@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.
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 deliberately can’t be created from the @mention box: 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.