Index | Memos

Memos

Summary

Memos represent a means to collect the thoughts of a particular user at a particular time to a particular data record. Orthogonal to the underlying data record, memos implement expressions of human reasoning, much like a fragment of a conversation. While a single memo may reflect a single idea, the sequence of memos pertaining to a data record constitutes a longitudinal train of thought contextualised to the underlying data record.

A memo always relates to a particular data record, i. e. table row. It may complement the optional messages saved in the audit log for each update of that record. However, rather than being linked to a specific version of a record, memos reflect reasoning and knowledge independently of the changes performed. You may picture a data set as a stone wall and the data records as its bricks, in which case memos are the mortar between the bricks; they enrich the semantics of the raw data with pragmatic reasoning.

Enabling memos

To use memos in a table, you need to modify the table schema. Setting the data type of the column in question to memo links a table column to the memos of the table. Per default, the table cells of this column are empty (—). Once you create memos, the cells of the column indicate the number of memos available for each table row.

Using memos

Use either of the following options to display the memos of a row, or to add a memo to that row:

• Click the table cell of the table column that displays memos.
• Select Memos from the action menu of the row. This requires an action called memo in the menu.
• Select the speech bubble from the control panel in either the table view or list view. In table view, Tables displays a list of all the memos of the table irrespective of the row. In list view, Tables displays the memos of the row whose values you currently inspect, which is reflected in the row ID being pre-filled in the querying form.

You can limit the list of memos by specifying an author, a time period or a text fragment. Notice that if you search for text fragments, the character string you search for is case sensitive, i. e. you will not find any memos that use upper or lower case variants of your text.