Data Types and Entity Names

Every kind of record in Project Notes has a name: projects, contacts, item_tracker and so on. Plugins use these names to put menus on the right records, to read and save data, and in the [$entity.column.row] placeholders that My Shortcuts and other plugins fill in.

Names

Plugins and shortcuts use the names in the first column. Project Notes XML files still use the database's own table names, which differ for three entities.

Name	XML table name	Where the records appear
projects	projects	Project List, Project Page
contacts	people	Contacts List
companies	clients	Companies List
project_team	project_people	Project Page, Team tab
project_locations	project_locations	Project Page, Files & Folders tab
project_notes	project_notes	Notes, and the Project Page Notes tab
meeting_attendees	meeting_attendees	A meeting's Attendees
item_tracker	item_tracker	Item Tracker, and action items on projects and meetings
item_tracker_updates	item_tracker_updates	A tracker item's comments
status_report_items	status_report_items	Project Page, Status Report tab
project_email_audiences	project_email_audiences	Saved report and meeting audiences

Columns follow the same rule. A column that points to a contact is contact_id (stored as people_id or person_id), and one that points to a company is company_id (stored as client_id). The company's name is company_name.

Menus

A plugin's record menu names one entity. Right-click a record of that kind and the menu appears; on the Project Page, for example, a menu for project_team shows on the Team tab's rows and one for project_locations on Files & Folders. A menu that names no entity is a global menu and appears under Plugins in the app menu.

Placeholders

A placeholder has the form {{ entity.column }}: the entity and a column of the record you right-clicked. {{ projects.project_number }} is the project number of the project, {{ contacts.email }} the email address of the contact. For a row of a related list, add the row number after the entity: {{ project_team.2.role }}. Use * for every row: {{ project_team.*.email }} lists all the email addresses, separated by commas.

Shortcuts saved before plugins moved to JavaScript used the XML names ([$people.name.1]). My Shortcuts converts them to the current names and the {{ }} form the first time it starts.

Finding the columns

Export a record to XML to see every column it has, or ask from a plugin with data.schema("projects"), which also gives each column's type and allowed values. See JavaScript Plugins.