Notion Integration

Certum Draft integrates with Notion to manage your client, matter, lead and task databases. Search existing clients when creating matters, write new matters back to Notion, sync the shared note and the checklist both ways, run the firm’s tasks, and capture phone-call enquiries as Leads.

What You Can Do

Feature	Direction	Description
Search clients	Read	Find existing clients when creating matters
Search matters	Read	Look up matters by number or client
Create matters	Write	New matters land in Notion with client relation, type, status
Create clients	Write	New clients are added to your Clients database
Capture Leads	Write	Phone-call enquiries logged to a separate Leads database
Watcher tagging	Write	Default firm members tagged on every new Lead
Team tagging	Write	Selected team members tagged on every new matter
Shared Note sync	Both	Edits sync both ways, formatting included, with conflict resolution if both sides change at once
Client contact details	Both	A linked client’s email, phone and address edited in Certum reach the client page; Notion owns the name
Tasks	Both	Per-matter and Office tasks in a shared Tasks database — captured, ticked, delegated and repeated from Certum, visible to the whole team in Notion. See Tasks
Matter checklist sync	Both	The matter’s checklist appears on its Notion page as real to-dos; ticks flow both ways
Address verification	Write	Verified-address metadata round-trips to structured properties
Certum link	Write	A certum:// URL is saved on each matter page for reopening
Registers	Write	Transfer Duty and AML/CTF register rows under the firm’s Registers page. See Compliance

Setting Up Notion

1. Create a Notion Integration

   Go to Notion Integrations, click New integration, give it a name (e.g., “Certum Draft”), select your workspace, and click Submit.

   Enable these capabilities:

   • Read content
   • Update content
   • Insert content
   • Insert comments — needed for the completion notice to whoever assigned a task, and for the team comment on a new matter. Without it those two fail (and Settings → Notion says so); everything else works.

   Copy the Internal Integration Token — Notion’s current tokens start with ntn_; older tokens start with secret_. Both are accepted.

2. Share Databases with the Integration

   In Notion, open your Clients database, click ⋯ (More) → Connections → find your integration and connect it. Repeat for your Matters database (and later, the Leads database).

3. Find Your Database IDs

   Each Notion database has a 32-character ID in its URL:

   https://www.notion.so/yourworkspace/abc123def456...?v=...
                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                                       This is the database ID

   You can also paste the full URL into Certum Draft — it extracts the ID for you.

4. Configure in Certum Draft

   Open Settings (⌘,) → Notion. Paste your Integration Token and click Save Token — Certum Draft immediately checks the token with Notion, so the tick reads Saved — token works (or you get a clear rejection instead of finding out later). Enter both Database IDs; they save automatically a moment after you stop typing.

5. (Optional) Set up the Leads database

   To capture phone-call enquiries as Leads, click Find or Create Leads Database… in the Leads section. Certum Draft detects the page hosting your Clients database, searches for an existing Leads database there, and either adopts it or creates a fresh one — only after you confirm. See Potential New Matters for the full Leads workflow.

Connection Diagnostics

After configuring, click Test Connection in the Connection section. Four rows show:

Check	What it Verifies
Authentication	The integration token is valid
Clients Database	The database exists and the integration can read it
Matters Database	The database exists and the integration can read it
Schema Validation	Expected property names are present

A passing run shows record counts (e.g., “1,420 clients”).

Above the test, a Status line reports Notion’s health as the app sees it this session — answering, a rejected token, a refused request, a list cut short at Notion’s 1,000-row cap, notices that aren’t getting through — and lists any client update still waiting to reach Notion, with Retry and Discard. See Settings → Notion.

Behind the scenes, reads, queries and page updates retry on Notion’s 502/503/504 errors, timeouts and dropped connections, waiting as long as Notion’s Retry-After asks. Page creates, comments and block appends are never re-sent after an ambiguous failure, so a blip can’t make two of anything.

