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Overview

Notes are a system-wide way to leave context, observations, and follow-ups on the records you work with every day. Unlike a single free-text field, Notes are a chronological thread — each entry has an author, a timestamp, rich formatting, file attachments, and links to other records in your system. You can use Notes to:
  • Capture operational context that doesn’t fit in a structured field (“waiting on customer to confirm release”)
  • Hand off work between shifts or teams without leaving the record
  • Attach photos, PDFs, or supporting documents directly to the entity they relate to
  • Cross-reference equipment, shipments, customers, and other records from inside a note
  • Search across every note your team has ever written for a given entity
Notes are scoped to your carrier. Other organizations that share an entity (for example, a partner railroad on the same shipment) cannot see your notes.

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Where you can add notes

Notes are available on every major operational record in ARMS. The same threaded experience shows up everywhere, so you only need to learn it once.

Shipments

Document tracking issues, customer communication, or special handling instructions.

Equipment / Inventory

Capture car-specific context. Coexists with the legacy single-field equipment notes.

Waybills

Note billing exceptions, routing questions, or rebill instructions.

Work Orders

Track follow-ups during switching, classification, and yard work.

Invoices & Charges

Document disputes, adjustments, or context on individual charges.

Interchanges & Consists

Note exceptions or follow-ups during car exchanges between carriers.

AEI Consists

Capture context against an AEI scan event.

Customers

Record account-level context shared across the team.
More entity types are added regularly. If you don’t see a Notes button on a record where you expect one, ask your Cedar contact — wiring a new entity in is a small change.

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Opening Notes on a record

Most detail pages have a Notes button in the page header. On Shipments, Notes appear inline as one of the activity tabs alongside Files and History.
1

Open the record

Navigate to the shipment, equipment, waybill, work order, invoice, charge, or interchange you want to annotate.
2

Click Notes

A side drawer opens on the right with the full note thread for that record. On Shipments, click the Notes tab on the activity panel instead.
3

Or use a deep link

Append ?notes=open to the record’s URL to open the Notes drawer automatically — useful for sharing direct links over email or chat.
The thread reads top-down chronologically — oldest notes at the top, newer below. The first 20 notes load when you open the drawer; click Load more at the bottom of the list to fetch the next batch. When you post a new note it appears at the bottom and the thread auto-scrolls to it.

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Writing a note

The composer at the bottom of the thread supports rich formatting. Type your note and click Add note (or press the send shortcut) to post it.

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Formatting

The toolbar provides the same editor used elsewhere in Cedar: bold, italic, underline, headings, ordered and unordered lists, links, code blocks, and inline code. Anything you write is stored as Markdown, so notes always render the same in the thread, in summary previews, and in search results.

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Mentioning other records

You can link any other record in the system inline by typing @ in the composer.
1

Type @

A typeahead popup opens at the cursor, grouped by record type (Equipment, Shipment, Customer, and so on).
2

Type to search

Start typing the identifier (car number, shipment ID, customer name, waybill number…). Results are returned across all configured record types and grouped by category.
3

Pick a result

Use the arrow keys to navigate, then press Enter — or click — to insert a reference chip. The chip shows the record’s icon and display text.
4

Read mode

In the saved note, the chip becomes a clickable link that opens that record’s detail page in a new tab when right-clicked.
Reference chips work across Equipment, Waybill, Shipment, User, Customer, Work Order, Invoice, Grouping/Fleet, Customer Location, X12 Message, Trip Plan, Workflow, Carrier, Commodity Lot, Motor Carrier, and more.
Mentions don’t notify. Inserting a reference creates a link and makes the note discoverable in search and Related Notes — it does not send a notification, email, or in-app alert to the referenced user, owner, or watcher. Notes are a passive context channel, not a messaging system.
If a record referenced in an old note has since been deleted, the chip renders dimmed with strikethrough text and the tooltip explains that the record no longer exists. Existing notes are never broken by downstream deletions.

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Attaching files

Drag files directly into the composer or use the upload button. Images, PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, and other documents are supported.
  • Attachments upload through Cedar’s backend — no browser-to-S3 configuration needed
  • Attachments appear as thumbnails (for images) or chips (for documents) below the note content
  • You can remove attachments while editing a note before saving
  • Each note can carry multiple attachments
  • Limits: up to 10 attachments per note and 50 MiB per file. Larger files are rejected before they leave your browser — split big PDFs or compress images to stay under the cap.
For inline images that flow with your text, paste a Markdown image (![alt text](url)) — the rich text editor will render it inline in both the composer and the saved view.

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Editing and deleting your notes

Hover over any of your own notes to reveal the actions menu (⋯) on the right. Edited notes show an “(edited)” indicator next to their timestamp so the audit trail stays clear.
Carrier admins with the appropriate role can edit or delete any note in the thread, not just their own — useful for removing accidental sensitive data or correcting stale information.

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Searching notes within a record

The Notes drawer has a search box at the top. Type a query and the thread is replaced with full-text search results from every note on that record.
  • Snippet highlighting — matched terms are highlighted in yellow inside each result snippet
  • Reference chip text is searchable — searching for an equipment number finds notes that linked to that car, even if the number only appears inside a chip
  • Hashtag content is searchable — content inside #group(...) syntax (used by automation) is normalized so you can find it by plain words
  • Result count is shown at the top of the results list
  • Clear the search box to return to the full thread
The search is debounced as you type, so you can refine your query without spamming the server.

