Notes

A Note is a short, permanent comment you attach to a record in COMS/BMS — a Purchase Order, a Work Package, a Company, and so on. Notes are how you capture the context that the record's own fields have nowhere to hold: why a decision was made, what a client said on a call, what someone still needs to chase.

They are designed as an audit trail, not a chat. Once a note is 24 hours old it is locked forever — it cannot be edited and it cannot be deleted, by anyone. Write them with that in mind.

Every Notes tab carries the same reminder: notes are permanent records.

Where you will find Notes

Notes appear as a Notes tab on the detail page of a record — Purchase Orders, Work Packages and Companies among them. The tab carries a count badge showing how many notes you are allowed to see, and only loads when you open it.

Notes are being rolled out across COMS, and more record types gain the tab over time. Rather than working from a fixed list, just look for a Notes tab on the record you are working with — if it is there, it works exactly as described on this page.

ℹ️ Good to know: If you can view a record, you can read its notes and add your own — there is no separate Notes permission to request. What you can see is then narrowed by each note's sharing setting.

⚠️ Heads up: Notes are an internal-staff feature. Customer contacts and vendors on the external portal can never see notes on any record, on any page — so a note is a safe place for internal commentary about a supplier or a client.

What to use Notes for

The test is simple: would the next person to open this record be confused without it? Good notes explain something the record cannot explain itself. Below are a few examples of what Notes can be used for:

• Record a decision and who made it. “Client confirmed the Phase 2 scope change on the 14 Aug progress call. Budget impact will be picked up in the next revision.” Six months later this is the only evidence that the overspend was authorised.
• Explain something that looks wrong. A cancelled audit with costs already accrued, a budget that was adjusted mid-year, a PO raised against an unusual work package — a one-line note stops the same question being asked at every review.
• Leave a handover for whoever picks the record up. “WP created for the development team to charge time against for the process improvement project.”
• Capture a verbal or email agreement that has no home anywhere else in COMS, so it is attached to the record rather than buried in an inbox.
• Hold text that a field refuses to accept because of the character limits described below.

What Notes are not for

• Not a to-do list. Notes cannot be assigned, ticked off, or reminded on. Use Tasks for work that needs doing.
• Not a message. Adding a note emails nobody — not even the people you share it with. If someone needs to act, tell them directly as well.
• Not a scratchpad. Anything you type is permanent after 24 hours. Do not use a note to park a draft or a guess you expect to tidy up later.
• Not for files. Notes are plain text only — no attachments. Upload documents to the record's documents area instead.

Holding text the older fields cannot store

This is one of the most useful things Notes do, and it is worth understanding why.

Many fields on Projects, Work Packages, Tasks, Purchase Orders, etc. records are stored in the original BMS database, and are still read by the old BMS application. That system predates modern text handling, so those fields can only store a limited set of characters — roughly the standard Western alphabet, plus accented letters like é, ü and ñ. Anything outside that range cannot be saved without corrupting the data, so COMS blocks it rather than letting it through.

You will hit this when you try to save a field containing:

• Emoji — a ✅ or ⚠️ pasted in to flag something
• Non-Western alphabets — Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Greek, Cyrillic
• Mathematical, scientific and technical symbols — ±, ≤, ≥, µ, Ω, ², ½, ≠, °C written with special characters
• Typographic marks that Word and Outlook insert automatically — curly quotes, en and em dashes, ellipses, bullet characters

The error names the exact characters it cannot store, for example:

“The PROJECT_DESCRIPTION field contains characters this field can't store: 复 日. Use plain text — no emoji, CJK, or special symbols.”

ℹ️ Good to know: Pasting from Word or Outlook usually works. COMS silently converts the typographic characters those programs insert — curly quotes become straight quotes, long dashes become hyphens, ellipses become three dots. You only see an error when characters remain that have no plain-text equivalent, such as emoji or another alphabet.

Notes have none of these restrictions. They are stored in modern COMS tables and accept any text at all — every alphabet, every symbol, emoji included. So when a field rejects your text, the answer is not to mangle the information until it fits:

1. Put a plain-text version in the field itself, so the old BMS application still shows something sensible.
2. Add a note on the same record with the full text, exactly as it should read.

For example, if a supplier's legal name is written in Chinese characters, or a technical requirement is only meaningful as ±0.5 µm at 25 °C, the description field gets a simplified version and a note carries the accurate one.

💡 Pro Tip: On a Purchase Order the error message points you here directly: “If you need to keep those characters, add an entry under the Notes tab on this Purchase Order instead — notes accept any text and can be kept private or shared with specific staff.” The same approach works on every record that has a Notes tab.

⚠️ Heads up: Because the note is the only place holding the accurate text, make sure you get it right within the first 24 hours — after that it locks like any other note, and the only fix is a second note carrying the correction.

