Schema suggestions

A review of your workspace's shape and the real data in it, proposing changes that would make it more useful — a column that should be a date, a total a parent should carry, a set of columns that are really a table of their own. Every suggestion quotes the numbers it is based on, shows what it would do to your data before you commit, and can be applied in one click. Admin only. Run a review Open Schema & relations from Manage workspace and choose ✦ Schema suggestions. The review reads your tables, your fields and a sample of the values in them, then proposes changes. It takes around half a minute and narrates what it is doing as it goes, because most of that time is spent measuring your data rather than waiting on the model. It counts against your workspace's AI allowance, so it runs only when you ask for it — never on page load, and never on a schedule. An empty result is a real answer. If the review finds nothing worth changing it says so, rather than inventing something to justify the trip. What it can propose A closed list, so that every suggestion can be checked against your schema and carried out rather than just described: • Field type — a text column whose values are really dates, money, an email address or an address. Retyping gives you sorting, date filters, calendar and map views and calculations. • Pick list — a text column with a small, repeated set of values that should become options, so it can be grouped and shown as a board. • Calculation — a total, count or looked-up value a record should carry from the records linked to it. • Link — two tables that describe related things with no relationship between them. • Relationship — a link marked “many per record” where every record only ever links to one. • Ownership — a link whose child records only make sense inside one parent. • New table — several columns that are really describing a separate thing, with the values repeating across rows to prove it. • Formatting — a calculated column printing a bare number where it means money, a percentage or a duration. • Cleanup — a column nothing has ever filled. • Automation — work the data shows is being done by hand, repeatedly. • Approvals — sign-off that is plainly already happening in a status column somebody can overtype. Suggestions where the work is You do not have to go back to the map to act on a review. Once one has run, any table with something outstanding carries a quiet ✦ Suggestion button on its toolbar — on the grid, and on the calendar, timeline, tree and map views too. Open it and you get the same card, with Apply in place. It appears only when there is something to say about that table, and only for admins. No review, or nothing outstanding, and there is no button. See what a change would do first Every suggestion is measured against your actual records before you decide, and says so plainly. The most useful thing it will tell you is how little most changes touch: changing a field's type rewrites nothing. Every value is stored as text, so retyping a column changes how it is read and not one byte of any record — and you can change it back. Where a change does touch stored data — removing an unused column, making a link an ownership one so children delete with their parent, extracting a table — the card says so in stronger terms. What this is based on opens the counts and sample values behind the suggestion, and where there is a row-by-row difference to look at, you can open that list too. Apply, or decline Apply carries the change out. Where several suggestions only add things — a calculated column, a link, an automation — the panel offers to apply those together; changes that alter or remove something stay one at a time, so it is always clear which one mattered. Not for me declines a suggestion for the whole workspace, and it sticks. Declining is remembered against what was proposed rather than how it was worded, so the same idea cannot come back in a new phrasing on the next run. You will never be nagged about work you have already done. Before anything is shown, each suggestion is re-checked against your live schema — so a change you made yourself in the field editor, through an import, or over the API retires its suggestion automatically, with nothing to tick off. How current a review stays A review is kept so you can come back to it: reopening the panel shows the last one immediately instead of spending another. It tells you when it ran, and Review again starts a fresh one. It stops being offered on a table's toolbar once its evidence no longer holds — when you change the schema, when the number of records has moved appreciably, or after a fortnight. The map still shows it after that, with the reason and a button to run another, because there the caveat is on screen where a quiet button on a grid has nowhere to put it. Tips • Worth running again after an import or once a new table has some real data in it — the suggestions are argued from fill rates and repeated values, so a nearly-empty table has little to say. • The suggestion button on a table's toolbar reads the last review. If you have just changed the schema and it has gone, that is why — run another from the schema map. • Applying a calculated column never writes to a record. The value is worked out when the record is read, so it is safe to try and simple to remove. Good to know • An approvals suggestion cannot be applied from the card. Its stages, approvers and quorum are decisions the suggestion does not contain, so it points you at the builder that asks for them. • Applying a suggestion changes the schema, which means the rest of that review is measured against a workspace that has moved on. The panel says so and offers to run another. • Declining is per workspace, not per person — it is a decision about the workspace's shape, so it applies to everyone who would otherwise be shown it. Who can do what • Workspace admins only, for the whole feature. The review reads a sample of every table's values, and the changes it proposes are schema changes. • A review sees only the tables you can see, and a stored one is re-filtered for whoever reads it — so it can never name a table you have no access to. • Running a review counts against the workspace's monthly AI allowance. Reading a stored one costs nothing.