February 27, 2025 / 🐳 Share Database with Group or everyone, New Sidebar, Copy as Markdown, Timeline and required fields improvements

[mdubakov]

@grex22

All Favorites does, at this point, is allow me to expand/collapse my entire Personal tab (minus Private section). It seems like an extra UI element / indentation that’s not needed, considering we can throw folders over there and so on.

This is exactly what we had before the final release. However, it was somewhat “unpleasant” to have everything without Favorites folder.
Also we do have plans to add more special sections into Personal:

• Recent - a list of recently accessed entities and views
• Popular - a list of entities and views you visit often

[njyo]

@mdubakov

Unfortunately this will not be done, since Folders are just UI thing for Fibery.

I noticed

[Lee_Denny]

Awesome! Thanks for the special shoutout

Looking forward to doing a deep dive restructuring and tidying of our Fibery.

I read you might be changing how Documents work by moving them from a view to a global database; is it worth waiting for that to get stuck into a major tidying session?

[mdubakov]

@Lee_Denny

I read you might be changing how Documents work by moving them from a view to a global database; is it worth waiting for that to get stuck into a major tidying session?

This is at least 3-4 months away. We might start it in Q2 only

[interr0bangr]

@mdubakov

We have smart folders improvements on the radar around Q2. This context empire is a complex beast, so we want to untangle it a bit and streamline with other things. Grouping is what we likely will add.

Amazing to hear, really looking forward to this. Thanks.

[Yuri_BC]

@mdubakov

Copy as Markdown action for entities and docs

I use copy pasting markdown like all the time (either manually or in automations). Nearly every entity I create needs to be processed by ai using markdown.

The first need I have is to copy the rich text field (Description) as markdown.
This is not yet possible, since the new markdown integration feature requires to copy the entire entity with multiple fields as markdown; for that reason, I never use that new feature.

Please allow rich text fields to be copied as markdown.
I currently have to use third party tools to accomplish this.

[Illusory]

@Alex_Rublev

Now it would make sense to add color coding for folders, so that the entire top-level isn’t just gray

+1 for this please. As we replace “spaces” with “folders”, this will be very helpful in distinguishing side items.

[helloitse]

I agree that there should be some distinction between spaces and folders, but I wonder if color is the way to go. Tbh, the way things are headed it feels like spaces are more a backend distinction. In a year from now, they may even hide spaces from users altogether.

[Illusory]

I think Custom Sections would be most helpful. Similar to the way Smart Folders creates their own section within the sidebar. Then, we can move folders under specific sections.

[mdubakov]

@Yuri_BC

The first need I have is to copy the rich text field (Description) as markdown.
This is not yet possible, since the new markdown integration feature requires to copy the entire entity with multiple fields as markdown; for that reason, I never use that new feature.

Possible in today’s release March 13, 2025 / ⛅️ Weekend days setting, Avoid weekends on timeline, better required fields UI

[njyo]

Circling back to the sidebar after using it a while and coming to terms that the Workspace and Personal tab will remain with Favourites and Private, I would like to ask for the following refinements:

1. Top level nodes (folders or spaces in the Workspace or the Private, Favourites section) should have a slightly larger margin on top, so that they are easier to recognise. Not much, but a little more.
2. There should be a clear gap between the last element in Favourites and Private.
3. I would like to be able to create folders in Favourites to manage the chaos a bit more as I find myself not switching tabs that much.

Thanks!

[Illusory]

After some testing, I wonder if the “Private” space under the Personal tab should be a true “Space”, in the sense that you can create databases within it.

Currently, I have a “for-me-only” Space in within Workspace and then I “favourite” it so that it is visible within the Personal tab. Seems a bit counter-intuitive. Wouldn’t it be simpler to have “Private” space act as a true Space where you can create new databases and dump data without cluttering “Workspace” or the Favourites section?

[Chr1sG]

Private database - my space

Hey, This is a feature I’m missing, coming from Notion. I’d like to create a database with content only visible to myself, to handle my personal task management (TODO list / GFD style). Unfortunately, at the moment I can only create a database in a space, which means all workspace admins have access to it. Only workaround I’ve found is to use my personal fibery/google account to hold this, but this a pain to use because fibery does not support 2 connections in the same browser.

