QUALIFIED RELATIONS
The link carries what belongs to neither side.
Arthur has been CEO of Mistral since March. That fact is on neither Arthur nor Mistral: it is on the link.
A relation, not a piece of text
Typing « Mistral » into a text field creates a string. The day the company is renamed, your record lies. Nothing ties the two together, nobody can navigate, and your agents read a word without knowing what it points to. A relation points at the record itself: it follows renames, it opens in one click, and it can be traversed step by step.
Qualifying means describing the link
The role « CEO » is not a property of Arthur, who could be a director elsewhere, nor of Mistral, which has other officers. The question that settles it: if the information is true of neither record on its own, it belongs to the link. What you put there are simple fields: text, number, checkbox, date, phone, amount, status, single select, multi select, address.
A role
CEO, proxy holder, beneficial owner, signatory.
A status
In progress, closed, awaiting approval.
A period
Since when, until when.
Single, multiple, or reciprocal
A relation is single or multiple: a company has one head office, it has several contacts. It can target several kinds of object at once, or any of them when the target is not known in advance. It can also be bilateral: the object on the other side then carries the reciprocal attribute, you set the link on one side and it reads from both. Nobody maintains two mirrored fields hoping they stay in agreement.
This is what makes a workspace answerable
An agent reading « Arthur, Mistral » has to guess. An agent reading « Arthur has been CEO of Mistral since March 2024 » knows. Every qualified link removes one guess. Rollups depend on it too: to total a client's invoices, the invoices have to be linked to that client, not merely carry its name in full.
How it works
Recording that a person runs a company, and since when.
You create the relation. A relation field on Contact, targeting the Company object.
You qualify it. The link gets its own fields: a role, a status, two dates.
You link two records. And fill in the qualification in the same move.
It reads from both sides. From the contact and from the company, on screen and by your agents.