whatever name your phone field had), change "type" column to "text", change "sys" column to "0". Believe field title and description should've been left alone, but if not change them back to whatever you had. The stored phone values should all still be in the "cb_phone" column of _comprofiler. If not then they'll be in the "alias" column which you can rename to "cb_phone" and change its column type to "text". Next install latest CB build for it to recreate the alias field as a new field.

Can we define a new alias field instead?

Latest builds will create alias field as a new field. It no longer uses a reserved id. What field id the alias has is entirely irrelevant now.

We don't want to introduce other issues so I am concerned about simply upgrading with the latest build.

Latest build will not cause any issues. The check for that field existing is based off name and not field id now and it'll see the alias field exists by name already so it won't do anything further. With the above revert steps it won't exist by name anymore and will be properly recreated (without using a reserved id).

We cannot go back to a backup. There are two many site transactions.

Your backup should be a complete backup. Which means you should be able to extract only what you need to restore. In this case just the _comprofiler_fields column should be enough, but the above manual instructions for reverting alias are probably easiest.

You shouldn't have to unless all your sites have been broken by the update. No future install will have this problem as again it's already fixed.

missarab wrote: Where is these field changes to be done? in cpanel php database, or in CB field management?
Thank you

See my reply below if you're affected by this.

www.joomlapolis.com/forum/153-professional-member-support/235727-builds-and-phone-field-phone-has-disappeared?start=6#290045