Create an new Entity "in-Entity" only using the Keyboard

Hi again,

Roam is famous for letting you create a new “Page” with a “[[” command, and now Notion has also brought in this ability with a “+.” These are great helps in moving quickly as you don’t have to first type, then grab the mouse and highlight to pull up the modal to create the new entity. This all takes quite a bit of time and disrupts the flow of staying with the keyboard.

It would be great if could both:

  • Create a new Entity by just typing its name inline

  • Then choose where it goes with a modal that you can navigate with the keyboard. You can to this with Notion’s new back linking feature, and even add the new Page in as a Template

This goes hand in hand with another keyboard shortcut-related request I’d love to hear back on, too!

Thanks!

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I don’t really get what you mean. Do you have any GIF examples or something?

Also one should be careful with keyboard shortcuts due to keyboard layouts when there’s no option for rebinding.

There’s a lot of people that don’t have keypad, which eliminates that right away. Then there’s different layouts of the keyboard and languages, even with just the QWERTY layout.

Some keys are not available without using a modifier—which invalidates the shortcut. For instance, I don’t have [. I have to press Alt+8 to get it, or for / as many programs use I have to use Shift+7.

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Hey, thanks for the comment.

Roam is basically predicated on the speed of the “[[“ command. Have you tried it? I know @mdubakov is acutely aware of it as many tweets are hashmarked back to Roam.

Notion just released the ability to type “+” and then when you start typing, what you type creates a new page. You then click “enter”, and you get a dialogue that you can move around in with the keyboard and add the page anywhere. That is extremely helpful for speed in using the tool.

I am sure that if Fibery wants to really stick with developer types, this type of ability to move with speed across the app, without reaching for the mouse, is paramount. I have not encounter one developer worldwide who has no keyboard or actively uses things like the “[[“ command! I believe you are using a Norwegian language keyboard from some of your posts? I appreciate that localization issue, but unless I’m mistaken, Fibery is largely targeting the American market where I’m based. Michael blogged about setting up Fibery USA, that’s one of the reasons for my thinking.

Cheers!

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Hey guys, per @Haslien request, I found a .gif of the Notion behavior:

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Yeah, the new Notion functionality here is pretty nice. Which is not something I say about Notion often, lately it is usually in catch-up mode. :smile: Would definitely like to have similar here in Fibery.

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I have not tried them no.

I’ve never heard of anyone without keyboard either, but without the numpad, plenty. Heck I have to be mindful to see that keyboards I look at when buying have them :slight_smile:

Correct, mine is Norwegian, and yes pretty sure they do target US, but that may change (at least I hope, for my less English fluent coworkers). In such cases you want to be future proofing as many learn the shortcuts and changing it later suddenly disrupts flow.

Anyway back on the topic of entity creation, it seems exactly like what we already have now via the search popup? Although it is a relatively new feature, at least for the non-search dialogue. That and it’s not as easy to navigate to the types via keyboard.

Via search you do tab, arrow right, then arrow down to the type and hit enter. You then have to click on “Create new entity” with mouse.
Via text input you have to use mouse for both selecting type and creating.

I’d just chip to say that as @Haslien has mentioned, the search feature now offers entity creation (and it seems to be possible to do it all via the keyboard, using tab and arrows).
I think one thing worth noting as a distinction when comparing with notion is that fibery has so many types available to the user, whereas notion only uses ‘pages’. This means it’s easy for notion to have a quick keyboard shortcut to create a page, but in fibery there would need to be a way for the user to select the type of entity to be created. This alone will mean more keypresses however it gets implemented.
If the fibery team can figure out a nice way of doing it from the search box, the same technique can be used when using the #mention function as well.

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Ah, no, I forgot this does exist, in fact I think it pre-dated Notion’s implementation. You just have to use # to create, rather than + or /. In other words #name of new entity, then select a type, and you can create in-line just like Notion. @B_Sp that’s what you’re looking for, right?

