What Are Buckets?

🗃️ What Are Buckets?

Buckets in Ontraccr are custom databases designed to help you structure, link, and filter information between customers, projects, equipment, and other entities. They act as flexible connectors and containers for grouped data, enabling smarter workflows and dynamic form behavior.

🧠 Why Use Buckets?

Use buckets when you want to:

Track custom datasets (e.g. highways, contracts, test segments)
Define relationships between entities (e.g. customer → contract → project)
Enable smart filtering in forms and boards
Store detailed custom fields in each instance

📌 Example Use Cases

Roadbuilding: Each stretch of highway is its own bucket, with downstream checkpoints and GPS markers
Contract Management: A contracts bucket links specific contracts to upstream customers and downstream projects
Multi-layered Data: Nest buckets inside other buckets to model parent-child hierarchies

🔄 How Buckets Work

Each bucket supports:

Upstream linking (who it's linked to)
Downstream linking (what it links to)
Custom fields and sections
Visibility in the sidebar
Use in forms and boards with smart filtering

Buckets can link to customers, equipment, projects, or other buckets in both parent and child directions — creating a deep relational model inside your Ontraccr workspace.

🧾 Summary

Buckets are custom databases for structuring information between key entities
Each bucket supports parent (upstream) and child (downstream) connections
They are used to power smart filtering and auto-filled attributes in forms and boards
Buckets are especially useful for modeling complex real-world workflows (e.g. highways, contracts, checkpoints)
Buckets allow you to define custom fields and sections for each item stored