Fibery Product Report: September 2024

[mdubakov]

This is our internal report we do every month. I decided to share it and see whether it is worth doing in the future. Features names are in bold. In our internal doc these are links to real features. Leave your comments about its usefulness.

Overall, product development is moving forward with great pace. Fibery becomes more polished and I feel positive about our progress here. Feedback from our customers is good.

Total Highlights Score in September releases:

Main areas we focused on in September:

• Search
• Automations
• Permissions
• Email Sync
• Views & Entity View
• Whiteboard

Permissions Theme

Done

We released the next major milestone: Share Database with User. The development took 2 months which is fine but we didn’t release any partial functionality (e.g. Submitter and Viewer) along the way as planned which is not cool. Hopefully, we’ll learn from this waterfally experience and invest more into coordinating migrations, re-indexes, etc. to release chunks of value earlier.

Next

We’ve realized that we can deliver the first version of guests without the full-scale Configure access to Users (which would’ve added another ~2 months), so that’s what we are doing now: Introduce Guests limited to per-Entity access.

The goal is to allow ~80% of external collaboration use cases (think freelancers or clients) by inviting 3rd parties by email to a specific Entity. Unlike regular Users, Guests won’t see each others’ User profiles (but will see other Members).

Later, we’ll likely return to the initial plan:

• Share Database with Group
• Configure access to Users
• Share Entity with Group

Adoption

• Entity sharing has reached its plateau when it comes to adoption by different workspaces.
• Automatic sharing via people Fields has been on the rise till very recently.
• Database sharing has seen the first adopters.

I’d say the only mildly worrying sign is the ratio of # of access templates created to # of them used.

When it comes to the number of unique users receiving access, the automatic sharing via People Fields dominates:

Simplicity & Usability Theme

General UI and Usability

Progress was great in this area, we released many improvements and polishing to entity views and views, including Search in Views, Pinned Entity Views and Relation Views, Quick Filters in Views, new headers in views. Some (not all) done features are:

• Improve Entity Name Field
• Update Entity page Header & Go-to navigation
• Introduce Search in Views
• Pin Relation Views
• Quick filters in Views
• and 10 more features

Next

Now we are working on Add (Quick Add, Name generated via formula problem) and new Space Setup

• Create anything from sidebar
• Required Fields and Creating a new entity is a pain if the name is generated by a formula
• Space Setup 2.0

Quick add

Required fields

Search

We are working on search improvements as well (Pavel and Max). Some UI and usability improvements were made:

• Filter Search Results by Final State
• Make Create action more visible in Search

Next

Now we are focusing on Semantic Search improvements and working on mixing keyword and semantic search results.

Semantic Search Results mixed with keyword search results

Grand idea is to host own model for embeddings and get rid of third-party services like OpenAI. In this case we can index databases by default and provide great search experience for all accounts. However, in the first steps we will try to improve search quality and usability, and only then think about self-hosting.

Automations

Sergey spent some time on Automations improvements:

• UI: Reorder rules & buttons
• Add description for automation Rules & Buttons
• Automations: copy rich text fields content from one entity to another

We did not find more low-hanging fruits and stopped , and switched to performance improvements for rich text. Main idea is to remove jumps .

Oleg is working on AI setup for automations. Scripts feature was released and it works good. Next step is to fully create rules and actions via AI.

• Automations Script AI Assistant

Email/CRM Theme

Finally we will be able to transform Fibery into Email client and support CRM cases good enough → CRM. Many features were done to make it happen by Max, Oleg and Eugene.

• Default Email integration Folder settings
• Email integration: introduce threads for related emails
• Add 5 mins sync to Email integration
• Support Microsoft Business Accounts Email integration
• Support Reply Headers in Send Email action to be able to communicate via Email from Fibery.
• Support OAuth for GMail integration

Next

• Multiple accounts for the same integration

After that Fibery can work as a CRM for many use cases, including HR and B2B Sales. Some general polishing will be required though. For example, Send Email button popup looks super ugly… Maybe we will re-design this part.

Whiteboard

Mostly small usability features released, major update will come after ProseMirror in Whiteboard addition.

Done

• Lock Whiteboard
• Whiteboard grid improvements
• Update fonts selector and default font set in whiteboard
• Update header in Whiteboard view
• Add Bring to front, Send to back options for object position menu

Next

We are still fixing basic things to make Whiteboard good. It is already much better and people noticed that.

• Whiteboard: Text Editor floating Menu
• Adding and displaying external text links on the whiteboard
• Comments in Whiteboard

[Oshyan]

I personally love to see this kind of thing! It’s far more open and thus compelling vs. most other products in the space. Notion for example is just absolutely awful at communication around upcoming features, etc. (though their strategy of mysteriously teasing vague things may be better for marketing). So I think this kind of thing should be used as part of marketing, personally. But I am not sure how positive an impact it would actually have, nor how long it takes you to put together such a piece. All I can say is that if I was a new customer looking for options and I read an update like this I would immediately jump Fibery up my short list vs. other less transparent options like Notion, Airtable, and Coda. This kind of communication goes a long way for certain potential customers.

