This glossary defines the words SmartSuite uses, from Action to Workspace, in alphabetical sections. Each entry is one or two sentences and links to the article that explains the term; the five building blocks (workspace, solution, table, record, field) come first.

About 15 minutes to read; use it as a reference minutes.

Most visitors to this page arrive with one of these tasks instead. Each line opens the page that answers it.

Workspace: Your SmartSuite account. A company or team usually shares one; each workspace has its own plan, members and solutions, and you can belong to several.

Solution: The container for one business process: its tables, views, dashboards and automations. Solutions appear as tiles on the home page, grouped by Category.

Table: Records of one type of item, such as projects, tasks or products. Every solution has at least one table, shown as a tab across the top.

Record: One item in a table: one project, one task, one contact. Expand a row in Grid View to open the record page with every field.

Field: One attribute of a record and one column in Grid View. SmartSuite has more than 40 field types, from text, numbers and dates to SmartDocs and Linked Records.

Action: The step an automation runs when its trigger fires: send an email, update a record, create a record and more. An automation has one trigger and up to 10 actions.

Activity History: The log on every record of what changed, from what to what, by whom and when. Retention is 1 year on Team, 2 on Professional, 3 on Enterprise and Signature.

Administrator (Workspace Administrator): The role with full control of the workspace: members, Teams, billing, settings and every solution, including private views.

API: The REST interface that lets other systems read and write your records. Calls count toward the monthly automation runs and API calls allowance of your plan.

API key: A token tied to one member that carries that member's permissions when another application calls the API on their behalf.

Assigned To: The field that gives a record an owner. The owner is notified and sees the record in My Work.

Assignee and Assignee+: Table permission levels. Assignee: view and edit only records assigned to you. Assignee+: the same, plus create records that are auto-assigned to you.

Automation: A rule that pairs a trigger with up to 10 actions to do repetitive work for you. Runs count toward your plan's monthly allowance.

Calendar View: A view that places records on a monthly, weekly or daily calendar by a date field.

Card View: A view that shows each record as a card with the fields you choose.

Category: A group of solutions on the home page. Administrators manage Categories; Solution Managers assign solutions to them.

Cell: The meeting point of one record and one field in Grid View; the term is used only for the spreadsheet-style view.

Chart View: A view that turns records into bar, column, line, pie and other charts.

Comment: A note on a record where the team talks beside the work. Comments support @mentions and show in the Notification Center.

Commenter: A table permission level: view and comment on all records, create or edit none.

Condition: A rule a record must meet: in a filter to be shown, in an automation to continue.

Contributor: A table permission level: create records, edit only records assigned to you, view the rest.

Dashboard: A page of widgets that shows data from one or several tables and solutions: charts, lists, counts, buttons and text.

Demo data: The sample records a Solution Library template ships with. Remove them from the solution's template menu with Delete Demo Content Data; your own records stay.

Document Designer: The tool that builds PDF templates filled with record data: lines, boxes, static text and fields placed on the page.

Editor: A table permission level: create and edit your own records, view everyone else's.

Enterprise: The per-seat plan with custom pricing that adds single sign-on, SCIM, audit logs, IP restrictions, data loss prevention and European data residency, with 400,000 records per solution.

Field permissions: Who Can View and Who Can View and Edit, set per field; available on Professional and Enterprise.

Field type: What kind of data a field holds and how it behaves: Text, Number, Date, Status, Single Select, Assigned To, SmartDoc, Linked Record and more than 30 others.

Fields to Display: The toolbar setting that chooses which fields a view shows and in what order; it does not delete fields or change other views.

Filter: A view setting that hides records that do not meet its conditions; filters combine with AND and OR and are specific to each view.

Form View: A view that collects records from people who fill in a form, shared by link or embedded in a website; form submitters are not billed.

Formula: A field that calculates a value from other fields with functions and operators, as a spreadsheet does.

Full Access: The table permission level that allows creating, editing and deleting every record.

General Access: The role most members have: work in the solutions and tables shared with them or their Teams.

Grid View: The spreadsheet-style view: one row per record, one column per field, with inline editing, sorting, filtering and grouping.

Group: A view setting that collects records under headings by a field's values; specific to each view.

Guest: A member type added to a solution to reach the records assigned to them; guests see only what they are given.

Home page: The first page after sign-in: your solutions grouped by Category, with search, My Work and the profile menu in the top panel.