Database Schema

Certum Draft reads from and writes to specific property names. The names below match the live O’Neill Solicitors workspace and are verified at compile time against the source code.

Clients Database (21 properties)

Property	Type	Notes
Client Full Name	Title	Format: SURNAME, Given Names
Email	Email
Phone	Phone	Mobile and landline combined with | separator
Address (Legacy)	Rich text	Combined address — legacy plain-text field
Postal Address (Legacy)	Rich text
Client Address	Place	Google-Maps location property — handled separately
Client Postal Address	Place
Unit	Rich text	Structured unit / level / suite / shop
Street	Rich text	Street address only
Suburb	Rich text
State	Rich text
Postcode	Rich text
Country	Rich text	Stored only when non-AU
Address Verified	Checkbox	True when MapKit-verified or manually confirmed
Address Verified Source	Select	mapkit, manual, migration, or unknown
Address Verified At	Date	When verification was stamped
Address Verified Fingerprint	Rich text	Canonical hash (v1:<16-hex>) for drift detection
Related Matters	Relation	→ Matters database
S/C Packet No	Rich text	Safe custody packet number
Deceased	Relation	For estate matters
Last Edited	Last edited time

Tip

Phone format: When both mobile and landline are provided, Certum Draft combines them with a pipe: 0412 345 678 | 02 9876 5432. The mobile number comes first. When reading back, if the value contains a pipe, it’s split; a single number is read as a mobile or a landline by Australian numbering (see Phone Number Handling).

Note

Address fields: The six structured fields (Unit, Street, Suburb, State, Postcode, Country) are written explicitly from the matter form — Notion does not auto-parse them from the combined Address (Legacy) field. The Address Verified checkbox + source + fingerprint round-trip so verified addresses stay marked as verified even if the matter is reopened on a different machine.

Matters Database (26 properties)

Property	Type	Notes
Description	Title	Matter name / Re: line
No.	Number	Matter number (only written when numeric)
Type	Multi-select	Matter type categories
Status	Select	Active, Completed, Closed, On Hold, Not started
Client	Relation	→ Clients database
Property	Rich text	Property description for conveyancing matters
S/C Packet No	Rich text	Safe custody packet number
People	People	Person(s) with carriage
Date of Instructions	Rich text	Open date stored as text
Finalised	Select	Close-state marker (a select, not a date)
Shared Note	Rich text	Used for file reference; syncs bidirectionally with the matter workspace
Rod Note	Rich text	Free-form note field
Phone	Phone
Deceased	Relation
Created time	Created time
Mel Date / Michael Date / Rod Date	Date	Per-practitioner date markers
Link to Certum	URL	certum://open?matter=000150

Caution

The matter number field on Notion is a Number type, not text. Certum Draft only writes to it when the matter number is purely numeric. Matters with non-numeric prefixes or custom identifiers skip the No. field to avoid Notion API errors.

Leads Database (16 properties)

Created by Find or Create Leads Database… in Settings → Notion → Leads, or adopted from an existing database in the same page. The schema is fixed; Certum Draft creates it with these properties:

Property	Type	Notes
Name	Title	Lead name (caller name or matter description)
Stage	Select	new, contacted, quoted, instructed, declined
Source	Select	referral, repeat client, google or web, other
First contact channel	Select	phone, email, walk-in, web form, other
Practitioner with carriage	Rich text
Next action by	Date	When to follow up
Contact	Relation	→ Clients database (linked once client created)
Raw caller name	Rich text	The caller’s name as captured on first contact
Raw caller phone	Rich text
Raw caller email	Rich text
Likely matter type	Rich text
Notes	Rich text
Decline reason	Select	no response, client declined, conflict, out of scope, referred elsewhere, other
Linked matter	Relation	→ Matters database (linked on conversion)
Conversion state	Select	not_converted, matter_creation_attempted, matter_created, lead_linked, needs_repair
Watchers	People	Firm members notified on every new Lead

