Views and record layouts

A collection holds your data, but it does not decide how you look at it. That is what views and layouts are for. A view is a saved way of looking at a whole collection — which entries you see and how they are arranged on screen. A layout is the arrangement of a single entry's own page. Neither changes the underlying records; they change what you and your team see when you open the collection. This guide covers both, and how each can be kept to yourself or shared with everyone who works in the collection.

Data, and how you look at it

It helps to separate two things that are easy to blur. The collection and its fields are the data — the facts of record. A view sits on top of that data and answers a different question: of everything in here, what do I want in front of me right now, and in what shape? The same Deals collection can be a tidy table for one person and a board of stages for another, at the same time, over the same entries. Getting comfortable with that separation is most of the idea.

What a view is

A view is a saved slice of a collection. It has a name, and it captures two things: which entries appear — the ones matching its filter — and which columns show for them. Save "open deals over $10k, sorted by close date" once and it is there whenever you want it, for you or for the team. Because a view is only a lens, switching between views never touches the data; it only changes what is on screen. This is the unit you will make most often as your collections fill up: instead of scrolling one long list, you keep a handful of named views for the questions you actually ask.

Filtering and columns

Two choices define a view: its filter and its columns. The filter decides which entries qualify — a status, a date range, an owner, an amount above a threshold — and Sonta gives you the operators that fit each field's type: contains and equals for text, greater-than or between for numbers, on-or-before for dates, any-of and all-of for option fields, and a check for empty. The columns decide what you see for each entry that passes. One thing to know up front: only fields marked searchable are available to filter or column on. If a field you want is missing when you build a view, that is why — it has not been made searchable on the collection, which is a field setting covered in working with collections and fields.

Shared or personal

Every view is one of two things. A shared view is visible to everyone who has access to the collection — this is how a team agrees on "the pipeline board" or "this week's jobs" and all looks at the same thing. A personal view is yours alone: your own working slice that no one else sees or has to step around. You decide which when you save it, and the person who created a shared view is the one who edits or removes it. Record layouts follow the same rule, so you can shape a page for the whole team or for how you like to work.

Ways to show a view

The same saved slice can be displayed in more than one shape, and the right one depends on the question. A table is the default — rows and columns, suited to scanning and comparing. A kanban board arranges the same entries into columns by stage, so a pipeline reads as cards you move from one stage to the next; this is where the stages you set on a collection show their value. A calendar places entries on dates by one of their date fields — useful when the work is scheduled, like bookings or due dates. Same entries, same filter underneath; only the presentation changes to match how you need to read them.

Record layouts

A view is about a collection; a layout is about a single entry. When you open one record, its page is not a fixed dump of every field — it is a layout you can arrange: blocks placed across a left column, a main area, and a right column, so the things that matter sit where you look first and the rest stays close but out of the way. A deal's page might keep its key numbers and stage in the main area, its recent activity beside them, and the linked company off to the side. Like views, a layout can be shared with the team or kept personal, and the owner is the one who changes it. The individual block types you can place are their own reference; here it is enough to know a record's page is something you shape, not something fixed.

A worked example

Take the repair shop from the collections guide, with its Work Orders. The front desk keeps a shared view called "jobs this week" — filtered to work orders scheduled in the next seven days, with columns for the customer, the status, and the amount — and shows it as a board grouped by stage, so a job visibly moves from booked to in progress to done across the day. The owner keeps a personal view of high-value open jobs, for their own eye. And a single work order opens to a layout with its details on the left, its activity history in the main area, and the customer it references on the right. One collection, several lenses, each shaped to who is looking and why.

Where to go deeper

Views and layouts assume you already have collections to look at; if you are still shaping those, start with working with collections and fields, and for the model underneath it all, understanding the Sonta data model. The step-by-step tasks — creating and saving a view, filtering and sorting, choosing a display, configuring a record layout, and the full list of block types — each have their own page in this section.