[njyo]

Coming back to this topic after a couple of weeks use, I have to say that I do not like the Workspace and Personal tab in the sidebar and I wish for the old layout to come back where they were just two vertical sections that I can scroll through.

I keep finding myself toggling and then scrolling a lot, which is much slower and more cumbersome than simply scrolling.

In my case, I have made my own My Dashboard page that I use as a starting point and from where I link to my work:

1. Almost always, when wanting to open My Dashboard, I need to toggle to Personal and then find it on top, rather than just having it on top.
2. When working on things and then switching to an un-linked page I always need to toggle to Workspace and scroll to the right page.

With the old setup, where everything was in one scrollable list, I do not need to switch context and scroll, I simply scrolled to the right place. I could do the math using the Keystroke-Level Model, but I trust that intuitively you understand that tab-switch plus scrolling is slower and—more importantly—cognitively more taxing than simply scrolling.

So, @mdubakov, please bring back the unified sidebar, even if just as an advanced option.

Thanks!

Edit: The result of this is that I’ve started to use the search more than before, which is obviously not good as it’s slower than just using the navigation structure created.

[Matt_Blais]

Maybe “Personal” could be a pop-out when hovered?

[ccollins]

@mdubakov

Folder is visible when a user has access to at least one Space inside it (or it contains any View, like a document or table).

I misunderstood when I first read this. The first half of the sentence makes perfect sense to me, “Folder is visible when a user has access to at least one Space inside it…”. This is perfect, only show the folder if a user has access to the data.

The second half of the sentence “or it contains any view…” is where you have lost me. Here is a very simple example: I have a folder titled “Admin Experiments”, which houses a number of spaces that only I have access to. These are partially completed future build outs. If I create a view under the folder instead of inside one of the spaces (for example a central document to write notes about each of these buildout ideas), that folder is now visible for everyone in my company. Even if I created a view that uses databases that they don’t have access to, they still see a new folder on the left sidebar with an empty view.

I don’t think this is intuitive for admin’s to have to manage or consider as they try to build out the permissions for their workspace. Folders are perfect for grouping spaces in a way that works for that company. But if I wanted to group spaces into department folders (engineering/marketing/sales) and each of these folders had a top level document or view to introduce the department folder, now everyone in the company sees every department folder even though they can’t access any of the data. This seems very unnecessary to me.

I’m curious what the counterargument is to this and what I’m missing. Thanks for considering.

[Chr1sG]

I think the answer is that the sidebar should eventually make sense to users as much as possible, but it’s true that during the phase when an admin/creator is building out dbs/views, things might appear counterintuitive.

[interr0bangr]

In contrast, I love the workspace and personal tabs and would request that Fibery doesn’t remove them, haha.

I just wish there were a way to collaborate with other users on views that are in your “Private” section of the “Personal” tab without having to move them to a space, which would then need a “Shared With Me” section, just like Google Drive.

[ccollins]

You make it sound like the build out phase is one and done. From my experience, most people start transitioning different processes over months and years and continue to build, tinker, and improve their processes forever. I’ve been fine tuning my company’s workspace for over 3 years and have many ideas for new spaces. I guess for us things will just “appear counterintuitive” forever (sorry for being snarky)

Also my second example was for a finished state. If you had different folders for different departments, and you had an intro document outside of spaces, then everyone in the company could see every department folder. The idea that everyone can see a folder titled “Executives Only” and an intro document that says “Welcome to the Executive Spaces”, but then they see nothing else within that space, that feels very unpolished to me. As a user it would make me think I’m not where I’m supposed to be and have been given access by accident. If I’m not supposed to be in that folder than I shouldn’t see anything.

Can you give me an example where an admin would want their users to see a folder where they don’t have access to any of the data inside of it?

[Chr1sG]

@ccollins

You make it sound like the build out phase is one and done.

Well, I merely meant that the part of the sidebar which is being built out might appear weird until spaces/dbs/views have been finalised.

@ccollins

If you had different folders for different departments

I suppose I would tend to use a space per department, rather than a folder per department, and the ‘intro docs’ would sit in each space.

In fact, you seem to be hinting at that, no?

@ccollins

everyone can see a folder titled “Executives Only” … but then they see nothing else within that space