Types and records

Besides chats, your workspace keeps track of things: the work you do, the companies and people you do it with, and anything else your company tracks, like properties, products or invoices. Each thing has its own page, and every detail on it says where it came from.

Types

A type is one kind of thing your company tracks: Clients, Jobs, Change orders, Listings, Invoices. A type owns:

• its name, and what one of its records is called
• an icon or emoji
• the details each record tracks (Client, Amount, Due date)
• its stages, some marked finished (Requested, Quoted, Approved, Rejected). Some types, like Products, have none.
• its links to other types, named both ways: a change order’s Job, and a job’s Change orders
• its actions, like Mark paid or Hire, beside the ones every type has
• the place it sits in, and who can see it
• what Cruma does on its own, like “Start a job when a signed quote arrives”

You set up types by hand, from a template, by describing them, or by accepting what Cruma noticed. See Set up what you track.

Records

A record is one real thing: Acme Ltd, 12 Oak St, INV-1043. It holds one or more types, and each type on it has its own stage and dates, shown as a chip and a section of its own on the record’s page.

• Acme is a client and a supplier. One company record with two types. Its Client section has its account lead and stage; its Supplier section has its terms.
• A freelancer is one person record, in Contacts and in Team. Their billing details sit under Contact.
• A candidate who’s hired keeps one record. Hire ends the Candidate type and adds Team, so the change is history, not a move, and the interviews stay where they were.

A finished record leaves the sidebar and the default views, and stays one filter away. Nothing is deleted.

Details, with their sources

What your workspace knows about a record is kept as details, and a link is a detail that points to another record. Each detail has:

• its source: the email, file, chat or person it came from
• as of: when it was true and when it was last confirmed
• its confidence: how sure the crew is

A detail the crew proposes shows dashed until someone keeps it. When two sources disagree, both are kept, the newer one shows, and the clash asks you on Home. Corrections never overwrite: the old detail stays in the history. Where this comes from shows, app by app, where a record’s details came from.

Changing a type never loses what’s known. Removing a detail from a type hides it, and renaming it changes only its label.

A page opens with a short summary the crew keeps current, and shows what changed since you last looked.

Actions

Every change to a record is a named action, with who may take it and whether it asks first. Every type has the common ones: set a detail, move a stage, link, add a type, merge. A type can add its own, like Mark paid on Invoices or Hire on Candidates.

People, the crew, kept tools and connected agents all use the same actions, with the same rules. See What the crew may do.

Views and tools

A view decides only how records are shown. Display sets its name, layout (list, board, calendar or table), grouping, whether it shows only what needs you, and whether it shows finished records.

• All work and Needs you read across every type.
• Changes to a type’s default view are just yours until you choose Save as a view.
• A new view is yours until you choose Share with everyone.
• + View asks what you want to see, like “Jobs that need me, on a board”, and builds it for you to confirm.
• From a view’s ⋯ you can add it to the sidebar.

When a view can’t do it, such as totals of change orders against each job’s contract value, the crew builds a tool. A tool you keep becomes a tab beside the views of the type it works on. See Tools.

Adding records

Add in a place opens one window. Type a name or paste an email. Cruma offers what it has read and not filed, then drafts the record with each detail it found, dashed and marked with where it came from. It flags a record you already have, so a new role goes on the same record. New work starts at its type’s first stage and opens.

Promises

Promises made on a piece of work become to-dos: yours under To do in your Inbox, and ones people owe you under Waiting. You never type a to-do in; it comes from the promise.

Finding anything

Press ⌘K to jump to any record, crew member or chat by name, or to run an action. It understands your words and the generic ones, so “jobs” and “projects” both work.

Talking about one thing

On any page, Ask Cruma about this starts a chat linked to it. A page’s Chats tab lists every chat about it.