Chapter 11 · Every screen, part by part
The professors list
Eleven thousand rows, and the whole design of this screen is about getting from that to the five people worth your afternoon.
Finding people#
1 — Search. Matches names only, not fields or research text. It is for when you know who you are looking for.
2 — Quick views. One click each, and they are the fastest way in:
| View | Who it shows |
|---|---|
| All | Everybody |
| Waiting on you | Research finished and is stopped at a decision you have to make |
| Researched | On the record, no match scored yet |
| High match | Scored well against your profile — your shortlist |
| Needs draft | Matched, no email written |
| Draft to review | An email exists and is waiting for you to read it |
| Stale research | Records old enough to be worth refreshing |
3 — The count. How many rows match what you have selected, out of the total. Watch this while you add filters — it is the fastest way to tell whether a filter did what you thought.
4 — Filters. These combine, and each one answers a different question:
| Filter | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| Stage | Where is this person in the pipeline? |
| Data | How much do we trust what is recorded? |
| Recruiting | Are they taking students? |
| Rank | How senior are they — assistant, associate, full, chaired? |
| Appointment | What kind of post do they hold — tenure-track, teaching, adjunct, visiting…? |
| Research | Will research run for this person? |
| Admin post | Do they hold something like a deanship or a department chair? |
| Fit | A range of match scores |
| Verified | When the record was last checked against its sources |
Two of these are easy to confuse, and worth getting straight:
- Rank is not Appointment. Rank is seniority — assistant, associate, professor, distinguished chair. Appointment is the kind of post — tenure-track, teaching professor, adjunct, visiting. A visiting associate professor has a rank and an appointment, and they say different things.
- Research is about the future, not the past. Will be researched means research will run for this person; it does not mean it already has. For that, use Stage. On a fresh workspace those two sets barely overlap.
5 — Saved. Once a set of filters is doing real work, save it and it becomes one click next time.
6 — Columns. Twenty-two columns exist; five are hidden by default. Show the ones you care about and the choice is remembered.
Reading a row#
1 — Professor. The name, with their appointment underneath. This column stays put when you scroll the table sideways, so you never lose track of whose row you are reading.
2 — Stage. Where they are in the pipeline. This is the one column that summarises everything else:
| Stage | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Not researched | Nobody has looked yet |
| Being researched | A run is in progress |
| Waiting on you | Stopped at a decision only you can make |
| Researched | On the record. No match scored |
| Matched | A match exists |
| Draft ready | An email has been written |
| Contacted | You have written to them |
| Replied | They answered |
3 — University. Where they are. Clicking through opens the university.
4 — Field. Their research area, shortened to fit. The full version is on their page.
5 — Fit. The match score, once one exists. — means no match has been scored, which is
different from a low score.
6 — Verdict. What the match concluded in one word, beyond the number — the number tells you the ranking, this tells you the recommendation.
7 — Outreach. The state of the conversation: Not contacted, then contacted, replied, and onwards.
8 — Email. Whether you have an address for them. On file means yes. Without one, nothing downstream can send anything — which is the point at which it is worth checking their faculty page yourself.
9 — Links. Their faculty page, personal site, Google Scholar, ORCID, LinkedIn, GitHub, as small icons. A greyed-out icon means that link has not been found.
Changing something on a row#
Open the row's menu at the far right and choose Edit status. A drawer opens with the editable fields for that person — recruiting state, and whether research runs for them — each with its label and what the value actually decides.
This is a drawer rather than a dropdown in the cell on purpose. In a list of eleven thousand near-identical rows, a click one row off target silently edits the wrong person, and nobody notices. The drawer knows whose record it is on and says so at the top.
Your choice here beats the workspace rule. Setting somebody to Research or Skip overrides Settings → Research Batches for that person only. Setting them back to Follow rule hands them back to the rule — which is not the same as Skip, and is why there are three options rather than a switch. See §3.2a.