Records don't exist in isolation. They're part of a larger ecosystem within Tines designed to help you capture, analyze, and act on data across your workflows. To understand how it all connects, let's follow a realistic scenario from start to finish.
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Here's how Records, Stories, Cases, and Dashboards work together to handle it.
Records and Stories
Stories are your intelligent workflows in Tines. They handle the predictable, repeatable parts of your processes. In our scenario, you've built a story that receives software access requests, checks the user's department and role, and verifies the software license availability.
Your story runs, pulls back the data, and determines that this request requires manager approval. Before routing it for approval, the story captures a record that stores the request details: requester name, software requested, business justification, department, and timestamp.
Records step in to preserve that data. Even after the story run completes, the record remains queryable. Your team can search for all requests from that department, analyze approval times over time, or export request data for executive reporting.
But the relationship doesn't end there. Stories can also query existing records to inform workflow logic. Maybe your story checks if this user has requested similar software before, or looks up the average approval time for this type of request. That historical data, stored in records, helps your automation make smarter decisions.
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Records and Change control
When Change control is enabled in your Tines tenant, records are automatically classified as either live or test based on the story that captured them. Live records come from stories running in live mode and represent your production data. Test records come from stories running in draft mode. This automatic classification keeps test data separate from production data, so your dashboards and reports reflect only real operational activity.
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Records and Cases
While the story was capturing the record, it also determined that this request needs manager approval.
Cases are how you handle work that requires human judgment and collaboration. In our scenario, the story creates a case and attaches the record as an artifact. Now your IT manager doesn't just see a case title. They see the full context: all the request details from the record, neatly structured and attached right there in the case.
If the story runs additional checks (like pulling the user's previous access requests or checking current license usage), those might be captured as child records and attached as well. The case becomes a collaborative workspace with all the relevant data at your team's fingertips.
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Records and Dashboards
Now let's zoom out. This isn't the only request your team handles. You're capturing dozens, maybe hundreds, every week.
Dashboards let you visualize data from records in a single view:
A chart of access requests over time (pulled from your records)
A breakdown of request types and approval rates (also from records)
Average time to fulfillment for software requests
Top requested software or most active departments
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The full picture
Here's how the pieces connect (in practice, these steps often overlap or repeat as your workflows run):
Stories run and capture structured data as records.
Records store that data persistently, making it queryable over time.
Stories query records to inform workflow logic based on historical data.
Cases are created when something needs human attention, with relevant records attached as context.
Your team collaborates in the case, makes decisions, and resolves the issue.
Dashboards visualize records data, giving you a real-time view of trends and outcomes.