That said it doesn’t work fully with the keyboard, so that part could be improved.

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Hey guys Chr1sG and Hasilen as well, thanks for all that.

Great Oshyan, you’re right I haven’t worked too much with the new dialogue for creating an entity, but I was so glad to see it come through. I was going to say that this still doesn’t help with getting this done with just the keyboard, and then @Hasilen raised issues I’ve been seeing and also thought to bring up at some point:

I responded in there re: my own issues with that. And I think if that could be solved, we have this request concluded. I’m editing to specify that this can’t be done with the Keyboard, as that would really help me. I breeze along in Notion and Roam when using those apps without reaching for the Mouse, and it’s huge for speed of work.

Also just for posterity’s sake re: @Chr1sG your comment on Notion.

I am obviously on the Fibery side of things, but I think you have to concede that in Notion with its templates, which you can access in that “+ Create Page” dialog, you do get something very similar to “Types” in Fibery, and I have considered replicating what I’m doing in Fibery in Notion using these Templates. I think it would actually not be much of a downgrade in fact. How it works is you get an option to create an “arbitrary” page - something you can’t do in Fibery and I wish you could :), and you can also create a page with ANY template you’ve created which you can find with just a few keystrokes in their search dialog. Aside from wait time to load, which I’d rather deal with than reaching for the most personally, you can get access to all your “types” in Notion and create stuff out of actual Templates. Something I’d like to see soon in Fibery.. Sadly for Fibery, I think the argument can be made that with Notion you can actually create with more variety than in Fibery with this functionality, contrary to your assertion :slight_smile:

Have you tried the new “+ Create Page” and seen how it allows access to a Template? That is a huge piece, Notion stepped up with that.

But… templates aren’t really comparable to Types as far as I understand, in that they are textual/wiki structure only and thus have zero functional significance. In other words they’re not fields/properties, they’re not actionable, calculable, relatable (except in the sense of unstructured backlinks, of course). A Notion database and its properties are sort of equivalent to Types in Fibery, but without the sophistication of relationships that Fibery offers.

Templates would be nice, but they’re not a replacement for typed entity creation IMO.

Hey,

I think in fact that db’s in Notion are the Type equivalents, here’s why:

  • They can be customized with all the various Fields. Each app has a list of Fields they offer. I’d argue that Notion’s has some Fibery doesn’t, Fibery has some Notion doesn’t. Would be interesting to do a side-by-side at some point :slight_smile:

  • In Fibery, if you want to create an entity that has certain pre-determined fields, you create a “Type.” Then, if you want to get some of those fields to pre-populate, which is why I’d use a Template, you can use defaults, but just in a few of those fields, like State and Single-Select. That’s why I made the request here to get more default capability, with Multi-Select:

However in Notion, you can create limitless templates within the DB. So if I have a db all set up with the Properties (as “Fields” are called in Notion) of my choosing, when I create the “default” Page in that db, I get an “Entity” equivalent of Fibery, with all the properties I created. But, I can also do stuff like pre-fill relations, set any field I like, etc. and get an even more useful Page pre-ready. Can I do this in Fibery?

I’m not sure why you think this:

because when I experimented with Templates in Notion, I did all kinds of pre-linking that I can’t do in Fibery.

Case in point: I have a “task” Type in Fibery that can relate to a another Type that is “Business Function,” which is going to be things like “Sales,” “Marketing” etc. If I want to quickly create a task linked to “sales,” I can’t do that from the “quick create” ctrl + K dialogue. I happen to have a sales guy and all his tasks should have that distinction. So I’ll have to create a whole new Type called “Sales Tasks” separate from my other Tasks if I want to handle this need. Of, force him to create all his tasks within the “Sales” Entity in my “Business Areas” Type, so no benefit of the “quick add” dialogue anymore.

