Skip to main content
What you’ll learn: how a taxonomy turns fields into a form, how filter_options narrows a shared dropdown per taxonomy, how the Quick, Form, and Grid modes work, and how approving a submission produces records.What you’ll build: three taxonomies (Email, Social, Ads), each with its own utm_medium filter, plus one approved submission whose rows land as campaign records with live short URLs.Prerequisites: Part 7: Computed fields.

​
Why this matters

Up to this point the governance model has been a static set of definitions. A taxonomy is what turns those definitions into a live form a user can fill in. Three taxonomies, one each for email, social, and paid campaigns, let your team share almost all of the same rules (same fields, same computed chain, same picklists) while each channel surfaces only the UTM medium that applies to it. Once you approve a submission, every row becomes a record, every record has a live short URL, and the pipeline you sketched in Part 1 is doing real work.

​
Concepts first

​
Taxonomy

A taxonomy pulls a subset of the GM’s fields into an ordered list and calls that combination a form. A field placed on a taxonomy can carry per-taxonomy overrides. The one you’ll use here is filter_options, which narrows a Dropdown field’s visible codes to just the subset that taxonomy cares about. A single field like utm_medium can appear on three taxonomies with three different filters while the underlying picklist stays whole. See the taxonomies reference.

​
Submission statuses

A submission moves through a small set of statuses: Draft while it is being edited, Awaiting review once it is submitted, Approved when accepted, Rejected when sent back, and Cancelled if withdrawn. Only an approved submission produces records, the permanent governed output. Whether a review step exists depends on the taxonomy: if review is not required (the default), anyone who can edit the submission finalizes it directly, with no “Awaiting review” step. The full state diagram is in the submissions reference.

​
Quick, Form, and Grid modes

The builder has three fill modes, switched in the header.
  • Quick (the default): a compact, single-record form, good on a phone.
  • Form: a single-record vertical form; computed fields appear in a sticky panel.
  • Grid: a spreadsheet for many rows at once, with copy and paste, a fill handle, and row insert, duplicate, delete, and reorder.
Quick and Form are single-record modes. The moment a submission has more than one row they are disabled and the builder switches to Grid. The fill modes covers the switching rules.

​
Step-by-step

1

Create the Email Campaigns taxonomy

Open the Marketing GM, click Taxonomies, then Create new taxonomy. Name: Email Campaigns. Add every GM field except qr_code: campaign_name, goal, country, region, launch_date, destination_url, utm_medium, utm_source, utm_campaign, tagged_url, short_url. Open the utm_medium field’s options on this taxonomy and include only email. That filter means submissions here only ever see email in the medium dropdown.
2

Create the Social Campaigns taxonomy

Click Create new taxonomy again. Name: Social Campaigns. Add every GM field including qr_code, because social posts are the one place the QR code actually gets printed. Set utm_medium to include only social. Save.
3

Create the Ad Campaigns taxonomy

Click Create new taxonomy once more. Name: Ad Campaigns. Add every GM field except qr_code. Set utm_medium to include only cpc. Save.
4

Publish the governance model

A submission’s form comes from the governance model’s published revision, so publish before you can submit. Open the GM’s revisions and publish the current version. If you change fields or picklists later, republish to roll the change out to new submissions. See the publish a revision guide.
5

Assign the taxonomies to the workspace

Open the 2026 Campaigns workspace (from Part 2). In Taxonomies, assign all three: Email Campaigns, Social Campaigns, Ad Campaigns. Save. The workspace can now take submissions for any of them.
6

Start a new submission

In the workspace, click New submission and pick Email Campaigns. The builder opens in Quick mode with a single blank row and a default name like 2026 Campaigns, Nov 15 that you can rename inline.
7

Fill in the first row

Enter campaign_name = Black Friday 2026, goal = Awareness, country = United States, region = California, launch_date = 2026-11-15, destination_url = https://shop.acme.example/deals, utm_medium = Email (notice it is the only medium offered, which is filter_options at work), utm_source = Newsletter. The computed fields fill in as you type.
📸 Screenshot coming soon: part 08 quick mode
8

