Tideswell glossary

Tideswell reuses about a dozen nouns everywhere, and several of them mean something narrower here than in general use. This page defines each one on its own terms, so you can read any single entry without the one above it. It sits in Core concepts, the reading section of these docs.

Entries are alphabetical. Where a word has a page of its own, the entry points at it.

How do you use this page?

Look the word up, read the two sentences, and follow the link if you need the detail. Every entry stands alone, which means a little repetition between them.

Two habits will save you time. First, when a screen and this page disagree about a word, the screen wins, because your workspace may have renamed it.

Second, if the word you are stuck on is about who is allowed to do something, go straight to How to work out who can do what in your workspace. That page is the whole subject rather than a definition of it.

Look up a word, A to Z

Seventeen words in alphabetical order. Each one says what the thing is, what not to confuse it with, and where the detail lives.

Agent

The panel behind the sparkle on the right-hand edge of every page. You ask it questions in plain English about your sales, stock, suppliers and your team's work, and it answers from what you yourself are allowed to see. See What is the Agent?.

When the Agent prepares a change, nothing happens until somebody approves it. See How to approve, refuse or undo a suggested change. It was called the assistant until October 2026.

Area

One of the groups in the menu down the left of every page: Chat, Work, Selling, Buying, Wholesale, Customers, Objects and Brain, with Settings at the foot for admins. Each area folds open into its pages, and an area with nothing in it you can open is left out of your menu. See How to find your way around.

Channel

A named room in Chat where everyone in it reads the same messages. A channel is either open to the whole workspace or private, and that is decided when it is created.

Folders in the channel list only group channels for display. See How to create and organise channels.

Cycle

A named block of dates, like a sprint, that tasks can be put into and filtered by. A cycle belongs to the workspace rather than to one team, so a single cycle can hold Fairgreen Golf Co.'s production work and its marketing work at the same time. See How to set up and work in cycles.

Department

A team inside your workspace, with its own members, its own leads, its own colour and its own projects. Every department appears under Work › Departments for everyone in the workspace.

Departments do two jobs at once: they group work, and they are how somebody becomes a lead. Admins manage them in Settings › Departments. See How to set up departments.

Display field

The one field whose value titles a record everywhere it appears: in the record list, in links, in mentions and in search results. On an Object's Fields tab that field carries a Titles records chip, and the Display field picker moves the job to another field. See How to create an Object.

Field

One box of information on a record: a date, an amount, a choice from a list, a link to another record. A field's type decides what it accepts, how it is shown and whether a list can be narrowed by it. See How to add a field and pick its type, and read How to plan your fields before you add them first.

Milestone

A single dated checkpoint inside a project, such as "samples approved". A milestone marks a moment rather than holding work, so tasks sit in the project, not inside the milestone. See How to add and reschedule milestones.

Module

One switchable part of Tideswell, such as Store, Documents, Purchase orders or Wholesale orders. An admin chooses which ones your workspace uses in Settings › Modules.

A module that is switched off disappears from the menu for everybody at once. That makes it the first thing to check when a whole section is missing. See How to switch parts of Tideswell on and off.

Object

A kind of record your team defines. The New Object dialog describes it as "A record type your team can fill in, filter and link to elsewhere." Tideswell arrives knowing about tasks, purchase orders, suppliers, customers and stock; an Object is how you add Repairs, Fabric trials or Press loans.

You meet the word twice. Objects is an area in the menu, and Settings › Objects is where an admin builds them. See What is an Object?.

Outreach

Everything the shop owes a customer: a call back, an email, a text. It lives in Customers › Outreach, one list the whole team shares, and each one can be claimed and closed with a note. See How to log and work through outreach.

Owner

Who is accountable for a record: a person, a team, both, or neither. An owner is not necessarily the person who created the record.

Owning something grants no extra permission, so the owner of a purchase order is not automatically allowed to approve it. See How to set a record's status and owner.

Record

One entry of an Object: one repair, one supplier, one purchase order. A record holds values in its fields, can sit at a stage, can have an owner, and can be linked to other records anywhere in the workspace. See How to add and edit a record.

Role

Your level of access in the workspace: member, lead or admin. Admin is set on a person, lead comes from leading a department, and member is everybody else.

Every row on Settings › Permissions names the lowest of those three roles that may do the thing. For some actions, such as setting a task to repeat, you count as a lead only in the department you lead. See How to work out who can do what in your workspace.

Stage

The step a record is at. A purchase order starts at Draft and moves through Awaiting approval, Approved, Order placed, Acknowledged, then Closed or Cancelled. Outreach moves through Open, Called and Done.

Admins set the stages for purchase orders, outreach, special orders, project items and production orders in Settings › Stages. For your own Object they live on its Statuses tab, and a record shows them in a Status control. See How to set up the stages a record moves through and How to set a record's status and owner.

Each stage keeps a meaning underneath its name, so renaming one leaves approvals and automations working. Your workspace may use its own words for these; Settings › Stages shows them.

Sub-task type

One of the kinds of work your team does, named by you in Settings › Sub-task types. You tag a planned item with them, and each department picks its own sub-task defaults from the same list, so a sub-task list reads like that team's own checklist. See How to set up the kinds of work your team does.

Workspace

The private space for one company. Every channel, task, supplier, record and setting belongs to exactly one workspace, and the people in it are its members.

The one kind of outsider is a supplier's rep you invite from a supplier's page. They sign in to a page of their own that shows only that supplier's purchase orders, and they never see the rest of the workspace. See How to let a supplier's rep confirm their orders.

Which words look alike and are not the same?

These five pairs cause more confusion than the rest of the vocabulary put together, and each one has a practical consequence.

• Object and record. The Object is the shape (Repairs, with its fields and statuses); the record is one entry (repair RPR-1042). Admins build Objects in Settings › Objects, and everybody works with records from the Objects area.
• Department and channel. A department is a team with members and leads, and it is what makes somebody a lead. A channel is a room where messages are posted, open to everyone or private.
• Module and permission. A module that is switched off hides a whole area from everybody. A permission you do not hold hides something from you alone. Tell them apart first using How to work out who can do what in your workspace.
• Owner and creator. The owner is who is accountable now; the creator is who typed it in. Changing the owner leaves the history as it was recorded, covered in How to comment on a record and see its history.
• Stage and field. A stage is where the record is in its life, chosen from one list. A field is a value on the record. A record of your own Object shows a Status control once an admin has given that Object its statuses.

Which of these words does your team choose?

Several of them, which is why these docs describe them rather than quoting them. Your Objects have the singular and plural names you gave them, your stages read in your words, your departments are yours, and each department names the thing it plans.

Settings › Terminology also renames Tideswell's own kinds of record, such as Purchase Order, Supplier, Customer and Task, in the singular and the plural. The new word shows in record lists and on record pages for everyone.

Menu labels, Settings rows and page titles keep Tideswell's word. See How to use your own words for Tideswell's records.

Lists such as Settings › Outreach types, Settings › Bill reasons and Settings › Custom fields hold entries your workspace writes itself. At Fairgreen Golf Co., Production plans Preps and Marketing plans Editorials, and both are the same feature.

Screen names that these docs give in bold, such as Settings › Objects, are fixed and read exactly as written. See How to rename, reorder or retire an Object for what happens to existing links when you rename an Object.

Where should you go next?

If you are defining how your workspace works, start at What is an Object?, which covers Objects from planning through to permissions.

If you are using a workspace somebody else set up, start at Working with records. And if a number on screen is not what you expected, How to read Tideswell's numbers and dates explains what a blank, a dash and a currency each mean.