Lists
A list is a sheet, not a filter.
Its rows point at records you already have. Its columns belong to the list — so the stage somebody is at in one process is not a column every record in the workspace has to carry.
One person. Two processes. Two sets of columns.
The record holds what is true about her. Each list holds what is true about her in that process — and neither one leaks into the other.
Stakeholders · record
Everything here is true about her wherever she appears.
Neither sheet’s columns exist on the other, and none of them exist on her record.
Four ways onto a list.
Most of them are not somebody typing.
From a selection
Tick the rows on any table and add them. The same dialog works from a record’s own page.
From a form
Point a list at a form and its responses join as they arrive, mapped onto the list’s columns. Turn the sync off and it stops taking new ones without losing the ones it has.
From a workflow
Add record to list is a step. So a branch — accepted, waitlisted, withdrawn — can file each answer somewhere different.
By hand, on the sheet
Type into the first column and pick a record. The row is a pointer, so picking somebody else re-points it rather than renaming anybody.
It behaves like the table it is.
The same grid as an object’s page, because it is the same grid — a list row is a set of values under a set of columns, one of which holds a record.
Columns of its own
Any type the records tables have: select, date, number, person, checkbox. They exist on the list and go when it does.
Saved views
“Everybody still waiting on a contract, oldest first” is a question somebody asks weekly. Save it once instead of rebuilding it every Monday.
Or a board
Group the same rows by any select column and drag between the columns. It is a view, so the table is still there.
A panel of its own
The list itself opens like a record does — the mail about it, the notes your team left, the files that went both ways.
The record stays the record
Editing a name on the sheet edits the record everywhere. Deleting the list deletes the list, and nobody on it.
On as many as it takes
A record can sit on any number of lists at once, each with its own columns and its own answer for her.
And the rest of the workspace reads it.
A list is a set of people and a process, which is exactly what the things that send and automate need.
Sequences enrol from it
Point a multi-step sequence at the list and everybody on it starts — stopping the moment any of them replies.
Workflows fire on it
Joining the list is a trigger. So is a change to a row’s own columns, which is not the same event as a change to the record.
Email goes to it
Address the composer at a list and each person gets their own copy, filled in from their own record.
Lists sit in the middle of it.
They are made of records, fed by forms, and read by everything that sends.
Make the first list out of what you have.
Tick a few rows, add a column for the thing you are tracking, and it is a process.