Citing records from other apps

Cite a contact, a deal or an invoice inside a message or a task and you see it with its current status: the title, whether it is open or closed, what it is worth. Swarm updates the card when the record changes, so you never read a stale snapshot.

In a message

Type # for a channel, $ for a task or % for a project: the composer inserts a reference rather than text.

A message also carries the references that arrived with it. A forward drags the original's along, and a task created from a message inherits whatever that message was carrying.

In a task

Link a task to the customer it is about from Related to, at the foot of the task's summary column, after the notifications. It searches Swarm, Wrap and Flow at once, so you say "this task is about this customer" without copying their name into the title.

The search only returns records you can already open.

When a card has nothing to show

When a card loses its data, you find out without leaving the message:

• "No access": the record exists and is not yours. It does not say what it is or whose it is.
• "Content deleted": it is gone.

Both are normal answers rather than a fault. Swarm stops showing a reference when you lose access to the record, or when somebody deletes it in its own app. The message keeps the card with what happened.

If you see "No access" and you need that record, ask for it in the app where it lives.

Creating a task from a message

Turn a message into a task from Create task, in the message's menu. You only have to pick the project.

Swarm uses the message's text as the task's description and its first line as the title. The task is born in the board's first column, with the message's references already linked and a pointer back to the original message.

Swarm then posts a line into the same conversation carrying the new task's card, so whoever was talking sees what it turned into.