@Mentions
An @mention is a way to link a piece of text directly to a person. Type @ followed
by a name and mizuiro will suggest matches from your employee directory and your
Contacts. Select the person and the @mention becomes a live link to their profile.
@mentions are supported across most modules: tasks, touchpoints, awards, kudos, contacts, training records, conference attendances, incidents, performance reviews, performance concerns, improvement plans, and written warnings.
Two related terms, one a tool and one a thing:
- A person’s handle is the unique identifier mizuiro stores for them, like
jim_smithoracme_vendor. It’s what sits between the@and the next space. - An @mention is the tool you use to drop that handle into a record. You @mention
someone - by typing
@and picking them - and their handle goes into the text as a live link to their profile.
So the @mention is the action; the handle is what it brings in and points at.
Type @ in any supported text field. A dropdown appears with matching employees and
contacts as you type - usually a name or two is enough to find the right person. Select
from the list and the @mention is added.
The @mention appears in the text as @ followed by the person’s handle - for example,
@jim_smith or @acme_vendor. When the record is saved, that string renders as a
link to the person’s profile.
If the person you’re looking for doesn’t appear, they may not be in your directory yet. Employees are added from Sidebar → People; external people can be added as contacts from Sidebar → Contacts.
@mention search runs across both your employee directory and your Contacts at the same
time. There’s no separate syntax for external people - @ covers both.
If you’re @mentioning a contact, their handle is generated from their name when they’re added to the Contacts directory. You can find it on their contact profile page.
When you @mention a person, two things happen:
The text becomes a link. Anyone reading the record can click the @mention to go directly to that person’s profile.
The @mention is tracked on the contact’s profile. If you @mention a contact (not an employee), their profile page shows a Referenced in section listing every record that @mentions them. This makes it easy to find every record that involves a specific external person without searching.
NoteThe referenced-in list on a contact’s profile is filtered by your normal visibility. You only see the tasks you’d already be able to see in the task list - so an employee looking at a contact’s profile won’t see tasks outside their own.
Every person in your directory has a unique handle. For employees it’s generated from their name; for contacts it’s generated when you add them. Either way, you can change it.
Why change a handle? Usually to make someone easier to recognize at a glance -
especially when two people share a name. If you have two Jim Smiths, the auto-generated
handles won’t tell them apart, so you might set one to jim_marketing and the other to
jim_logistics. A manager can edit an employee’s handle from their profile; a contact’s
handle can be changed from their contact page.
Handles are unique, and never reused. If you try to set a handle that someone else already has, mizuiro won’t accept it - you’ll be asked to pick a different one. The same is true for any handle that has ever been used, even one that’s since been changed away from: mizuiro keeps a full history of every handle and never hands the same one out twice. A handle you retire today can’t be claimed by someone else tomorrow.
That history is also what keeps old references correct. If someone’s handle changes - you rename a vendor, an employee updates their preferred name - the @mentions already sitting in existing records still resolve to the right person; mizuiro traces them through the handle history.
Can I @mention someone in a module they don’t have access to?
Yes - the @mention is a reference, not an invitation. @mentioning a contact in a task doesn’t give that contact any access to mizuiro. It just creates a link in the text and records the reference on their profile.
Can I @mention someone who has left?
Yes. Notes often need to talk about someone who used to work with you, so they’re still in the dropdown, listed after everyone who’s still here and marked (left). The mention links to their record like any other. They aren’t notified, since they no longer have anything to do with the company’s day to day.
What if the person I need doesn’t show up in the dropdown?
They may not be in your directory yet, and how you add them depends on who they are:
- A contact (an external person) can be added on the spot. When there’s no match, the dropdown offers an “add as contact” option - fill in a couple of details and you’re dropped right back to your @mention without leaving the page. Contacts often come up in the moment, so this is by design.
- An employee has to be added first from Sidebar → People, then you can @mention them. Employee records can’t be created from the @mention box on purpose: a person’s employment record should be set up properly before they’re referenced, not conjured mid-sentence.
Can employees be @mentioned?
Yes. Employees have mention handles the same way contacts do. @mentioning an employee in a task doesn’t assign it to them - that’s what the assignee field is for. An @mention is just a reference in the text.