How Grindstone thinks

This topic explains the handful of things every Grindstone workspace is made of and how they fit together: people, work items, assignments, time slices, traits and list values. The rest of the documentation builds on these words.

The short version

• A person does the work.
• A work item is something to work on.
• An assignment is one person’s work on one work item.
• A time slice is a stretch of time spent on an assignment.
• A trait is a field, such as a name, a due date or a client, that one of these kinds of things has.
• A list value is one of the choices a list trait offers.

Your time is recorded as time slices. Everything else describes whose time it was, what it was for, and how you want to sort and report it.

People

Every workspace has people, and you are one of them. When you set up a workspace, the name you give under Introduce Yourself is your name there, and the time you record belongs to you.

A folio is a workspace just for you, but it can still hold other people. A Grindstone 4 database you import, for example, brings in everyone it recorded. You can’t delete yourself from the workspace you’re in.

Work items

A work item is anything you spend time on: a project, a task, a matter, a course, a chore. Work items are what you pick when you start timing, and you can create one on the spot from the Switch list. See Timing your work.

Assignments

An assignment pairs one person with one work item. Its Person and Work Item are chosen when it’s created and can’t be changed afterward.

Assignments are where per-person facts about a work item go. In the General Time Tracking preset, for example, each assignment has an Estimate, a Due date and a Complete date, so two people on the same work item can each have their own.

You time an assignment, not a bare work item. When you start timing a work item, Grindstone times your assignment on it that the Active Assignments view lists first. If that view lists none of yours, Grindstone creates a new assignment for you. What counts as active is up to that view’s filter, which your preset sets. In General Time Tracking, an assignment stops being active once its Complete date is set.

Time slices

A time slice is a stretch of time, with a start and an end, spent on an assignment. Because the assignment names a person and a work item, every time slice says who worked on what, and when.

You time one thing at a time (see Timing your work). Starting to time something begins a new time slice, and stopping ends it. Time slices can have traits of their own, such as notes, and you can change them afterward. See Editing recorded time.

Traits

A trait is a field. Each trait has a subject, which is the kind of thing it belongs to, and a data type, which is the kind of value it holds. Both are chosen when the trait is created and can’t be changed afterward. See Traits.

The subject can be People, Work Items, Assignments, Time Slices, Traits, or the values of a list.

The data type can be text (Single-line Text or Multi-line Text), a number (Integer, Floating Point Number or Decimal Number), Date & Time, Time Span, Date & Time Range, Boolean, a List Value, or a reference to a Person, Work Item, Assignment, Time Slice or Trait.

Traits are things in the workspace too, so traits can have traits. That’s how a trait gets the name it shows as a field and its place among the other fields. Traits covers adding and arranging them.

Lists and list values

A trait whose data type is List Value is a list: its value is always one of a set of choices you define, such as clients, phases or areas of life. Each choice is a list value.

List values are things in the workspace too, so they can have traits of their own. Each list has its own Selection and Traits views among the system views, and Create View offers each list alongside the built-in kinds. See Traits.

Views and system views

You see all of this through views: live tables of one kind of thing, filtered, sorted and calculated with formulas (see Formulas). Some views are yours, under User Views. Others are System Views Grindstone relies on:

• Selection views decide what’s offered and how each thing is labeled wherever you pick one, such as a person or work item for a field. The Switch list starts from the view your preset chose, or the work items’ Selection view if it chose none, and you can pick another view from the list itself. See Views.
• Traits views list the fields of each kind of thing and the order they appear in. See Views.
• Active holds Active Assignments, which decides which of your assignments timing a work item uses. See Views.

Where it all lives

People, work items, assignments, time slices, traits, list values and views all belong to the workspace they were made in. The preset you set a workspace up from decides which traits, views, statuses and other pieces it starts with. See Presets and Workspaces and folios.