How to use Types

Manage your workspace's types and understand what changes when you do.

1. Open the catalogue — go to Admin Portal → Platform → Record Subtypes. You'll see every subtype your workspace has, grouped by entity type. Default seed (per the platform's starting kit):
   • Person: Customer, Employee, Contractor, Volunteer, Next of Kin.
   • Organisation: Client, Supplier, Partner, Branch, Franchise, Government.
   • Asset: Vehicle, Building, Equipment, Tool, Furniture.
   • Event: Service, Repair, Installation, Inspection Visit, Meeting, Delivery.
   • Order: Purchase Order, Sales Order, Work Order, Quote, Invoice.
   • Incident: WHS Incident, Vehicle Incident, Property Damage, Environmental, Security, Near Miss.
   • Inspection: Safety Inspection, Compliance Audit, Vehicle Inspection, Equipment Inspection, Building Inspection.
2. Add a new subtype — click New, pick the entity type, give it a display name. The internal name (snake_case) is auto-generated; you can override but it's rarely necessary.
3. What changes on the fly — switching a record's subtype takes effect immediately. The record moves between filters (Customer ↔ Employee on the People list), its Attribute Registry context changes if any of your custom fields are subtype-scoped (those fields appear / disappear on the next form load), and the mobile app picks the change up on its next sync — no rebuild required. The record's links, notes, files and history all carry forward unchanged.
4. The four canonical Person ↔ Organisation relationships drive the Contacts panel on an Organisation record:
   • Employee of — the person works for the organisation as one of its staff.
   • Contractor for — the person is contracted to the organisation but employed elsewhere (or independent).
   • Contact at — neutral. The person is associated with the organisation in some way; relationship not yet specialised. Inbound contact-form submissions land as this by default.
   • Client of — the person represents the organisation as a client / buyer. We sell to them.
   Pick the right one and the Contacts panel on the Organisation shows the person with a colour-coded badge (Employee blue, Contractor amber, Contact purple, Client green). Mis-classify and they still show — just under the wrong colour.
5. Adding your own relationship type — Admin Portal → Platform → Relationship Types → New. Pick the left and right entity types, give it a display name (forward, e.g. "Mentor of") and an inverse display name (e.g. "Has mentor"). Whatever you name it, the four canonical types above keep their special status on the Contacts panel; custom relationships show on the Links tab as ordinary links.
6. Where this all lives in the schema, for the record: entity types in entity_types (central, system-managed), subtypes in entity_subtypes (central, per-tenant), relationship types in relationship_types (each tenant's CRM). Subtype is stored as subtype_id on the record; relationship type is stored as relationship_type_id on the entity_links row connecting two records.

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