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AI summary

For long threads, the AI Summary button (sparkle icon) on the notes summary chip generates a one-paragraph digest of the thread on demand.
  • Click the sparkle icon next to a notes count
  • A popover opens and shows a summary that captures the key themes, latest status, and any unresolved concerns
  • Summaries are generated fresh each time — they reflect the current thread, not a cached snapshot
  • For very long threads, the summary is built from the 100 most recent notes. Older context isn’t included, so summarize earlier and save the result in a fresh note if you need a long-running record to stay accessible.
Use AI summary as a fast way to “get up to speed” when picking up a record handed off from another shift, especially on shipments and equipment with extensive history.
AI summary is billed under AI pricing. All other notes features (writing, viewing, searching, attaching files, references) are included with your Cedar subscription and are not separately metered.

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Notes on list pages

List pages (Shipments, Inventory, Waybills, Work Orders) include a Notes column that summarizes notes per row at a glance. Clicking the cell either opens the Notes drawer in place or navigates to the row’s detail page with the drawer open, depending on the screen.
Notes columns are batch-loaded with the rest of the page, so adding the column doesn’t slow down list rendering even on large views.
When a note on one record references another (for example, a shipment note that mentions a piece of equipment), the referenced record’s detail page can show a Related Notes section listing the notes that mention it. This is useful for answering questions like:
  • “Are there any notes about this car?” — see notes on the equipment and notes on shipments, waybills, and work orders that mentioned it
  • “What’s been said about this customer?” — pull together every cross-entity reference in one place
The section caps at the most recent five related notes per record to keep the page focused.

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Equipment notes — coexistence with the legacy field

Equipment is a special case because the original single-field equipment notes (used by automation, switch requests, and the EDI/API layer) is still in use. The threaded Notes experience runs alongside it. In other words: existing automation keeps working exactly as before, while the threaded Notes system gives your team a richer place to capture context.
The legacy single-field equipment notes is still the source of truth for switch requests and automation effects. Don’t remove #sw(...) or other automation tokens from that field — they’re how the system tracks switching state.
See Inventory for more on the legacy equipment notes field.

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Permissions

Notes use Cedar’s standard role-based permissions, configured in the Admin Portal. There are seven permissions, bundled into three feature sets that show up as columns in the Admin v2 IAM matrix following the standard view / operate / manage split.

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Feature sets

  • Notes — View  ·  linda.notes.list + linda.notes.search. Read threads, run the in-drawer search, and use the @ typeahead anywhere references render.
  • Notes — Operate  ·  linda.notes.create + linda.notes.edit + linda.notes.delete + linda.notes.search. Author your own notes end-to-end.
  • Notes — Manage  ·  linda.notes.editAny + linda.notes.deleteAny. Admin override that lets you edit or delete any user’s notes regardless of authorship. Layer onto any role that should be able to moderate.

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Defaults shipped with each role

Cedar wires these feature sets into the standard predefined roles, so most carriers don’t need to touch IAM: Override these via Roles in the Admin Portal — for example, layering Notes — Manage onto a non-admin moderator, granting Notes — Operate to a customer-facing role that should leave notes against its own scoped entities, or removing Notes — View from a role you’d rather not have reading notes at all.
Notes never cross carriers. A user authenticated to Carrier A cannot read, write, or even discover notes belonging to Carrier B, even on entities (like a shared shipment) that both carriers can see.

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AI agent context

Notes are visible to Cedar’s AI agents when answering questions about a record. If you ask “what’s going on with shipment X?” or “summarize this car’s recent activity,” the agent reads the note thread alongside structured data and cites the author and timestamp of any note it draws from. This makes Notes a natural place to leave context you want surfaced when teammates (or you, later) ask Cedar AI for help.

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Common workflows

Hand off a shipment to the next shift

Open the shipment, click the Notes tab on the activity panel, and write a brief summary: the current state, anything pending, and who’s expected to take the next action. Use @ to reference the equipment, customer, or waybill so the next person can jump directly to the relevant records. The next shift can use AI Summary to catch up across long threads.
Open the equipment in Inventory, click Notes, and drag the damage photos into the composer. Mention the related waybill or shipment with @ so the photos and context show up in Related Notes on those records too.
On the customer’s detail page, add a note describing the question and the timeline. Mention the specific shipment or invoice with @ so the question surfaces from those records via Related Notes. When the question resolves, edit the note (or add a follow-up reply in the thread) — the “(edited)” indicator preserves the history.
Open Notes on any affected entity and use the search box. Try typing the equipment number, the customer name, or a keyword like “demurrage” or “rejected.” Results show snippet highlights and link to the originating record.
On a list page (Shipments, Inventory, Waybills) hover over a row’s notes count, then click the sparkle icon for an AI summary popover — no need to open the full drawer.

Shipments

Notes appear as a tab on the shipment activity panel.

Inventory

Equipment notes coexist with the threaded notes drawer.

Waybills

Notes drawer on the waybill detail page.

Roles

Configure who can view, create, edit, and delete notes.

Notes API

Programmatic API for building integrations on top of Notes.