References
Inline chips that point at another document, a control, a connection label or an evidence item, and stay current as those records change.
A reference is an inline chip in your text that points at something else in the workspace. Unlike typing a name by hand, a chip resolves against live data every time the document is opened — so it shows the target's current name, and it tells the reader when the target is gone. Use one whenever a procedure names another document, a control, or a system you pull records from.
The kinds
| Kind | Points at | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Document | Another document in your workspace | Type [[ and search, or the Reference slash item |
| Control | A control record | The Reference slash item |
| Connection label | A named resource on one of your connections — the system and the exact place your records live | The Reference slash item, then the sticker sheet |
| Evidence | An item in the evidence pool | Type [[evidence: and search |
The bare [[ menu searches documents only. Evidence appears when you narrow the search yourself by typing [[evidence: first. That is deliberate: one door, one meaning.
Inserting one
Type [[ in the body. An autocomplete list opens under the caret. Keep typing to filter, press Enter to pick, Escape to close. The Reference item in the slash palette does the same thing — it types [[ for you and opens the same list, so /mcp, /control, /related and /csv all land there too.
Until you pick a target, what you typed is just characters. Abandoning the menu leaves nothing behind — no half-inserted placeholder.
A connection-label chip is created rather than searched. You choose a connection from your workspace's connections, then give the label a name and a description of the resource it binds to. Creating or changing a label needs admin access; without it the chip stays unbound instead of half-binding to something you cannot see. See Permissions.
How a chip stays live
When you open a document, every chip on the page resolves at once:
- Document chips look up the current document list you have access to and show the document's current name. Rename the target and the chip follows on the next open.
- Evidence chips resolve the exact items referenced, by id — not just the newest page of the pool.
- Control and connection label chips render from the label stored on the chip.
Results are cached for about 30 seconds, so a rename you just made may take one reload to appear. Chips share one lookup per document, so a page with many references does not fire one request each.
Editing, re-pointing and removing
Open a chip and it offers change › — a picker titled for its kind ("Change document", "Change control", "Change connection"). Picking a new target re-points the chip in place; the surrounding sentence is untouched. Document chips also offer Open document, which opens Governance → that document in a new tab. Control chips open the control record in a new tab. Evidence has no page of its own, so evidence chips do not open anywhere.
To remove a chip, delete it like text. It behaves as a single unit — one backspace takes the whole chip, not the last letter of its label.
Copying a chip into another document carries the reference with it. One case has a side effect worth knowing: paste a connection-label chip into a control's document and that connection is attached to that control as a source, so the control is allowed to read from it. The grant does not travel automatically with a copy otherwise — it is earned in the document the chip lands in.
When the target is missing, or you lack access
A document or evidence chip whose target has been deleted, archived, or is in a team you do not belong to renders as a broken reference: it shows the raw id where the name should be. That is the honest signal — the same document can show a healthy chip to a colleague on that team and a broken chip to you.
Control, connection-label and file chips do not report broken. They keep rendering calmly from the label stored on the chip even if the record behind them is gone, because a false "broken" on those kinds would strike valid older references. Do not read a healthy-looking chip of those kinds as proof the target still exists — confirm it on the control or connection itself.
If a connection is disconnected or its access expired, chips pointing at its labels still render; what breaks is the record fetch behind them. Reconnect from the connections page. See Controls and evidence.
Where references show up later
References are part of the document body, so they travel with it: into the sealed copy sent for review, into the published version, into version comparisons, and into exports. A reviewer comparing two versions sees a re-pointed chip as a change like any other. See Versions and history.