Watch the computed previews

utm_campaign shows awareness-us-california-20261115-black_friday_2026, tagged_url shows the full URL with query parameters, and short_url shows a reserved 8-character slug. None of these are live yet; they are previews of what will be stored on approval.
9

Save as draft and add rows

Click Save as draft. (Drafts save even if a row still has validation errors.) Add a couple more rows. As soon as there is more than one row, Quick and Form are disabled and the builder switches to Grid, with the same computed columns updating live.
📸 Screenshot coming soon: part 08 grid mode
10

(Optional) Paste rows from a spreadsheet

Copy rows from a spreadsheet whose columns are in the taxonomy’s field order and paste with Ctrl/Cmd+V into the grid. Cells map left to right by position; there is no header matching, so if your columns are in a different order, rearrange them first or values land in the wrong fields.
11

Finalize the submission

Click Create Record(s). Because this taxonomy does not require review, the submission goes straight to Approved and each valid row becomes a record. (If your workspace requires review for this taxonomy, you instead click Submit for review, the status shows Awaiting review, and a reviewer who can manage the workspace clicks Approve.) Approval requires every row to be valid; an invalid row blocks it and the per-cell errors are shown.
12

Inspect the records

Open Records in the workspace. The new records appear with their final values, their short URLs marked active, and (for any Social row) a rendered QR code in the qr_code column.
📸 Screenshot coming soon: part 08 record detail

​
Check your work

  • Three taxonomies exist on the Marketing GM, each with the right field set and the right utm_medium include filter.
  • The governance model has a published revision, and the 2026 Campaigns workspace has all three taxonomies assigned.
  • One submission went from Draft to Approved (through Awaiting review if your taxonomy requires review), producing records from its rows.
  • Each record carries a populated utm_campaign, tagged_url, short_url, and (for Social) a qr_code.
  • Each short URL is marked active; visiting the slug on your account’s shortener domain redirects to the tagged destination URL.

​
What you just built

The end-to-end flow from Part 1 is now running. A user with no governance knowledge can open the 2026 Campaigns workspace, pick a taxonomy, type a handful of values, and walk away with UTM-tagged, shortened, QR-coded links. The governance model enforces every rule you wired in Parts 2 to 7 without anyone having to remember them.

​
Gotchas

  • filter_options only narrows the entry form. The underlying picklist still holds all three mediums; you are hiding the others for this taxonomy. Anyone reading the records or the picklist directly still sees the full list.
  • A short URL slug is frozen once the submission is approved. The slug becomes part of the record; you cannot edit it afterward. If you need a different slug, create a new submission. You can still update a live link’s destination URL, just not its slug or domain. See the short URL reference.
  • Grid paste matches the taxonomy’s field order, not your column headers. There is no header matching. If you added destination_url to the taxonomy before launch_date but your sheet has them the other way around, the paste lands the URL in the date cell and validation fails. Arrange the sheet to match.
  • An option filter on utm_medium does not cascade to utm_source. Filtering the medium to email does not also filter the sources; utm_source keeps showing every child of whichever medium was picked. If “Allow new values” ever added an off-topic source under email, it would still appear. Use reviewer discretion.
  • Approved submissions are locked. Once approved, a submission cannot be edited or re-approved, and editing the rows of a not-yet-approved submission resets it to Draft. See review and approve submissions.

​
You did it

The eight parts cover one complete, real-world workflow. Everything else in Terminus Hub (automated picklists, the other computed field types, sharing and embedding, analytics) is a variation on what you’ve already built. A few places to go next:

Automated picklists

Source dropdown options from another taxonomy’s records.

Short URL slug modes

The two alternatives to auto-editable and when to use them.

Other computed fields

Auto Number, Random, Constant, Terminus ID.

Share and embed

Put a governance form in front of people outside your account.

Analytics

See clicks and scans roll up by any field you defined.

Field reference

Every field type, picklist type, and taxonomy setting in isolation.