Editing in the grid
Editing a cell does not write to a table. The grid hands the change to the service that owns that record — the same service the ordinary screen and the Assistant's tools call — and shows you what it did. A field that service will not accept cannot be written from the grid either, and the refusal you see is its refusal, in its own words.
The path an edit takes#
- You type in a cell
- The grid sends one field change for one record
- The workspace is resolved and the request is checked against the allowlist
- The owning service validates and applies it
- Row-level security confirms the row is yours
- The audit trail records what changed
- The cell shows the value the service actually stored
The last step is worth reading twice. What appears in the cell afterwards is what was stored, not what you typed. Where a service normalises a value — trimming it, canonicalising a phone number, resolving a name to an existing record — you see the normalised result immediately, which is the fastest way to find out that your input was understood differently from how you meant it.
What accepts an edit#
| Kind of field | Editable here | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A plain attribute the service owns — a name, a note, a stage | Yes | This is what the service exists to change |
| A value derived from other records | No | Writing it would make the derivation and the stored value disagree |
| An identifier | No | Identity is how everything else points at the row — see stable identifiers |
| A field governed by a rule | Only where the rule allows | Compliance and suppression are not suspended inside a grid |
| A field on a record type that has no such field | There is no column | The columns are the record's fields, nothing more |
Why an edit is refused#
- It failed validation
- The service rejected the value — a malformed address, a stage that does not exist, a date that cannot be. The message names the field and the reason.
- A rule forbids it
- Clearing a do-not-contact entry, for instance, is not something the grid does casually. Compliance decisions have their own route and their own record.
- The field is derived or read-only
- The column shows a computed value. Change what it is computed from.
- The row is not yours to change
- You are looking at a workspace you are not entitled to write to. This reads as a refusal rather than a missing row.
- The value is unchanged
- Submitting the same value again is not an error and writes nothing, so it leaves no audit entry either.
None of these are grid faults, and none of them have a workaround inside the grid. That is the point: there is exactly one way to change a record, and it validates the same way every time. The grid would not save an edit walks through the same list as a symptom rather than as a rule.
Editing here is your action, not Connect's#
Autonomy governs what Connect may do without asking — send a reply, place a call, act on a channel. It does not gate what a person does with their own records. Typing into a cell is your change, attributed to you, and it does not wait in Needs You for anybody's approval.
The Assistant is on the other side of that line. When it changes a record it uses data_update, which is a writing tool: it proposes, you confirm, and the audit records both the tool and the person who allowed it. Two actors, one service, separate authority — the separation argued for in separating the agent's authority from the person's.
Questions#
Can I paste a column of values into the grid?
The grid changes one field on one record at a time, and a set of rows through bulk actions. Bringing outside data in is what import is for, and it validates every row before anything is written.
Why did my typed value change after I pressed enter?
The owning service normalised it. The grid shows what was stored rather than what you typed, so a trimmed, reformatted or resolved value appears at once. If the result is not what you meant, that is the moment to notice.
Is an inline edit recorded anywhere?
Yes. Every change that alters the workspace leaves an audit entry naming what changed and who changed it, whether it was made in the grid, on a record screen, or by the Assistant with your confirmation.