Concepts & glossary

Learn the words RowFold uses — workspaces, tables, fields, records, views, relations, and reports — and how the rail — your tables, with the workspace's own pages behind Manage workspace — fits together, so the rest of the app makes sense at a glance. Learn the vocabulary • Workspace — the top-level home for a set of related tables, with its own members and roles. You create one from a template or start blank. • Table — a list of one kind of thing: tasks, customers, invoices. Each table has its own fields and records, plus an emoji and accent color so you can spot it in the rail. • Field — a column in a table. Types include Text, LongText, Number, Currency, Date, Boolean (a true/false check), Select and MultiSelect, Email, Url, Phone, Percent, Rating, Progress, and People, plus the linked types below. • Record — a single row in a table: one task, one customer. Every record has a display name, and deleted records go to the Trash where they can be restored. • View — a layout for the same records. Every table offers Grid, Board, Gallery, Calendar, Timeline, and Map. Switching views never changes your data. • Relation (link) — a field that connects a record to one or more records in another table of the same workspace. • Lookup — a field that shows a value pulled through a relation from a linked record. Edit the source record and the lookup follows. • Rollup — a field that summarizes linked records with a count, sum, average, minimum, or maximum. • Report — a saved summary of one table, shown as a table, a single KPI number, or a chart that can flip between bar and line and plot several columns at once — with filters, sorting, and grouping. Date groups can be bucketed by day, week, month, quarter, or year. • Ask RowFold — ask questions about your data in plain language from the rail or the search palette; answers cite the records they draw on. • Automation — a rule that watches a table and acts: a trigger (a record created, updated, deleted, matching conditions, or a schedule), optional conditions, then steps such as updating fields, creating records, sending email, calling a webhook, or generating text with AI. • API token / webhook — an API token is a workspace-scoped key (a signed JWT) for calling the REST API at /api/v1; a webhook posts each matching record change to a URL you choose so outside systems stay in sync. Both live on the Developers page. Understand how your data is organized Everything nests three levels deep: a workspace holds tables, and each table holds fields (its columns) and records (its rows). The rail shows the tables of your current workspace with a live record count beside each name; click the workspace name at the top of the rail to switch workspaces or create a new one. Relations connect records across tables in the same workspace — a task can link to a project, an invoice to a customer. Lookups and rollups then carry values along those links, so you enter a number once and summarize it wherever it is linked. Deleting a record moves it to the Trash rather than destroying it, and restoring brings it back exactly as it was. Find your way around the one rail RowFold has a single rail — there are no modes to switch between — in three bands. The top is four destinations: Home, Inbox, Bookings and Reports & dashboards. The middle is your Tables, the one part that scrolls; open a table and its views run along the top of its page. Ask lives in the top bar, and the notification bell holds Approvals and My Work. The foot is pinned: Manage workspace opens everything you build, connect and govern — Reports & dashboards, People & access, Permissions, Import data and Audit log; Schema & relations (the live schema map), Automations, Channels, Integrations and Developers (API keys and webhooks). Super admins also see an Admin entry. Designing a table's fields opens from the table itself: click its field count under the name, or open Fields & setup. Star anything and a ⭐ Starred section appears at the top of the table list; your name, with Settings and sign out, sits at the very bottom. Pick a view for the job Open a table and its views run along the top of its page: Grid for spreadsheet-style editing, Board for cards in columns, Gallery for larger cards, Calendar for dated records, Timeline for spans of time, and Map for addresses. Views are presentations of one shared set of records, not copies. Change a record in any view and every other view reflects it. Find anything with the search palette Press ⌘K (Ctrl+K on Windows) anywhere, or click Search or ask… in the top bar, to open the palette. It searches the tables and records of your current workspace; use ↑ ↓ to move through results, Enter to open the highlighted one, and Esc to close. You don't have to decide up front whether you're searching or asking. Type something that reads like a question — “who has the most pets”, “what are the totals by status” — and the palette switches itself: the ask row moves to the top and Enter asks it instead of opening a record. Finish the question with a ? and it hands straight over to the Ask chat with your text carried across, so you can just keep typing. ⌘+/ still opens the ask dialog directly. Answers cite the records they drew on, and clicking a citation opens that record in the peek drawer over the chat. Know what your role lets you do Each workspace member has one of four roles. Viewers read; Contributors can also create records; Editors can also edit and delete records; Admins also control structure, members, and permissions. The New table, Add first table, and Build with AI actions only appear for workspace Admins, and the server enforces the same rule. Admins can also fine-tune access per person: a table can be set to Full access, Read & create, Read only, or No access (hidden), and an individual field can be made Read only or Hidden for someone. Because of these overrides, two members of the same workspace may see slightly different tables and fields. Tips • The New button in the top bar adapts to you: it always offers New workspace and Import workspace, adds New record once a table exists, and shows New table, Design tables with AI and Build a workspace with AI only to workspace Admins. • Starred tables and records appear under ⭐ Starred in the rail for one-click access. Stars are saved in your browser, so they follow the device, not your account. • The number beside a table in the rail is its live record count, updated as you add and remove records. • Lookup and rollup values update themselves — to change one, edit the linked source record instead. • Import workspace accepts CSVs or Excel and detects relations between your files for you. Good to know • Board, Gallery, and the other views are layouts of the same records — deleting a record in one view removes it from all of them. • If you don't see New table or the AI design and build entries, you are not an Admin of the current workspace; ask an Admin rather than looking for a hidden setting. • A Formula field computes within one record ({Price} * {Qty}, and it can reach across links: {Company.Region}); a Rollup aggregates MANY linked records (count, sum, average, min, max). Reaching for a formula when the answer summarizes other records is the common mix-up. • Lookups and rollups cannot be typed into; they are derived from linked records, so an empty one usually means the relation is not linked yet. • A workspace missing from your rail usually means you have no membership in it — an Admin must add you before it appears. • Deleting a record sends it to the Trash rather than erasing it — it vanishes from every view but can be restored from the Trash page. Delete forever and Empty trash on that page are permanent. Who can do what • Workspace roles are Viewer, Contributor, Editor, and Admin: Viewers read, Contributors also create records, Editors also edit and delete records, and Admins also control structure, members, and permissions. • Only workspace Admins see New table, Add first table, Design tables with AI, and Build a workspace with AI; the server enforces the same rule on table creation and AI building. • Per-person table overrides can set a specific table to Full access, Read & create, Read only, or No access (hidden). • Per-person field overrides can make a field Read only or Hidden for someone. • Restoring a record from the Trash — or deleting it forever — requires delete permission on that record's table. • The rail lists only workspaces you are a member of. • The Admin console is visible only to super admins (app operators); it appears as an Admin entry in the Manage workspace panel at the foot of the rail.