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Adding a note

1. Open the record and click the Notes tab.
2. Click Add Note.
3. Type your note. You have 500 characters — a live counter shows how many you have used.
4. Choose who should see it (see below).
5. Click Save.

The Add Note form: note text with its 500-character counter, and the three sharing options.

The note appears immediately at the top of the list — notes are always shown newest first, and that order cannot be changed.

💡 Pro Tip: Line breaks are kept exactly as you type them, so a note with two or three short lines stays readable. There is no bold, italic, or bullet formatting — and no clickable links, so paste a reference number rather than a URL where you can.

Who can see a note

Every note has one of three sharing settings, chosen when you write it:

Setting	Who can read it	Use it when
Share with everyone with access	Anyone who can view the record.	The default, and the right choice for most notes — the point of a note is usually that the next person sees it.
Keep private (only me)	Only you.	A reminder to yourself that would only be noise to everyone else.
Share with selected staff	You, plus the staff you pick.	Something commercially sensitive or not yet confirmed — a rate negotiation in progress, for example.

Choosing “Share with selected staff” reveals a picker for the staff who should see the note.

In the list, each note's Visibility column tells you where it stands: Visible to all, Only me, or the names of the staff it was shared with.

ℹ️ Good to know: Sharing is a visibility setting, not a notification. Nobody is emailed or alerted when you share a note with them — they will simply see it next time they open the record.

ℹ️ Good to know: If a colleague shares a note with you and nobody else, it shows in your list as Only me. That is expected — you are the only person who can see it.

Reading and searching notes

The Notes tab offers two ways to read the list, and remembers which one you chose:

• Table View — a column each for the note, its author, its visibility and when it was created. Best for scanning a long history.
• List View — each note as a card, colour-coded by visibility (green for everyone, blue for private, amber for shared with selected staff). Best for reading notes in full.

Table View, showing all three visibility settings on one record.

List View colour-codes each note by who can see it.

Use the Filters bar to search. The Keyword box matches the text of the note only — it does not search author names or dates. Type a term and press Enter or click Apply.

A note that has been edited is marked (edited) next to its date. The date shown is always when the note was created.

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The 24-hour rule

This is the most important thing to understand about Notes. A note can be changed only during the first 24 hours after it was created, and only by the person who wrote it. After that it is a permanent record.

When	What the author can do	What everyone else can do
Within 24 hours of creating it	Edit it or delete it.	Nothing — no buttons appear.
After 24 hours	Nothing. The note is locked.	Nothing — except a super-admin, who can Force Edit but still cannot delete it.

⚠️ Heads up: Deletion is permanently off after 24 hours — for everyone, including super-admins. There is no override, no request process, and no way to remove a note once the window has passed. Treat every note as though it will be read at an audit.

⚠️ Heads up: Editing a note does not restart the clock. The 24 hours always runs from when the note was first created, so a note you edit at hour 23 still locks one hour later.

💡 Pro Tip: Because the window is short and absolute, re-read a note before you save it — particularly names, figures and dates. If you spot a mistake in a locked note, do not try to get it removed: add a new note correcting it. The correction and the original both stay on the record, which is exactly what an audit trail should look like.

Editing a note (within 24 hours)

1. Find your note in the list and click the blue pencil button.
2. Change the text or the sharing setting. You cannot move a note to a different record.
3. Click Save.

Deleting a note (within 24 hours)

1. Find your note and click the red bin button.
2. Confirm at the Delete Note prompt.

The delete confirmation. This button only exists on your own notes, for their first 24 hours.

If you no longer see edit and delete buttons on a note you wrote, the window has closed.

Force Edit (super-admins)

Super-admins see a red Force Edit button on notes they cannot normally touch — someone else's note, or one past its 24 hours. It exists for correcting genuine errors, such as personal data recorded on the wrong record.

Force Edit warns that it is bypassing the normal lock.

⚠️ Heads up: Force Edit changes the note's text only — it is not a delete. Nobody can delete a note past 24 hours through COMS. Use it sparingly and only where the record would otherwise be wrong.

Quick reference

Question	Answer
How long can I edit my note?	24 hours from when you created it.
How long can I delete my note?	24 hours from when you created it. Never after that — not by anyone.
Does editing extend the window?	No. The clock always runs from creation.
How long can a note be?	500 characters.
Can I attach a file?	No. Notes are plain text.
Can a note contain emoji or Chinese characters?	Yes — notes accept any text. It is the older Project, Work Package, Task and Purchase Order fields that cannot.
Does anyone get emailed?	No — not even the staff you share the note with.
Can external users see notes?	No. Notes are internal staff only.
Can I edit someone else's note?	Only a super-admin can, via Force Edit.
Can I delete someone else's note?	No — nobody can, at any time.
What order are notes shown in?	Newest first. This cannot be changed.