Architecture and ownership
What Communication owns, what it mirrors and what it never knows.
Communication owns four tables: Channel, Channel Binding, Notification Rule and Message. Core owns Organization, Person, Membership, Department, Team, Classification Term and Tags. Tooling and Access owns Tool and Tool Workspace. The nine mirrors are read-only copies; only the link columns added in this base are local.
Follow the data
Core and Tooling → mirrors in Communication → local links from Channel, Channel Binding, Notification Rule and Message. A Channel lives in a Tool and Tool Workspace. A Channel Binding points one Channel at one subject (Team, Department, Organization or Agreement) for one purpose. A Notification Rule names the channel, the record type and the audience (Team, Department or Membership). A Message links its Channel, its Rule and its recipients (Membership or Person).
n8n flows write Message rows from outside. The Daily Digest resolves its Slack recipient through Tooling and Access, then finds the recipient’s Membership in this base by the shared Membership # and writes the delivery row. See Daily Digest delivery.
Mirrors and sync direction
| Mirror | Source | Local columns |
|---|---|---|
| Organization (mirror) | Core Record Types, Organizations | Channel Bindings, Tags (local) |
| Person (mirror) | Core Record Types, People | Messages (Recipient), Tags |
| Membership (mirror) | Core Record Types, Membership | Notification Rules (Audience), Messages (Recipient), Tags |
| Department (mirror) | Core Record Types, Department | Channel Bindings, Notification Rules (Audience), Tags |
| Team (mirror) | Core Record Types, Team | Channel Bindings, Notification Rules (Audience), Tags |
| Classification Term (mirror) | Core Record Types, Classification Term | Notification Rules (Record Type), Tags |
| Tags (mirror) | Core Record Types, Tags | Inverse links from every table |
| Tool (mirror) | Tooling and Access, Tools | Channels, Tags |
| Tool Workspace (mirror) | Tooling and Access, Tools Workspaces | Channels, Tags |
Table descriptions state a one-way, read-only sync from the source. Check the source view and refresh interval in the Airtable sync settings before relying on them. Source links that arrive as links (for example Membership → Member) have no inverse here; several source links arrive as text (for example Organization → Memberships), so they cannot be followed inside this base.
Preserve the boundaries
Communication never links a Relationship, Deal, Receivable or Observation. A consuming base reads messages through its own synced view and links them locally; that sync does not exist yet. A Message is one delivery attempt, not a conversation and not a business result: a KPI answer is an Observation in KPIs & OKRs, a sales contact is an Interaction in CRM. A Channel Binding says where messages for a subject go; it grants no access. A Notification Rule says who is told; it never decides who may read a record.
Rules recorded in Systems Central
Systems Central lists six rules for this system. None is enforced by the base itself.
| Rule | Enforcement |
|---|---|
| A message is one delivery attempt, unique by external ID | Manual review |
| A sent message is never edited | Manual review |
| Work finds its channel through a channel binding | Manual review |
| The person behind an account comes from its binding | Automation and manual review |
| Communication never knows sales or billing records | Not enforced |
| Email threads map to one interaction, emails to messages | Not enforced (Email Logging inactive) |
Correct facts at the source
Correct people, organizations, memberships and catalogs in Core; tools and workspaces in Tooling and Access. Correct channels, bindings, rules and message links here. Mirror descriptions declare the copies read-only; do not use a mirror column to fix a source fact.