Add COMMENTS and REFERENCES to Feed

[B_Sp]

I was very excited to see the Feed feature released, but I think two big areas that actually involve updates around entities are still missing. So I’d like to request their inclusion:

• Comments

• References

Most of my reasoning is in a post I made over on the Feed thread, referenced here:

@B_Sp

We use almost exclusively comments. We do a lot of software development and project management in Fibery, and all the other tools for those functions I’ve dealt with (Jira, Wrike, Asana, ClickUp, etc.) leverage comments the same way, and they offer various feeds of comments that provide a great way to keep updated on all the goings-on in a given area.

In Fibery this could be very useful in these cases:

Software development app: You have a hierarchy like Epic → Story → Task. If you could read all the comments in the tasks, you’d see all the activity in development at a glance

Project Management: Initiative → Project → Task. Similarly, as you work through your tasks and update them, in the Feed you could see ALL activity in ALL projects at a glance.

I think the big benefit of comments vs. doing these updates in Rich Text fields is you have 1) info on WHEN the comment was made, and 2) info on WHO made the comment.

Likewise, References are a huge piece we use a lot, and also constitute updating Entities. References are a real game changer in Fibery, and one use of them is to very quickly add a mention of another entity with a simple click of “#” and then typing the name of the reference. My team has a routine where we scan both comments and references to look for updates . This is because sometimes you can update an entity when commenting in another entity by just tagging the referenced entity. This is a huge time saver - without this capability, you’d need to go copy and paste the relevant update in both entities.

Added this to Rich-text tag, if that’s incorrect, Admins please recategorize!

[webinit]

I agree @B_Sp, comments would be great.

[B_Sp]

Thanks @webinit! Any chance you’d be willing to spend one of your precious votes on this?

Thanks again!

[kjb]

Literally just came here looking for this. Feed is awesome and with the way we manage projects, this would be very helpful!

[B_Sp]

Thanks @kjb and @webinit for your votes to move this along!

[mdubakov]

Feed for references will be added when we rework references. Now we are moving into Blocks design for entity view and references are natural thing to move into Feed View. You can expect something like this in 2+ months.

We did not have plans to add Comments into Feed, but it looks like a good idea so we will explore this.

[Oshyan]

As I said in my reply over on the original topic, I think you are right, especially about Comments actually. I could see References also being useful. I’ll use one of my votes on this as soon as the ones for the original Feed View request are released.

[B_Sp]

Glad to hear @mdubakov you think comments in the Feed are a good idea. Just to reiterate, I’ve seen this well executed in other competing tools and have longed to see it in Fibery - the Feed itself is the big piece here so very glad that has been released.

And appreciate @Oshyan your willingness to add a vote of support for this once you have the chance to do so!

[Mikkling]

I second @B_Sp’s suggestion!

Mostly because it allows me to build a proper Message/Chat space in Fibery: Message DB with Assignees and Comments field, with a Feed View filtered by assigned-to-me and created-by-me, and each message-thread is kept in the Comments field.

Technically, the comments-in-feed-view is not necessary, because i could just do it as a Table view but then you have to open the Message to read the comments.

As a tangent, does anyone know how i could build automations for an Unread flag?

[Matt_Blais]

@Mikkling

As a tangent, does anyone know how i could build automations for an Unread flag?

Perhaps we could get the Notifications feed (and related functionality) exposed as a “special built-in DB” like Users? On which we could define automations, etc…

[B_Sp]

Glad to keep getting support here. This and all other improvements of notifications, merging of comments and references into one area that is discussed Here would be huge for improvement in Fibery usability for my team. There are really no other tools out there that have both comments, and “backlinks” - which is the way the market refers to what we have in References in Fibery - where you can freely link anything in both. Most tools have much more limited functionality in comments than in Fibery, meaning you get forced into doing your commenting in Slack or some other tool, while your work is in the “main” management tool.

Hoping you guys keep pushing forward here as you could really upsell what you offer in Fibery vs other tools, and how this can be a big piece of having “all your stuff in one place.”

Thanks!

[B_Sp]

I am in pretty big need of this feature, and just wanted to add one more comment: The current feed only pulls from Rich Text boxes. My team doesn’t really do much in the way of activity that you’d track in a “feed” in those boxes. In just about all work management tools around various types of work - Github/Jira; ProductBoard/Aha; Asana/ClickUp/Wrike; Confluence/Slite/Slab; Coda/Airtable, etc. etc. comments seem to be where activity and updates are logged, not “description” fields like Rich Text in Fibery. @Oshyan put it well here:

@Oshyan

True, and yet false. Here’s why:
What do Miro and ClickUp and Fibery and Figma and Google Docs and so many other tools have in common? Notifications! You gotta get 'em right, or at least not aggressively wrong (Fibery is sadly a bit closer to that than “right” IMO).

Being able to see a stream of what people are talking about is something I sorely am missing right now. And would really like to have the references included, which often are just comments in related entities - such a powerful feature of Fibery that over time just sticks out more and more - you guys should get innovation of the year for the references feature!

Thanks for listening!

[B_Sp]

I wanted to revitalize this request as this is a need my team has, and it can be solved in a myriad of ways, including some related requests in here such as:

For Activity Stream, ability to see in chronological order References & Comments

Hi guys, I wanted to request for the upcoming Activity Stream the ability to see Comments and References as they happen as part of an Entity history, and if you hopefully can add Fibery-wide Activity Stream, part of that as well. We use References and Comments extensively. In fact, I would say that without these features I’m not sure my team could stay in Fibery due to the other limitations. But because you have developed enough functionality in Comments like full #mentioning and inclusion i…

Ability to have all References to an entity and its children in one area

References are an essential feature for our team in Fibery. Might not be here without them in fact. The ability to see around an entity comments that another user took time to make, including referencing the entity in question, is immensely useful. For us, references are as valuable as comments, because we have trained ourselves that we can reference any entity anywhere in Fibery, and keep the context of what is being said from the referencing entity, and all this shows up in the reference. …

The bottom line is we use comments and references as the primary updates in entities. This is particularly relevant with work-type entities such as tasks, projects, initatives, decisions, etc. It would be much more useful if you could just glance at an entity and see in one stream the comments, as well as the references, in chronological order, to get an idea of its history.

If this is going to be solved some way differently that would be great, too.

Thanks!

[helloitse]

I am looking to explore the feed view in my workspace and I would find a comments field very helpful here. I am out of votes but want to throw my hat in on this page.
Examplesof how I would use it:
I am in the habit of leaving comments on tasks as a way to mark WIP, what was completed and notes for me to pick back up on execution. A feed of comments on the Task database, sorted in descending chronological order gives me a quick overview of work recently completed.

[B_Sp]

Thanks for supporting this! Really hope it gets to production soon, comments are a key way my team communicates and having them showing anywhere as a chronology of activity around an entity is great. Same with referenced entities. Thanks again!

[YvetteLans]

We would love to have a good solution for references. Currently we turned references off in the workspaces of our clients since it’s a really confusing feature when you link a lot of entities to another.

It’s a shame since it’s such a powerful feature. If we could only have references in a table or feed view that would be really really awesome!

[memetican]

I was just trying to figure this out now, I’ve added a commentor to my team but I can’t tell when or where they comment because it doesn’t show in the activity feed. Is there a setting for this?

[mdubakov]

@memetican

I was just trying to figure this out now, I’ve added a commentor to my team but I can’t tell when or where they comment because it doesn’t show in the activity feed.

Usually notifications should be enough if you configure your Inbox to receive comments added to entities you are interested it. So far there is no way to create some general comments feed.