Integration: A connection between SmartSuite and another system, built in, through a connector service or through the API.

Invitation: The email an Administrator sends from Manage Members that adds a person to the workspace with a role and a type. A member is billed when they accept.

Kanban View: A board view with one column per value of a field such as Status, and one card per record.

Limit: A maximum set by your plan: records per solution, file storage, automation runs and API calls per month, Linked Record fields per table, Recycle Bin days.

Linked Record: A field that connects records in two tables, in the same solution or across solutions. The link is mirrored in both tables.

Locked view: A view that only its creator, a Solution Manager or an Administrator can change; Professional, Enterprise and Signature.

Map View: A view that plots records on a map from an address or location field.

Member: A person in the workspace. Every member has a role (Administrator, Solution Creator, General Access) and a type, and may hold Solution Manager on individual solutions.

Member Directory: The built-in directory of every member's profile: contact details, skills, interests and status.

My Work: The page in the top panel that lists every record, comment, checklist item and personal task assigned to you, grouped by due date.

Notification Center: The list under the bell icon of every mention, assignment and update to records you follow, with All, Unread, @mentioned and Assigned to Me tabs.

Permissions: What a member or Team can see and edit in one solution, table or field, as distinct from a role, which applies to the whole workspace.

Power Search: Search across every solution and table in the workspace from the top panel.

Primary field (Title): The first field of every table, which names each record. It cannot be removed or hidden.

Private to Me: The default permission mode of a new solution: visible only to its creator and the Administrators.

Private view: A view only its creator sees; every member can create private views on the tables they can access.

Professional: The per-seat plan at $32 per seat per month billed annually ($36 monthly), minimum 5 seats, with 100,000 records per solution and table and field permissions.

Record page: The full page of one record with every field, its comments and its Activity History; Solution Managers lay out its sections and tabs.

Recycle Bin: Where deleted records, fields, tables, solutions and Teams wait to be restored: 30 days on Team, 45 on Professional, 60 on Enterprise.

Role: What a member can do in the whole workspace: Workspace Administrator, Solution Creator or General Access. Administrators assign roles.

Saved view: Any view listed in the View Panel; its fields, sort, filter and grouping are saved for everyone who can see it.

Signature: The plan priced per solution rather than per seat, with limits, terms and support set in the contract; available through Sales.

Single sign-on (SSO): Signing in through your organization's identity provider with SAML or OpenID Connect; an Enterprise feature.

SmartDoc: The rich-text document field: formatted text, tables, images and embedded content inside a record.

Solution Creator: The role that can create solutions from templates or from scratch; a Solution Creator becomes Solution Manager of each solution they create.

Solution Library: The gallery of more than 200 templates, grouped into Core Workflows, Industry Workflows and Other Workflows, opened with Start with a Template.

Solution Manager: A permission on one solution, not a role: full control of that solution's tables, fields, permissions, automations and data.

Sort: A view setting that orders records by one or more fields.

Spotlight: A toolbar tool that highlights the records matching a find or filter while it is active; in Grid, Card, Kanban, Calendar, Timeline and Map views.

Starred item: A solution, view, record or settings page you have starred so it is listed at the top for quick access.

Status: A field type for the stage of a record, with named values that Kanban columns and automations can use.

Team (plan): The per-seat plan at $15 per seat per month billed annually ($20 monthly), minimum 3 seats, with 5,000 records per solution.

Teams: Named groups of members. Share a solution with a Team once and every member added to that Team later gets the same access.

Template: A pre-built solution from the Solution Library, installed with Use Template and then changed to fit your process.

Timeline View: A view that places records as bars on a time axis from their date fields.

Trigger: The event that starts an automation: a record is created or updated, matches conditions, a form is submitted, a schedule arrives and more.

View: A saved way of looking at one table: which fields show and how records are sorted, filtered and grouped, in one of the view types. Every view shows the same records.

View Panel: The panel on the left of a table that lists its views and folders and holds the Create New View button.

View type: The layout a view uses: Grid, Card, Kanban, Calendar, Timeline, Map, Chart, Dashboard, Form or Gantt.

Viewer: The read-only table permission level.

Widget: One block on a dashboard: a chart, a list of records, a count, a button, text or a filter.

Workspace Administration: The Administrators' settings area in the profile menu: members, Teams, plans and billing, security and workspace settings.

Next step: Start here: your first week in SmartSuite.

Last verified 26 Oct 2026.