In Notion, I create a db called “Tasks” and replicate basically the same Fields as my “Task” Type in Fibery. But, I then create a template called “Sales Task.” I can then add a pre-set relation to my “Sales” Business Functions db. Notion will let me with the “+” create that task in about two clicks. I cannot do this in Fibery.

My point with all this is I’m trying to illustrate what I think are some flows that we could easily get here in Fibery to actually leverage its superior underlying architecture to Notion. In this example, Notion won’t let me build out my “Business Function” db with various layers like in Fibery I can thanks to many-to-one relations. But I’m missing in Fibery as much flexibility, which might be funny to be writing, but I think it’s true, than I have in Notion in this particular case.

Cheers and thanks for the good dialogue! Hope somebody is reading this and it will all positively affect the Fibery roadmap!

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You’re right, I misunderstood how you were using the templates and/or misremembered the interaction with Properties. Truth is I haven’t bothered trying to implement complex DB relations, etc. in Notion because I find the experience more frustrating and less intuitive than Fibery. And I don’t use templates that much (yet) because they’re less applicable to my personal stuff that is what I use Notion for. So I’m probably ignorant of at least some of its capabilities.

As you outline it, you’re right that templates, or rather I might call them presets in this context (a “template” to me more implies a preset structure rather than preset values), are very useful and when applied to properties/fields, they are very powerful. Fibery should definitely implement this. And I want to call attention (again) to how it’s implemented in Notion, which I think is good. The ability to have multiple templates/presets in a single DB.

I intend to do this at some point, not just with field types, but a broader comparison. Hopefully I can get to it soon.

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Hey great, great constructive commentary as always, thanks!

I’ve actually delved a bit into Notion lately and realized that some of what is going on there is more sophisticated than I used to think. I think @mdubakov is intimately familiar with how Notion works, so we can feel good that the team is looking at those solutions, too.

Take care!

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Loving this dialogue, guys… :grin:

I do use Notion, but like @Oshyan I haven’t really used templates, and I’m clearly not a power user like @B_Sp so it’s great to benefit from the learnings of others.

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Quick comment to say that [[ creating a new document(if it doesn’t exist; otherwise link) is cruicial for any workflow centered on docs. The second brain/zettel type that fibery does already so well with sliding panels, a la Andy Matusak). I still haven’t found a solution that works without clicking (minimum 3 times). At that point I forgot what the doc I wanted to create was. This is a core operation, it has to be ms to create a new doc, otherwise the tool feels like an impediment to thinking.

EDIT: this is hopeful and seems to be ‘done.’ It just doesn’t work for me as it brings the ‘any entity’ dropdown from hell that makes me reach for the mouse. If we could get it to default to ‘document’, it could be a workflow enhancement of titanic proportions.

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Have you tried using {{

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For anyone reading this in the future: This is the magic solution. {{ makes the UX pleasant for someone who adds a lot of documents per day.

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is there a keyboard shortcut for this? (equivalent to the cmd+L in obsidian f.e.?) (on my keyboard this is cmd+8 cmd+8 … pretty cumbersome)

todoist solves the type issue by interpreting the @some_TYPE (they call it project or something i cant remember) while adding a new entity.

so {{ “name of entity @name of type” enter would be the fastest way of adding stuff that i can think of.

For what?

Creating an entity; use # and start typing the name (then choose its type)
Creating a document: use {{ and start typing the name
Creating an embedded view: use << and start typing the name (then choose the view type)

Loads of other stuff: use / and see what the options are.

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ah!, thanks - i missed the # option (too many apps juggling in my head).

that is nice and basically what the cmd+L is in obsidian. it looks up existing entities, creating new ones if nothing is found.
with the option to “tab” into the anything field this is also quite good to handle with the keyboard. although it would be even better to access the type without the tab+enter but maybe with a ## or something while typing? (eg #name of new entity ##type …with autocomplete) this would make it also more obvious that the name of the new entity is still possible to edit (now you need to click back to the text)