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Work with records in a view

Goal​

Create, edit, delete, search, and sort a table's records from the view grid inside an app.

Prerequisites​

  • You are signed in to the Platform Shell and have opened an app (see Open an app).
  • You have selected a table in the app's left navigation.

Steps​

  1. The selected table shows its records in a grid, using the table's default view. If the table has more than one view, choose a different one from the View picker in the command bar above the grid.

  2. To add a record, select New in the command bar and fill in the form. On the form's own command bar, select Save & Close to save it and return to the grid, or Save to save and keep the form open for more edits.

  3. To change a record, select its row with the checkbox, then select Edit in the grid's command bar. Update the form and select Save (stay on the form) or Save & Close (return to the grid). Select Close to leave without saving; if you have unsaved changes, the app asks you to confirm first — and it asks the same question if you leave any other way, including the browser's Back button or a sideways swipe on a trackpad.

  4. Some fields on a form point at a record in another table. Select the field, type part of the record's name, and pick it from the list that appears — selecting the field without typing offers the first records. The field then shows the record's name. To empty the field, select the ✕ at its edge.

  5. A date field opens a calendar when you select it. Pick a day and the field closes; a date-and-time field keeps the calendar open so you can set the hour and minute, then select Done. Three shortcuts make a distant date quick:

    • Select the month and year at the top of the calendar to see the twelve months of that year. Select a month to jump to it.
    • Select the year again to see a page of years. The arrows page twelve years at a time, so a birth date twenty-five years back is two presses and a click away.
    • Today jumps back to today, and Clear — the ✕ at the edge of the field, or the button under the calendar — empties the field. Save the record and the date is removed, not merely hidden.

    Dates are shown in your app's calendar — Gregorian or Persian, whichever the app is set to, or whichever the field itself was designed for. Whichever you see, the same instant is stored, so a record entered in one calendar reads correctly in the other.

  6. A form may also carry a file or picture field — a contact's photo, a signed delivery note. See Add a file or picture to a record; a file behaves a little differently from every other field, because on a saved record it is stored the moment you choose it rather than when you save. Where a table has been set up for it, that picture also appears in the grid beside each record's name and beside each choice in a lookup — a record with no picture yet shows the first letter of its name instead.

  7. To remove records, select one or more rows with their checkboxes, select Delete, and confirm. Edit requires exactly one selected row; Delete works on one or more selected rows.

  8. To find records, type in the Search box in the view's header, beside the column chooser. The grid narrows a moment after you stop typing (Enter applies it at once) to records whose primary column contains your text.

  9. To sort, select a column heading; select it again to reverse the order. To sort by more than one column — by status, and within each status by name — hold Shift and select the next heading. The headings show an arrow for the direction and, once there is more than one, a small number for each column's place in the order. See Sort by several columns, and filter below.

  10. To move through large tables, use Previous and Next below the grid. Select Refresh in the command bar to reload the current page.

Sort by several columns, and filter​

Above the grid, beside the column chooser, are two buttons that change what the list shows without changing any record.

Sort opens a panel listing the order as rows: Sort by the first column, then by the next, each ascending or descending. Add sort level adds a row; the × removes one; drag a row by its handle (or focus the handle and use the arrow keys) to change its place. Apply reorders the list; Reset goes back to the order the view was designed with. This panel does everything Shift+click does, and it is the way to do it without a mouse.

Filter opens the same builder a view's designer uses: conditions such as Status equals Active or Amount greater than 1000, combined with And or Or, and groups inside groups for a question like (Status is New or Open) and Owner is me. Apply narrows the list; Clear removes the filter. Your filter is added to the view's own — it narrows the view, it never shows records the view leaves out.

A dot on either button means it is in use. If the grid is empty while a filter is applied, it says so, so an empty list is never mistaken for missing data. Both last until you switch view or leave the page.

A view drawn as a tree or a calendar has none of these — no Filter, Sort, Search or column chooser — because neither is a list of rows: a tree follows its hierarchy and a calendar shows its period.

A record's form has a Related picker at the end of its tabs, listing the tables whose records point at this one — an account's contacts, an order's lines, a project's tasks.

Choose one and it opens as a tab beside the form's own, showing just those records with their view's own commands. Switch back and forth as you like; close the tab with the × on it. The form's own tabs have no ×, because a maker put those there on purpose.

New on a related tab creates a record of the related table with the link back to this one already filled in. That is what makes it the way to add a line to an order or a task to a project, rather than a list you have to leave in order to act on. The address bar carries the link too, so a refresh or a shared link lands on the same half-filled form.

Teams are the exception, and the tab says so: Users, Roles, Teams and Team Memberships are copies of things that belong to the whole organization, so their related tabs are read-only. Somebody is put in a team in the Admin Control Center, under Teams — see Put a user in a team.

Closing it brings you back to the tab. Whether you press Close or Save & Close, and whether you were adding a record or opening one that was already there, you land back on the parent record with the same related tab open — not on the related table's own list, which is somewhere you never navigated to. The address bar carries the way back as well, so this survives a refresh mid-edit.

A related tab needs a saved record, since related records hang off this one — on a record you are still creating, the picker says so.

Commands you do not see​

The command bar shows only what your role lets you do with this table. If you may not create records here, there is no New button; if you may not delete them, there is no Delete. Nothing is greyed out — a command you will never be able to use is left out rather than offered and refused.

If you may read a table but not change it, Edit reads Open instead, and the record opens as a page you can read: every field is shown, none can be typed into, and there is no Save. Being unable to change something is not a reason to be unable to look at it.

Which table you are in decides this, not which record — so the same app can let you create Contacts and only read Accounts. Ask your administrator to adjust your role if you need more (see Grant a Role Access to Records).

What happens behind the scenes​

Every action runs against your current environment under your own permissions — you can only see and change records you are allowed to. Deleting a record is permanent, which is why the app asks you to confirm first.

Hiding a command is a courtesy, not the protection itself: the platform checks your permission again on the server every time a record is read, created, changed, or deleted. That is why a command that vanishes after a role change was never the thing keeping the record safe. Searching, sorting, and paging are applied by the platform when it fetches records, so the grid always reflects the latest data for the filter you chose.

Troubleshooting​

  • The Edit or Delete action is unavailable. — Edit needs exactly one row selected and Delete needs at least one; select rows with their checkboxes first.
  • New or Delete is missing from the command bar. — your role does not grant that on this table, so the button is not shown at all. See Commands you do not see above.
  • The form has no Save button. — you may read this table but not change it, so the record opened read-only. The button is not hidden temporarily; a save would be refused.
  • A save reports a validation error. — the record breaks a rule the table enforces (for example, a required field or a value constraint). The message explains what to fix; correct the form and save again.
  • The grid says "No records." — the table has no records yet, or none match your current search. Clear the search box and press Enter to see all records.
  • I emptied a date but it came back. — clearing a field is a change like any other: it is only stored when you select Save or Save & Close. Closing the form without saving discards it along with your other edits.
  • A date reads differently from the one I picked. — the field is shown in the app's calendar, and a maker can also give a field its own display format. The stored instant is the same one you chose; only how it is written differs.
  • A delete says "Other records still point at this one". — other records link to this one through a lookup, and the message names each table and lookup. Nothing was deleted. Open the record, change or delete those records from its Related tabs, then delete it again.
  • A save says somebody else changed this record while you had it open. — another person saved the same record after you opened it. Nothing of yours was saved, so their change was not overwritten. Close the form, open the record again to see what they changed, and make your changes once more.
  • Add a file or picture to a record.
  • Open an app.
  • Switch between environments.