Designing Table Views
A view is a designed table: a chosen set of columns over a chosen source, with a filter and a sort order saved alongside it. Everybody who opens the view sees the same design. This is different from a saved view on an ordinary list, which is your own arrangement of an existing table — see Working with Lists for those.
Where to find it
| Screen | Where it lives | What you need |
|---|---|---|
Views — /admin/views | Settings → Data model → Views | Permission to view virtual tables; saving needs the write permission, and deleting is a level-2 action |
The catalogue
Every view in the space is listed with its Name, Source, Columns, Roles and whether it is Enabled. Badges tell you what kind of row you are looking at — System (shipped by the application), Locked (read-only in the designer), Disabled (it cannot be opened).
Press + Add view to create one, or click a row to edit it.
Source table
Pick what the view reads. Today that is Contacts; views over other tables arrive with the registry-driven source picker, and until then the picker shows the one option.
Columns
A view needs at least one column, and they are shown in the order you arrange them. The picker groups what is available:
| Group | What it offers |
|---|---|
| Contact columns | the fields on the record itself — name, type, phones, emails, addresses, created, modified |
| Linked (person / entity) | the name parts of the record the contact points at — first name, middle name, last name, prefix, suffix, nickname, description |
| Custom fields | this space's custom fields. A calculated or rollup field carries a Computed — read-only badge |
| Extension tables | columns from the extension tables attached to the record |
| Linked contacts | the contacts on the other end of a link type |
| Groups and Roles | the data groups and roles the contact holds |
Use Move up / Move down to arrange them, Remove to take one out.
Some columns are read-only by their nature, and the designer says which and why rather than letting you discover it on save. Roles are one: a role column displays roles, but roles are granted and revoked on the record, never by saving a view.
Linked-contact columns
A Linked contacts column shows the contacts reached through one link type — "Care manager", "Agency", and so on. For each enabled link type the picker offers two entries, one per direction, labelled with that type's own words:
- Outbound — this record links out;
- Inbound — other records link in;
- Either direction — offered as a single entry when the link type reads the same both ways.
These columns are read-only, cannot be sorted (they hold many values), and filter only on the counterpart's name.
If a link column names a link type that is not enabled in this space, it is badged Unknown or disabled link type and the server refuses to save the view until the type is re-enabled or the column removed.
Filter
A view can carry a filter: an AND/OR tree in the same grammar the ordinary filter builder uses (see Filtering & Searching for how to read and write one). It is saved with the view and applied to everyone who opens it — it is part of the design, not a personal narrowing.
Incomplete conditions are ignored rather than saved half-finished, and the designer tells you when it has dropped one.
Sort
Add one or more sort columns, each Ascending or Descending. Multi-value columns cannot be sorted.
Preview
Preview runs the view as designed and shows you the rows it returns, before you save it for everybody. If it comes back empty, the view is valid and nothing matched — which is usually a filter you want to re-read.
System views
A view the application ships behaves differently: its Name and Enabled are yours to change, but its columns, filter and sort are managed by the application and shown read-only. It cannot be deleted — disable it instead.
Deleting a view
Deleting is a soft delete, and the confirmation says the one thing that is easy to forget: menu rows pointing at the view are not removed. Retire those under Menus, or they will point at a view nobody can open.