Atomicwork allows you to extend your workspace beyond built-in entities like requests, assets, and changes. With Custom Objects, you can define your own kinds of records to track and manage any business data unique to your organization, such as vendors, contracts, visas, or approval delegations.

By combining custom objects with automated workflows and AI coworkers, you can build tailored solutions directly within Atomicwork to streamline your operations.

How It Works

The model has two parts:

Object types are the blueprints — you define the fields, layout, and identity of a category of records. A “Contract” type, a “Vendor” type, a “Client” type. You build these once in Settings.
Records are the instances — every Contract, Vendor, or Client your team creates. Each record gets an auto-incremented display ID based on a prefix you set on the type (CON-1, VEN-42, CLT-7).

What You Can Do With Them

Capture any structured data — text, numbers, dates, dropdowns, attachments, and relationships to people, assets, and other custom objects
Link records together — a Contract can reference its Vendor; a Project can reference its Client. Relationships are live, not copied text.
Automate on record events — run workflows when a record is created, when a field changes, or on a recurring schedule
Give your team a directory — searchable, filterable lists with saved views for different audiences (account managers, procurement, leadership)
Ask Atom — once records exist, AI agents can query and surface custom object data in conversation

Key Concepts

Display ID prefix — a short code you set on the object type that prefixes every record’s ID. Use something recognizable: CON for contracts, VEN for vendors, CLT for clients.
Scope — Global types are available across the whole organization. Workspace types are scoped to one team’s service desk. Set at creation time; can’t be changed.
Sections — fields on a record form can be organized into named groups. Useful once a type has more than 6–8 fields.
Draft vs. Published — object types start as drafts. Build out the schema, then publish. Once published, records can be created and automations can run.

Understand when to use custom objects

It is important to distinguish when to create a custom object versus using custom attributes or catalog items:

Custom Objects: Use these when the data represents an independent, reusable business entity that needs to be referenced across multiple places (such as requests, assets, and workflows). For example, an "Office" or a "Vendor" is a custom object because it can be linked to assets, IT requests, and facilities tickets.
Custom Attributes: Use these when the data is simply an extension of an existing record and will not be reused elsewhere. For more details, see our guide on Request attributes.
Service Catalog Items: Use these to define services that employees can request directly. For more details, see our guide on Service catalog and services.

Create and publish a custom object

To set up a new custom object, follow these steps:

Go to Settings > Directory under the Organization section.
Click Create and enter a name and optional description for your custom object.
Configure your object attributes. Atomicwork supports various field types including short text, numbers, dates, dropdowns, and relationships.
Define the scoping for your object. You can choose GLOBAL (org-wide) or WORKSPACE (workspace-specific) scoping. Note that scope is immutable after creation.
Click Publish to make your custom object live. Once published, it will appear in the Directory section in the left navigation menu.

Scope determines where the object type and its records are available:

Scope	When to use
Global	Organization-wide data — vendors, clients, contracts, projects. Visible across all workspaces.
Workspace	Data relevant to one team or service desk only. Scoped to a specific workspace.

Scope cannot be changed after the object type is created.

By default, every custom object includes a display_name field. This field serves as the label that appears whenever the record is referenced across the platform, such as in a request dropdown or a relationship field.

Field Types

Fields define the schema of your object type — what data each record captures and how it’s stored. Add and configure fields from the object type’s settings page under Settings → Custom Objects → [Your Type] → Fields.

Text and content

Type	Use for
Short text	Names, labels, identifiers — single line
Long text	Descriptions, notes — multi-line plain text
Rich text	Formatted content with headings, lists, links
Email	Email addresses — validated format
Phone	Phone numbers
URL	Links to external pages or documents

Numbers and values

Type	Use for
Number	Integer quantities, counts, IDs
Decimal	Contract values, billing rates, amounts needing decimal precision

Dates

Type	Use for
Date	Start dates, expiry, deadlines — date only
Date & time	Timestamps that need time precision

Selections

Type	Use for
Dropdown	Single selection from a defined list
Multi-select	Multiple selections from a defined list
Nested dropdown	Hierarchical options — e.g. Region → Country

Other

Type	Use for
Checkbox	Boolean on/off flag
Rating	Score or star-based rating
Attachment	Files and documents

Relationship Fields

Relationship fields connect records to people, assets, groups, and other custom object records. They’re live references — not stored text — so if the linked record changes, every record referencing it reflects that automatically.

Relationship to person: Links to an employee in your directory. Useful for owners, managers, assigned contacts, and team members. You can configure whether a single person or multiple people can be linked.
Relationship to asset: Links to a hardware or software asset record. Useful when a custom record is associated with specific devices or software licenses.
Relationship to group: Links to an access group or organizational team.
Relationship to custom object: Links to a record in another custom object type. This is how you model multi-entity relationships — a Contract that references a Vendor, a Project that references a Client.

Both sides of the relationship are queryable. If a Contract has a Vendor relationship field, you can view contracts from the Vendor record (reverse relationship) and look up the vendor from the contract record.

Reference custom objects across Atomicwork

Once you have published a custom object, you can leverage it across different areas of the platform:

Link to assets and requests: You can add custom objects as relationship fields on assets or request forms. For example, you can link an application asset to a "Software Contract" custom object. To learn more about linking entities, see our guide on Relationship attributes.
Automate with workflows: You can build workflows triggered by changes to your custom objects or run them on a schedule. For example, you can set up a scheduled workflow to alert contract owners 10 days before an expiration date. For more information, see Workflows 101 and Scheduled workflows.
Search records: All custom object records are indexed and searchable using the Global Spotlight search. To learn more about searching, see Using search in Atomicwork.
Power AI coworkers: Custom object data can be used as context for AI coworkers, enabling them to run analyses and provide intelligent recommendations.

Explore common use cases

Here are a few ways organizations use custom objects to automate their business processes:

Customer Management: Manage customer relationships and link them directly to requests, assets and relationships.
Vendor Management: Track active suppliers, store contact details, and link them directly to hardware assets or procurement requests.
Approval Delegations: Track when employees are on leave and automatically route their pending approvals to a designated manager.
Software License Tracking: Monitor total purchased versus utilized licenses by connecting custom objects to third-party APIs via workflows.

How to use Custom Objects in Atomicwork