Tasks Database

The firm’s shared Tasks database is yours to create; Certum reads and writes it by property name and never alters its schema. Check Tasks Setup in Settings → Notion → Tasks says what’s missing. The required properties:

Property	Type	Notes
Task	Title	The task’s title
Matter	Relation	→ Matters database. A task filed to the firm’s Office page relates to that page
Assignee	People	Who holds the task
Due	Date
Status	Status	Certum uses the first option in the To-do group as “open” and any option in the Complete group as done. An In review option enables Send back / Return for changes; a Cancelled option in the Complete group enables Cancel Task (closed, but not done — nobody is told it was completed)
Request ID	Rich text	Certum’s idempotency key, so a retried capture never makes a second task. Follow-up tasks begin certum-chase-, delegated checklist steps certum-step-, agent-created tasks certum-agent-

Optional properties Certum uses when they exist:

Property	Type	Notes
Assigned By	People	Who gave the task to its holder; changes on a send-back or return. Delegation, the Waiting on list and completion notices depend on it, so treat it as required in practice
Priority	Select	Urgent and the other priorities
Completed At	Date	A true completion stamp, set on tick and cleared on reopen; the Logbook groups by it
Requested By	People	The person who first created the task — unchanged by send-backs and reassignments, so the original asker stays visible
Repeat	Select	A recurring task’s rule, named as Certum names it: “Weekly on Friday”, “Fortnightly on Monday”, “Monthly on the 15th”, “Monthly on the last business day”, “Quarterly on 28 Jan/Apr/Jul/Oct”, “Yearly on 30 Jun”. Case, a missing “the”, bare ordinals and three-letter names are tolerated; anything else is shown as not understood and the task ticks as an ordinary one
Repeat Period	Date	The period a series is currently on; written by Certum when a repeating task is ticked

The Office page is not a property — it’s an ordinary row of the Matters database, chosen once in Settings → Notion → Tasks, that Office tasks relate to.

A running Mac notices when the database gains the Cancelled option or any of the optional properties: the first task read that carries one re-reads the database’s layout. Certum also checks the database about once a minute for recently edited rows, so a change made in Notion or on another Mac appears within a minute or two whichever screen is showing.

How Data Flows

Client Name Handling

Client surnames are stored uppercased in the Client Full Name title field. Format: SURNAME, Given Names (e.g., SCHRUTE, Dwight Kurt). When reading back from Notion, Certum Draft parses this title into separate surname and given_name fields for templates.

Notion owns a linked client’s name. Certum never sends a name change to Notion, and takes Notion’s name every time the matter opens, so the surname, given names and full name a linked client page supplies show read-only in the matter form with an Open in Notion link — correct the name there and it comes through on the next open. Parts Notion leaves empty stay editable in Certum.

Client Contact Details

A linked client’s email, phone and address edited in Certum are pushed to the client page when the matter saves, and stay edited: on reopen, Notion’s value is taken only where the matter’s own value hasn’t changed since Certum last read it, so a local edit is never reverted by an older value. A pending update persists until Notion confirms it — retrying on its own when Notion or the network is down, and waiting for Retry or Discard in Settings → Notion when the token or a capability is the problem or a colleague has changed the page meanwhile.

Matter Number Handling

Matter numbers are stored in Notion’s No. field, which is a Number type. Certum Draft only writes when the matter number is purely numeric — non-numeric prefixes (custom identifiers, legacy formats) skip this field to avoid API errors.

When Creating a Matter

1. Client selected from Notion — Name parsed into components; phone split on | into mobile/landline; verified-address metadata round-tripped if present.
2. Matter created — New page created in the Matters database with:
   • Description (matter name), Type (multi-select), Status set to “Active”
   • Client relation linked
   • Date of Instructions written as today’s date (text)
   • People property populated with selected team members (if Team Tagging is configured)
   • Link to Certum URL saved
3. New client created (if not found in Notion) — Added to the Clients database with structured address fields and verification metadata.
4. Shared Note initialised — Available for editing in the workspace.

