Glossary¶

Initiative takes a handful of perfectly ordinary words and gives them specific jobs. These are the ones where guessing from the everyday meaning will lead you somewhere wrong.

Everything else is explained on the page that owns it, and Cmd+K will find it faster than this page will.

Community¶

A workspace — one separate space for one group of people and all their work. Not a forum, and not a vibe. Your book club and your work team are two different communities, and neither can see the other. See Working with communities.

Initiative¶

A folder for one big effort inside a community, holding that effort's tools. It's also the level where you decide who's involved, which is why it matters more than "folder" suggests: its contents are visible only to its members.

And yes, the app is called Initiative too. Context usually sorts it out. See Working with initiatives.

Tool¶

Any of the nine kinds of thing that live inside an initiative: projects, files, calendars, queues, counters, dashboards, posts, galleries and wikis.

Worth knowing because they all behave alike — same sharing, same tags, same comment threads — so learning one teaches you the rest. The list has grown before. See Tools.

Handle¶

Your name plus a four-digit number, written jordan#1234. The number is what lets two people share a name, and it's part of the handle rather than decoration — somebody typing jordan alone won't find you.

It's how you're identified everywhere you haven't set a display name, and it addresses your profile at /u/jordan1234.

Presence¶

The dot under your picture: online, idle, busy or offline. Not the same as your profile status, which is the line about what you're up to, and not the same as a task's status either. Sorry. See Saying how you're around.

Full access¶

The override held by the built-in Moderator role: Moderators reach everything in their initiative regardless of how individual items are shared, and can change who else has access.

It's unique to Moderator. No other role can be given it, however much you'd like to. See Initiative roles.

Access level¶

How much somebody can do with one specific project or file: Viewer (read), Editor (read and change), or Owner (that, plus deciding who else gets in). Separate from their initiative role, and both apply. See Sharing projects & files.

Join policy¶

How an initiative lets people in: invite only (a manager adds you), by request (you ask, a manager answers), or anyone can join (one click). See How people join an initiative.

Break-glass¶

A short-lived, recorded, self-issued grant that lets platform staff reach a community they don't belong to — used instead of any standing back door, and it expires on its own. See Platform roles.

Archive vs. Trash¶

Two different safety nets, and people mix them up.

Archive tucks a finished thing out of sight, keeps everything, and lasts forever. Trash is where deleted things wait before being removed for good, for however long your admin set. Archive when the work is over; delete when it was a mistake.

Message policy¶

Who may ask to message you: Private (nobody), My communities, or Anyone. New accounts start Private, so a quiet My Messages is expected rather than broken. Every setting ends in a request you accept or decline. See Who can reach you.

Platform role vs. community role¶

Two separate ladders. A community role (member, admin or superadmin) governs one workspace. A platform role (member, support, moderator, operator, owner) governs the whole server.

Being an admin of your community gives you no authority over anybody else's. See Platform roles.

Still hit a word you don't know?¶

Press Cmd+K and type it. Search reads the contents of every page, not just their titles, so it'll take you to the sentence that explains it.