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Tempo uses fields from your CRM for three object types: opportunity, account, and contact. You can also create opportunity fields that live only in Tempo. Field Management is where you decide, per field, whether Tempo proposes values, whether a person reviews them, and how the value is written. Read the Update Behavior section carefully before a security or governance review. It describes exactly what reaches your CRM without a review step.

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The Field Management page

Open Settings → Field Management. The page is a table with one row per field: A field name can appear more than once, once per category. Check Category before you edit. Use Find a field and the Filters panel to narrow the table. Filtering Update Behavior to Automatic shows every field Tempo writes without review. That is the single most useful view on this page before a governance conversation.

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Org and Mine

When the organization allows per-user field settings, admins see an Org / Mine toggle labelled Field settings scope. Org edits the organization default. Mine edits the admin’s own personal settings, the same way a seller does.

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Scope

A field is Private or Organization.
  • Private fields apply only to the owner’s opportunities. Any member can create one.
  • Organization fields apply across the organization. Only an organization admin can create one or promote a Private field to Organization. The confirmation reads Make this an organization field? Promotion cannot be undone from the panel.
CRM-synced fields are Organization fields.

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Managed By

  • CRM: synced from Salesforce or HubSpot. Updateable CRM fields can be written back.
  • User: a field a member created in Tempo. Values stay in Tempo.
  • Tempo: a deal-state dimension Tempo maintains itself. Its definition is read-only; an admin can make it Visible.
Tempo-managed and user-managed fields never write to your CRM. Approving a value changes the field in Tempo only.

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Update Behavior

Update Behavior decides whether Tempo generates a value and whether a person reviews it first. There are exactly three options:
Updateable, CRM-synced fields set to Automatic are written to your CRM with no review. Review which fields use Automatic before a security or governance review, and check the Overrides column for sellers who have set Automatic on their own deals.
Only organization admins can change the update behavior of an organization field. Fields marked as key fields follow the same rule.

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Per-user field settings

Under Settings → Organization, an admin can turn on Allow per-user field settings: “Let sellers override field visibility and update suggestions for themselves. When off, only admins control these on org fields.” When it is on:
  • A seller sees their own Update Behavior control on each organization field and can set it to Automatic, Suggest, or Manual for their own deals.
  • A seller who chooses Automatic opts their own deals into automatic approval. Pending proposals on their deals are approved and applied, and new proposals apply as they are generated. No admin action is involved.
  • A seller who chooses Suggest or Manual on a field the organization set to Automatic is not auto-approved by the organization setting.
  • The Overrides column shows admins how many members diverge from the organization default.
When it is off, every member inherits the organization setting.

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Guards on automatic apply

Three guards limit what Automatic can do:
  • Closed opportunities. Tempo does not generate proposals for an opportunity whose CRM IsClosed value is true, and it never automatically applies a proposal unless that value is explicitly false. If the state is unknown, existing proposals stay pending. A person can still approve them by hand.
  • Old evidence. When every artifact that triggered a batch is older than 30 days, Tempo skips proposal generation for that batch. This stops history imports from raising proposals from months-old evidence.
  • Other open deals on the account. Some artifacts are kept on the account instead of being tied to one deal. When the deal’s account has other open deals, an Automatic field that writes to your CRM uses only evidence tied to that deal. If a proposal for that field cites no evidence tied to the deal, it stays pending. A person can still approve it by hand.

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Record creation has no review step

Two actions create CRM records without a proposal:
  • New Opportunity on the Opportunities page creates an opportunity, and optionally its account, in Tempo and queues an outbound create to your CRM.
  • The create_crm_object tool over MCP creates an account, contact, or opportunity the same way.
Neither path goes through the Updates queue. The button appears only when Salesforce is connected.

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Where updates show up

Every proposal cites the artifact it came from, whatever the update behavior. You can trace a value back to the transcript, email, Slack thread, or saved chat that produced it.
  • Deal Updates tab. Open an opportunity and click Updates to review pending proposals for that deal.
  • Opportunities table. Cells with a pending proposal offer Review update, and any field offers Check for update.
  • Slack. When an admin turns on Notify deal owners to approve CRM updates, deal owners receive approval cards by direct message or in a channel. Approving a card writes the value. See Slack.
  • MCP. list_deal_updates reads proposals, and manage_fields acts on them.
The deal’s Updates tab shows an off state until at least one field has Suggest or Automatic update behavior. Field Management offers a Slack updates setup dialog to turn on Slack approvals from the same place. See Reviewing CRM updates for the seller’s view.

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Frequency

Frequency sets the minimum cadence for automatic update generation. Manual refreshes can still run at any time.
  • Since last update measures from the moment the field itself last changed.
  • A named reset is a calendar boundary. Everything resets at the same moment for every field on that setting.

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Write Mode

Write Mode decides what happens to the value already in the field when Tempo writes to it: Append and Prepend can include a delimiter between the old and new values. Configure it in the Write Mode editor. These modes suit long-text fields where the history matters more than the latest state.

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Signal-linked fields

A field can be linked to a signal so the field’s value reflects what that signal finds. Choose the signal from the field’s Edit field panel. See Signals.

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Instructions and Description

Description explains what belongs in the field and what does not. Instructions tell Tempo how to calculate it: evidence to look for, decision rules, exceptions, and value mappings. A weak description produces noisy proposals. A strong one is specific about inclusion and exclusion:
Stores the identity and specific internal influence actions of a single customer-side individual who actively advocates for the solution. Entries must document the individual’s name and role alongside concrete evidence of how they exert political capital. Excludes individuals who solely perform administrative functions like vendor onboarding or procurement processing without clear demonstration of proactive internal sponsorship.
That exclusion clause is what stops every procurement contact getting logged as a champion.

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Create a Tempo-managed opportunity field

Create a field when you want Tempo to track something that does not belong in your CRM schema.
1

Open the Fields panel

Go to an Opportunities view and click Add field.
2

Start a new field

Click Create New Field.
3

Choose a creation method

Select Draft with AI to describe what you want to track, or Create manually to start blank.
4

Complete the definition

Review the Title, Type, Scope, Description, optional Instructions, and Updates behavior.
5

Choose when to generate values

Select Generate now to calculate the field for matching existing opportunities, or Start going forward to wait for new evidence.
6

Create the field

Click Create field.

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Manage fields from an AI platform

From an MCP-connected AI platform, you can read the field catalog and manage Tempo-managed opportunity fields. Start by listing fields instead of guessing their keys:
To see the full rules on a field, including constraints and update policy:
To create a field after reviewing a draft:
Private fields remain owner-managed. Organization admin access is required to create or change Organization fields, promote a Private field, or manage key fields.

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Improving proposal quality

If proposals are noisy or missing, the field description is almost always the lever:
  • Too many proposals: the description is not excluding enough. Add what does not belong.
  • Wrong values: the description is not specific about format or source of truth.
  • No proposals: the field may be Manual, its Frequency may not have come round, the opportunity may be closed, the evidence may be older than 30 days, or the field may not be updateable in your CRM.