In January we did 4 releases with total 480 value points (600 → 530 → 820 → 480 last 4 months). Releases quality and speed is decent in January. And December was very good.
Main product areas and how they will change with time in near future.
Permissions
Since Andrew was busy with validation rules, we didn’t start any Features in January — only finished and released Manage custom access templates for Database access from UI.
Adoption: guests (retraction)
In November, I wrote that Guests have seen incredible adoption among collaborative workspaces. I was wrong, and my incredulous intuition was right. There was a bug in the query that only affected Guests and only in this chart. Here’s the reality:
So 17% became 9% and 68% became 13%. Yikes!
More reasons to consider Improve Guests user experience! But not before…
Next: access to users
The next major thing is Configure access to Users, and the roadmap is clear now:
It’s not the fastest way to first value, but I believe it’s the right path for the long term.
Once the access to users is ready, there will be two major things left to close the Granular Access theme:
- Allow to hide Space data (entities) from Admins
- Add create capability to access templates
Validation rules
Initially we wanted to implement access to previous values in automation rules, so we dig into it. However, it appeared that validation rules are is a better way to solve data consistency problemm is a be need mostly, so we jumped into Validation rules with brave Andrew and fearless Sergey. We almost completed all the things, the only remaining use case should be released soon Support Previous field values in validation rules.
After than Andrew will rest for a week and get back to permissions.
We have 109 rules created in 44 workspaces now.
Usability and simplicity
We seriously fucked up with Quick Filters where users can change values (especially me), as a result, we had to start from scratch and scrap 2-3 months of effort. However, this time we nailed a better solution with help of Anton and I hope Pavel will keep his sanity intact after this feature.
Another quite unexpected feature we’ve implemented is Architect vs. User modes. It is a somewhat controversial thing, and we are getting some negative feedback (but we got more positive feedback for sure).
What we learned here is to prepare releases for such features better. We had to add some in-product in-place announcement and make sure users are not missing this. An Intercom banner is not enough, so next time we will do better.
Done
We did many small improvements everywhere:
- Quickly Show/Hide All Fields in Entity View
- Reports performance boost: load less fields by default
- Collapse and expand all levels for Grid View / List View / Gantt View
- Hierarchical list: ability to remove top level objects with keeping the rest
- Preserve all View settings when adding or removing databases where possible
- View Items Menu unification
- Group Action Buttons in context menu if there are more than 3 of them
- Restyle collection XL units
- Empty states for Views
- Disable/Hide Documents for the workspace
- Jump to newly created Field on Entity View
- Update nested list styles in Smart Folders
- Reorder action menu items in Entity page
- Update Edit Name pop-up
Next
- Timeline: improve performance to support lots of items
- Search Spaces and other Search improvements
- Hide Entity Views based on rules
Import and Integrations
We did several quite unexpected things
- “Periods” integration
- Stripe integration
- Improve integration framework by reducing load on database
Next
Now we are working on some import improvements in scope of Introduce optional Field settings in integrations and import feature.
Files field
Victor was quite busy with different things and only now we are re-focusing on Files again. We also spent unreasonable amount of time on this bug File upload silently fails if you navigate away. File units got better:
- New File unit on Entity View
- Preview files in rich text fields in lightbox
Next
Now we will complete file units in other views (including Table View) and maybe take a look at Google Drive integration.
- More File Unit visualizations on Entity View
- File Unit visualization on Views
- ??? maybe Attach Files from Google Drive to entities
Rich Text
We decided to make rich text great (for the first time), so Vova started to fix bugs and already fixed no less than 50 
. Also Kostas did Embed Mermaid (code → diagram) into rich text.
Next
Kostas got some balls and will dig into Reorder rich-text blocks via drag’n’drop and keyboard. I hope we will be able to catch up with Notion here. We will continue bug fixing effort as well.
In parallel we are fixing references in Migrate mentions when converting or merging entity
AI
AI Agent usage increased significantly in January.
We’re spending $4K+/month on AI providers (mostly on Anthropic).
We can also calculate cost per account now, and in February we already see things are not going good for some accounts. We will think what we will do with AI pricing in some near future, since AI calls is not a good metric.
Sub-agents usage is also interesting. Guide is very popular.
Notable improvements that we’ve done recently:
- Modify Document View content via AI
- Search tool for AI Agent (incl. Document views)
- Add Basic sub-agent for Multi-Agent system
Next
Aleh is completing Create/Update a Report with AI and now we are working on Set AI Agent Context (Space, Database, Entity, View, …).
Overall, Fibery AI Agent is far from complete and we have to implement many many improvements to make it good. We assembled a list of such things and Max with Sergey will move this theme forward in the next several months. We will also implement Smart Agent should access Files content (+ attach file into chat)
Automations
Very little progress here. We implemented Duplicate automations to other databases and nothing else.
Next
- Access the previous value for Rules
- Automatically link entities: operators besides = (>, <, ≠, …)
- Automatically link entities: compare with constants
- Unite “Entities linked/unlinked” triggers with Entity Update trigger, allow to mix all fields via OR condition
Whiteboard
To support a wider range of chart types in future Whiteboard: Templates , we started by expanding the set of connector styles and unifying the interface panels.
You can now use line jumps and a double-line style with all connectors, and we’ve updated the connector behavior algorithm to work better with different line thicknesses. Connectors also support custom colors and styles. When you select the connector tool, a new menu lets you choose the type, color, and style before you start drawing, so everything looks right from the start.
- Redesign connector toolbar
- Add connector a jump and a double line style
- Update the set of arrowheads and line styles
Next
The next step is to unify the shape toolbars and add a sidebar for shape and icon collections, with support for user-defined collections.
- Redesign shape toolbar
- New panel for Shapes
- Add the ArchiMate shape set
- Add additional icon libraries
Mobile
By the end of December we shipped our first mobile app release to the app stores. In January we slowed down feature development to collect user feedback and focus on redesigning the mobile experience (navigation, document workflows, views, instant entity creation, and the AI chat and better tablet support).
P.S. Your feedback is welcome as usual!
