Previously: Product: November 2024
We’ve made four releases in January. Total Highlights Score: 551 (for comparison, it was 205 in November).
January was a very good month in terms of delivered value.
Permissions
WIP
We currently focus on supporting Groups on all levels:
- Share Entity with Group
- Share Database with Group (in progress)
- Automatically share entities with linked Groups (in progress)
Entity sharing is live and, optimistically, we will ship DBs and automatic access in February, unless aliens other priorities hijack Andrew again.
Scalability
Customer X stretched the scalability of our entity permissions by (rapidly) sharing 70K user-entity pairs (3x the next largest customer). Entity permissions didn’t work in their workspace for a few days as the queue grew larger and larger, and we didn’t notice this until they complained.
We have made a few changes to our code and processes to prevent, detect, and troubleshoot a similar issue:
- Fixed a tremendously ineffective part of the algorithm that calculated potential access changes when it shouldn’t have.
- Added a monitoring alert for the growing queue that two people can react to.
- Added a “hotspot” detection utility to notice heavy permission setups.
- Implemented a way to [temporarily] manually disable a particular automatic access via People Field in case it produces too much work.
- Done Disable access template dropdown if automatic access via People Field is being recalculated to prevent double- and triple-work.
Adoption
Let’s look at our usual adoption chart
Database access adoption is already above expectations: more than 800 users in 129 workspaces have received some DB access—even without Groups support! Submitter access is the most popular one, as expected, but we have a problem Submitter access is undiscoverable (can’t figure out how to grant create capability) so there’s definitely a room for improvement.
Guests are a flop now with barely any usage. Why? We don’t know: there’s not much negative feedback, or any feedback, for that matter. This question requires some user research.
Usability and understanding
So far, we are focusing mostly on adding more functionality before switching to primarily explaining it. However, whenever Dima has a window, we’ll polish small things here and there:
- Navigate to access template configuration from dropdown
- Allow to link an Entity to another if User has read capability for one and update for another
- Always provide source entity name in access audit when access is propagated
- Show if access template is used in automatic access when managing it
Sudden Asana integration
Oleg got fed up with AI and decided to do Asana integration. It should be completed in February.
Filters
We’ve implemented most requested features for Filters area (well, except custom formulas and context filters). No plans to improve filters in near future.
- Set any relative value in Date Filter
- Filter and color-code by a related Entity’s Fields
- Add more text operators (is, is not, starts with, ends with) to filters
Adding and updating data
Batch actions
We’ve released Batch Actions fully and made them work in all views. We got a lot of positive feedback, but we do not have feature usage stats.
- Batch edit: change fields for selected entities
- Batch edit on Table View
Batch drag and drop was not done, but maybe we will work on it somewhere in the future.
Duplicates
We also released find duplicates, but it is not popular now, like 170 actions on duplicates and 8 merges happened in the last 2 weeks .
- Show duplicates for entity
Next
We want to finalize this theme with:
- Find Duplications action for Database
- Find duplicates in any database based on Entity Name
- and maybe even Find Duplicates by specific Field: Email, URL, etc
Required fields
Required Fields started and there are some chances that we will have the first release in February. In the first release all (or almost all) additions will invoke a Quick Add popup that a user will have to fill, then we will add in-place addition.
Next
Then we will work on Improve Entity creation when formula is used for name (or some fields are required)
Sidebar
We’ve released many sidebar related features and the new sidebar looks quite good. We got ~4 negative feedback related to My Items. On the other hand, My Items usage is still low, only ~5% of users have it enabled by default, and less than 25% of users switched back and forth.
Maybe with Automations to add things into My Items and some promotion this feature will be used more often.
Overall, Sidebar is far from perfect, still many things to improve and converge.
Done
- Show Databases in left sidebar and remove Space setup
- Collapse all menu items with a single click
- Favorites → My Items
- Quick Filter Items in Sidebar by Name
- Separate “My” from “All” in the sidebar
Next
We’ve kickstarted Nested Spaces (or Spaces in Folders), but postponed it so far. Maybe we can solve this problem via My Items, our goal is to have 60% of users use My Items. Some more polishing for sidebar will follows as well, so it seems we will complete Sidebar theme only in March/April 2025.
Now we are adding Default Space, so it will be possible to add Views and Databases in top level, together with Spaces. It will increase sidebar flexibility and remove redundant concepts like Sections and Smart Sections (they will just be top level Smart Folders).
- Default Space: Add Views and Databases on top level, Remove Smart Sections, remove Sections
- Admin sets spaces order for all users and user can’t reorder spaces in All Items mode
- Automations to add things into My Items
- ? Remove Hidden Spaces
- Home Page in Fibery
- We are also thinking how to merge Private and My Items.
Dependencies
We decided to add dependencies management now. It was planned on Q2, but we got a nice lead and this was a showstopper, so we moved this theme to this quarter. We’ll add a special type of relation (dependency) and visualize them on Timeline view. We hope to finalize these features in February.
Dependency relation config on field editor (in progress). Final design of dependency relation setup.
Dependencies on a Timeline (in progress)
AI
We’ll restart AI theme in February and explore new approaches to make AI Assistant great (for the first time). We did not settle with any exact plan so far. First, we will experiment with approaches for 2-4 weeks and then decide.
We want AI Assistant to answer questions like:
- For current customers whose contract is up for renewal within 6 months, what are the top 10 negative feedbacks? Consider customers whose contract’s renewal date is between January 28, 2025 and June 28, 2025.
- Compare sales in March 2024 and March 2023
- Find risks and areas for improvement in user feedbacks received per each component in products
Performance
Sergey started to dig into performance. First step is to make rich text loading smooth. Then we will try to find what to work on next. We are going to spend 1-3 months on this theme.
Email/CRM Theme
Fibery can handle emails in a nice way now, including multi-accounts and webhooks for instant updates. We use it on our account already, and it seems it works fine, but more time is needed to find problems.
- Deprecate Gmail IMAP sync
- Gmail OAuth Security Verification
- Sync several emails accounts to the same database
- Sync email replies from user-assigned folders / labels
Next step is to popularize this approach via educational materials, videos, templates and guides. We will not focus on this theme in February, but there are chances to get back to it in Q2.
Whiteboard
We have released the Follow other users feature, allowing users to visually track another user’s actions in real time on the board and the first part of the Comments in Whiteboard is almost ready for release. This addition will further expand collaboration capabilities for teams.
Done
- Whiteboard: Follow other users
In Progress
- Whiteboard: Find text
- Comments in Whiteboard
Next
- Groups improvements
- Sections improvements
- Embed views into the whiteboard (reports, tables, etc)
- Share whiteboard
P.S. Your thoughts and ideas are welcome 🩵.