[YvetteLans]

@Oshyan

I personally love to see this kind of thing! It’s far more open and thus compelling vs. most other products in the space

I also love these kind of updates. And agree that it’s a competitive advantage.

@Oshyan

So I think this kind of thing should be used as part of marketing, personally. But I am not sure how positive an impact it would actually have, nor how long it takes you to put together such a piece. All I can say is that if I was a new customer looking for options and I read an update like this I would immediately jump Fibery up my short list

Fully agree.

I think it’s a great marketing piece that also deserves a spot on the website (blog? separate page?)

And honestly I think the weekly updates also deserve a spot on the website. Fibery’s release pace, new features and tons of improvements are rarely seen in the market. It’s a big USP!

[veronica]

I think the last year was amazing for you guys from the standpoint of product development and usability. I am your very strong supporter and switched all my clients into Fibery as guests to interact with their data. As I think about notion and other competitors, I think to entice people to try and fall in love with Fibery you have to have some freemium plan. Something like 1 user, 5 or less spaces, some Max number of entries for ever free. This will encourage people who are single users to switch and try it out. Once they do, they will see the benefits and they will bring their small businesses etc. My goal now is to encourage my clients to create their own spaces and accounts based on what they see is possible in Fibery.

[Sarah_Arminta]

I really really love updates like this. I think the transparency and insight into Fibery’s thought process is unique and a big selling point. I tell people about it as often as I can lol. Even though I haven’t always agreed with your focus and positioning, at least it’s clear what it is so I can make the decisions I need to because I’m well informed. It goes a long ways in terms of trust. It also makes me WANT to fight for Fibery even when things aren’t perfectly suited for my use case. You’ve been my dark horse app for a long time. I’m just waiting for you to have your break out moment and for other people to finally get it.

[mdubakov]

@veronica

I think to entice people to try and fall in love with Fibery you have to have some freemium plan. Something like 1 user, 5 or less spaces, some Max number of entries for ever free. This will encourage people who are single users to switch and try it out. Once they do, they will see the benefits and they will bring their small businesses etc. My goal now is to encourage my clients to create their own spaces and accounts based on what they see is possible in Fibery.

We are working on it. I hope we will re-launch free plan till the end of the year, now we are trying to come up with good restrictions (but without users limitation, which is quite hard

[Michael_Ichter]

I very much like this report. It feels more significant and powerful than other updates. Maybe because it feels like a “window” into your internal process, and because it has less of the “fluff” that are usually found in marketing and customer-oriented communications. I especially liked seeing the “next” sections, which are more intuitive for me than the roadmap.

[HereBeBeasties]

I’d say the only mildly worrying sign is the ratio of # of access templates created to # of them used.

I’m not sure how you’re generating the stats for this, but the “usage” on the actual access template page only shows people who have been directly shared with using the access template, not those who have been assigned the access template via an Assignees mapping. So you might be under-reporting this?

(This feels like a bug to me - you might inadvertently delete what you think is an unused access template, and end up accidentally revoking lots of permissions.)

[antoniokov]

@HereBeBeasties

I’m not sure how you’re generating the stats for this, but the “usage” on the actual access template page only shows people who have been directly shared with using the access template, not those who have been assigned the access template via an Assignees mapping. So you might be under-reporting this?

We count the usage via People Fields as well as direct sharing, so the data should be right.

[interr0bangr]

@mdubakov

We’ve realized that we can deliver the first version of guests without the full-scale Configure access to Users (which would’ve added another ~2 months), so that’s what we are doing now: Introduce Guests limited to per-Entity access.

The goal is to allow ~80% of external collaboration use cases (think freelancers or clients) by inviting 3rd parties by email to a specific Entity. Unlike regular Users, Guests won’t see each others’ User profiles (but will see other Members).

I’m glad some work is being done here. Is there a general timeline for when some of these improvements might be implemented?

Our use case is that we need clients to be able to edit a status field on a database, but ideally could just give them access to a single view that shows all the relevant entities instead of having to share each entity individually.

We’re currently handling this process with a shared Google Sheet but there’s a lot of issues with security and permissions that we’re running into so we’d prefer to use Fibery.

[mdubakov]

@interr0bangr

Our use case is that we need clients to be able to edit a status field on a database, but ideally could just give them access to a single view that shows all the relevant entities instead of having to share each entity individually.

View Sharing in the best case scenario will be done Q1 2025.

[interr0bangr]

Great, thanks for the ballpark!

[mdubakov]

@veronica

As I think about notion and other competitors, I think to entice people to try and fall in love with Fibery you have to have some freemium plan. Something like 1 user, 5 or less spaces, some Max number of entries for ever free.

Free plan was released yesterday

October 31, 2024 / New pricing, invite guests to edit, quick add

New pricing [pricing-plans-2024] We’ve updated our pricing, and here are the key changes: Free plan for teams of 10 or fewer people with feature restrictions but unlimited entities. AI included in paid plans instead of an AI add-on. Guests free of charge to collaborate with external people at no extra cost. Pricier Standard and Pro plans to account for AI, greed and inflation. Public Enterprise plan price to stick to our principle of transparency. Here is a post with a short reasoning behin…