If Notion is unreachable partway through, the app says so honestly instead of pretending the sync worked. A client that couldn’t be created in Notion is flagged Local only — not in CRM at the selection step, and a matter that couldn’t be linked shows Not linked to CRM on its Overview with a one-click Link to Notion retry.

Phone Number Handling

Certum Draft separates mobile and landline numbers in the matter form, but Notion has a single Phone field.

Writing to Notion:

• Both numbers combined with a pipe separator: {mobile} | {landline}
• If only one number exists, no pipe is added

Reading from Notion:

• If the value contains |, it’s split: first part is mobile, second is landline
• If no pipe, the single number goes where Australian numbering puts it: 04…, +61 4… or a nine-digit number starting with 4 (a mobile missing its 0) is a mobile; anything else is a landline
• A Phone field holding more than a mobile and a landline — names, notes, extensions, several numbers — is never overwritten: a phone edit for that client stays in Certum and is logged

Address Verification Round-Trip

When an address is confirmed in the Matter Workspace (via the MapKit-assisted AddressField), Certum Draft writes the structured components (Unit, Street, Suburb, State, Postcode, Country) plus the verification metadata (Address Verified checkbox, source, timestamp, fingerprint) to the Clients database. Re-opening the matter on a different machine preserves the “verified” state — the address won’t ask to be re-confirmed unless it materially changes.

Shared Note Sync

The Shared Note card on the matter’s Overview syncs both ways with Notion:

• From Notion: Loads when you open the matter, showing @mentions with highlighting. Edits made in Notion pull back into the app.
• To Notion: Your edits push to Notion automatically as you type (after a short pause), with proper Notion @mention formatting.
• @mentions: Typing @Name creates a real Notion mention — the person is notified.
• Formatting: Bold, italic, underline and strikethrough from the buttons beside the note or the Format menu (⌘B, ⌘I, ⌘U) sync to Notion; bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, colours and links applied in Notion show in the app and survive an edit made there. Only inline formatting: a Notion property cannot hold headings, lists or checkboxes.
• Conflicts: If the note changed in Notion while you were editing (including a formatting-only change), a banner says so instead of overwriting anyone’s work. Choose Use Notion to take the Notion version, or Keep Mine to push your draft over it.
• A save that fails keeps your draft and retries — you won’t lose a note to a dropped connection.

Matter Checklist on the Notion Page

Open a matter once and its checklist (Sale, Purchase, or any pack that defines one) appears on the matter’s Notion page as real tickable to-dos — and ticks flow both ways: tick in Notion or in Certum interchangeably, and each side updates the other, with Notion ticks attributed to the person who made them. Certum’s matter file stays the audit-grade record; items marked N/A or hidden by the form are kept off the Notion page. The sync is a three-way merge that self-heals crashes, offline work, and two Macs opening the same matter: once both sides agree on a tick, that agreement is recorded as the new base, so a later untick in Notion is read as an untick rather than a stale copy, and sync runs and the one-step pushes after a tick happen one at a time, each saving only the steps it touched. The sync only writes while this Mac holds the matter’s editing lock.

A checklist step handed to a colleague with Delegate… is linked to a task in the Tasks database (Request ID certum-step-…); ticking either side ticks the other. See Editing Matter Details.

Lead Edits Always Reach Notion

When you edit a Lead in the inspector, the change always saves to Notion — if two Macs edit the same Lead at once, the last write wins. (An older version used to silently refuse saves it thought were stale; that check is gone, because it sometimes blocked perfectly good edits.) Rapid edits are coalesced so they don’t flood the API.

The app also writes only the columns your Leads database actually has. If your board is missing a column the app knows about, that field is skipped rather than making the whole save fail — and Certum Draft never creates or alters columns; your database schema stays yours to control.

