I find that smart folders would work great as kind of like a dynamic navigation that doesn’t have to be updated. In notion or coda you can accomplish something similar by creating a page of “Organizations”. On this page you can introduce the organizations with some documentation, then have the organizations listed out using a view of a table.
In fibery, I can achieve similar functionality with smart folders. However, in this example I cannot place a document at the very top of the smart folder, just above Product in the screenshot below:
To closely associate documentation about Organizations with the smart folder directory, I have to manually create another folder to place the smart folder in, which adds additional hierarchy, which isn’t needed. So, I end up with something like this that becomes awkward to name things.
I wanted to mention that while I think this ability should exist, one feature that would help mitigate the need is Embed Custom Views into Entity View (or Rich Text), if views could be embedded in a document as well as an entity’s rich text. Then, I could create something like the Coda example. Or, if Types themselves could have a rich text area that could embed views into, that would address the need as well:
I often find myself wishing for a place where I can explain to users how the Type is intended to be used.
Are we talking about the same thing?
Where do you think such an area should live?
Interesting! What does that look like in your mind? Just whatever appears in the left menu, but embedded in a page? Or more like a hierarchical table? Or something else?
As far as I can see, Smart folders are virtually the same as hierarchical lists, so isn’t embedding the former basically the same as embedding the latter?
And as far as I know, embedding views (of all types) is planned.
Edit: I think I was confusing Hierarchical Lists with Smart Folders
So I guess what I really want is to be able to embed Smart Folders in views. Well, BOTH really, as a Hierarchical List is perfect for displaying Tasks with subtasks.
I love the power that Smart Folders give us to “roll our own” custom ways of organizing/viewing related types.
An example for my Project entity view – I’d like to have an embedded Smart Folder that shows:
For most cases I much prefer a single, powerful “do-it-all” view that can be easily tweaked, rather than a separate view for each possibility – too many possibilities!
Here’s an example for my Meeting entity view – let’s say I’m viewing a Meeting entity from two weeks ago, and I want the view to include a Smart Folder of all Tasks related to the Meeting, organized by:
Ideally we’ll be able to Name and Save filter configurations, so they can be instantly recalled (as Notion does, to great effect).
I often wish each folder, smart or otherwise, had an associated doc (and each type too @Chr1sG !) . I feel like that would actually close some of the smoothness gap when just using docs compared to Notion/Slite etc.
To be specific, that would be one canonical doc per folder, always created.
If that was setup nicely, it could also solve part of this problem, although I guess allowing any number of docs would be more general.
That is a good question and I think so. I definitely do think that there needs to be a more useful Type page in some way or another, better access to it (e.g., I should be able to click on the Type name on the entity view), and some rich text area about the type.
I think Fibery hasn’t started from the same generic foundation as notion that everything starts from this super basic thing that can optionally have attributes associated. If eventually we have a more powerful rich text field, I could see Types having a view similar to when you expand an entity. That could have a quick button to edit the Type.
I could also see some way to configure default information that shows up for all Types in an app, or globally. For example, an area that shows a short list of Views sorted by most recently accessed, Entities by most recently accessed, etc. You might want to also have some control over doing this for a specific Type. So, the Issue Type might have Entities In Progress sorted by recent activity, and so on. In short, I think there is a pattern that exists in Fibery, but it just needs to be applied consistently to all “things”.
It sounds like what you’re describing is very similar to A: Suggestion for App Dashboard / Hierarchy View from left Menu - #5 by Oshyan and B: the “dashboard” concept, but filtered to a specific type and its relevant views. In fact there has been a lot of related discussion around this, and I know the team is intending to at least allow some kind of app-level description, but I’m not sure they have made clear whether they intend to extend this to the type-level. Keep in mind that currently Type is not exposed anywhere for non-admin users unless you make a view for it (entities of a type obviously can be, especially with Smart Folders).
Anyway, I like the idea, but just wondering how it fits with all the other ideas and discussion around similar things…
Guys (@rothnic too!), just to add some additional related requests:
I think we are all looking for the ability to build out information around both Apps - the reason for their creation, their history, etc. - and Types.
This is a great point. Often my users want to click the name of an Entity’s Type, say “Ad Partners” (we’re using something similar), and see simply a list of them. This is a very intuitive behavior of apps like Fibery
Right now though, if you want to see a list of ALL Entities in a type, you have to rely on the default creation of a table. And if you move the Type to another app, that table doesn’t follow, so you then lose your “every entity in the Type” default.
And I know this is a huge topic, but just wanted to mention again that Table view is really overdue for some improvements. You guys also talk a lot about Hierarchical View in this thread, and one huge thing I am missing from it is the ability to actually enter data like in a Table. I have found this to be so true @Chr1sG:
I think we need a lot more functionality around these to get them more useful, such as the way hierarchies work in either Wrike or TargetProcess that I documented here:
Hoping to get some movement on all of this soon, thanks!
Found this old topic. This is exactly what we currently need Would be great to add a document in the root since we also want to have a read me / Wiki document in a smart folder.
we’ll be able to Name and Save filter configurations, so they can be instantly recalled (as Notion does, to great effect).
Would be great to add a document in the root since we also want to have a read me / Wiki document in a smart folder.