Watchers on New Leads

Settings → Notion → Leads lets you select firm members who should appear on every new Lead’s Watchers people property. Notion notifies them automatically. If a watcher is later removed from the workspace, Certum Draft silently drops them from new Leads and shows a one-shot dismissable banner so you know to refresh the selection.

Certum Link

Each matter in Notion has a Link to Certum URL:

• Format: certum://open?matter=000150
• Purpose: Click the URL to reopen the matter in Certum Draft from anywhere — Notion mobile, a Slack message, a calendar invite.

Note

Notion displays custom URL schemes as text rather than clickable links. The link is still valid — copy it and paste it into Safari, or use Open in Notion on the matter to round-trip the other direction. Every Open in Notion link in the app (matter, dashboard, Tasks, leads, Shortcuts and the matter folder’s Notion link file) is the page’s https://www.notion.so/ address, which the Notion app takes when it is installed and the browser otherwise.

Dashboard Cards

When Notion is connected, parts of the home dashboard draw on your Notion data:

• Open Leads — Active Leads grouped by stage.
• Recent — matters you’ve opened recently on this Mac, joined by the matters most recently edited in the Notion workspace (anyone’s edits), so you see what colleagues have been working on. A matter that exists only in Notion shows as a register row; every linked row carries an ↗ to its Notion page. The Office page is left out.
• Today — your overdue and due-today tasks from the Tasks database, and what colleagues finished for you.

They refresh on dashboard re-entry and app activation through a throttle, never on every save. Client names are resolved from the local matter index rather than per-row API calls. See Dashboard.

Not Using Notion?

Notion integration is optional. Without it:

• Client details are entered manually for each matter.
• Client information is stored in the local matter metadata.
• All other features work exactly the same.
• Matters exist only on disk (no cloud sync).
• The dashboard’s Open Leads section and Today card are hidden, and the Tasks page is unavailable.
• The Leads capture flow is hidden.

Troubleshooting

”Test Connection” button is greyed out

All three credentials must be set: Integration Token (click Save Token), plus the Clients and Matters Database IDs (both save automatically as you type).

”Not authenticated” Error

• Check the token is valid (regenerate at Notion Integrations if unsure)
• Verify the integration is shared with the database (Connections menu in Notion)

“Database not found” Error

• Verify the database ID is 32 characters (or paste the full URL — Certum Draft extracts the ID)
• Ensure the integration is shared with the database
• Check that you haven’t copied a view ID instead of the database ID

”Missing properties” Warning

• Schema validation found expected property names missing from your database
• For new workspaces, this can fire because you haven’t added the optional structured-address properties yet. The integration still works — only writes to missing fields are skipped.
• Add the missing property in Notion if you need it

Matter not appearing in Notion

• Check the integration has Insert content capability
• Verify the Matters database is shared with the integration
• The matter may be filtered out of your default view — switch to “All matters” or remove the filter

Completion notices or team comments never arrive

The notice to whoever assigned a task, and the comment that tags the team on a new matter, are Notion comments. They fail — while task reads and writes with the same token work — until the integration has the Insert comments capability. Turn it on at Notion Integrations; Settings → Notion shows the failure on its Status line until then.

A client’s name keeps reverting

Notion owns a linked client’s name. Edit it on the client page in Notion and it comes through on the next open; see Client Name Handling.

@mentions not working

• The person must be a member of your Notion workspace
• The name in the Shared Note must match exactly (case-insensitive) as it appears in Notion
• The integration needs permission to mention users

Leads database setup says “Configured database isn’t reachable right now”

A previously-configured Leads database ID exists but the integration can’t currently see it (transient network blip, or the database was unshared from the integration). Click Retry — Certum Draft preserves your configured ID until you explicitly adopt a different database or create a new one.

Rate Limit Errors

• Notion permits roughly 3 requests per second
• Certum Draft throttles writes via a built-in rate limiter, and retries a 429 after the wait Notion’s Retry-After asks for
• Bursty operations (bulk client import) may still show “rate-limited — retrying” on the menu-bar item for a moment; nothing is lost