Fibery UX/UI enhancements

[mdubakov]

If you have concrete problems with Fibery UI and general UX, please post them here and we will try to address them. Try to describe a problem first, then you can offer a solution (or not, it is less important).

[Michael_Ichter]

Consistent "Group by the same database relation" behavior when using "Search Sidebar items"

For smart folders in our wiki, we use the “group by same database relation” toggle to nest entities. However, when we use the “sidebar search” feature to locate a folder and then expand that folder, all the entities are expanded. They are nested, but the lists are all expanded and cannot be collapsed: [image showing fully expanded lists] As is, this feels cluttered, and it is inconsistent with accessing the smart folder normally. It would be nice for the UX to have this collapsed by default (…

I just posted this earlier today. I believe it fits under this macro topic.

[Mircea_Braescu]

I have a few

1. Tables should show the active item, even when the table is out of focus

Problem: I have to navigate through a lot of items like in the screenshot below, it’s easy to get lost where in the list are, and re-tracing those steps is wasteful and frustrating,

2. Tab titles should be informative.

Context and problem: Problem: I often have multiple tabs open and the tab title becomes absolutely worthless the moment I open an entity, so when I do any context switching (which happens a lot) I can’t easily go back to the tab that I want because I don’t know which one it is, so I have to re-open them one by one until I find it, instead of looking at them and knowing “aha, it’s the 4th tab”
The problem stems form the fact that I want to know which view each tab was about, but opening an entity loses that information (the view name)
Ideally the tab title would be something like: {VIEW} \ {ENTITY}

3. Boards should not have a single button (which is arguably useless 99.9% of the time) taking up one entire column with empty space.

Problem: depending on the views and screen sizes things can easily get very crowded in Fibery boards. Doubly so if you open an entity. Having that useless column in there make the content too crammed and hard to scan, or pushes elements out of view when they could have fit in.
This is one of the most egregious examples of bad UX I have ever come across

4. Having forms not use advanced search (searching by ID) is a horror show in some situations

Context and Problem: In our context we moved from Jira and want to “ease people in” by using a form. Imagine their frustration when they go in, have to select a task, and realizing they can only search by name but not ID. That creates frustration and comments such as “Jira was better” [for logging work]

5. On whiteboards, I should be able to select “no border” for a shape

Problem: I want to remove the stroke in the same way I do in other similar apps: by choosing an option that hides it, I don’t want to re-learn how to hide a stroke, such as by turning the opacity to zero, which still leaves some visual artefacts so it does not work as intended

6. In the desktop app, closing tab should take me to the previously open tab

Context and Problem: I often have multiple tabs open in the desktop app, and if I want to click an image to see it in full details, the app will open it in a new tab, If I close that tab, then the active tab becomes the last tab on the right, not the tab I was using before, which means I have to to detective work to figure our which was was open before I decided to view that image. Basically the problem is I’m wasting time fighting with the tool instead of focusing on the actual task at hand.

[tomp]

When searching (in search, or when searching to create a relation to another record) only the space name, database name and record name are shown. In my use case there are too many similarly named records and therefore I would like to be able to choose which other fields are displayed in the results rows to help me differentiate between records, or expand results one by one to see if it’s the record I’m looking for (This is how my CRM Microsoft Dynamics handles search) . Delete this if you don’t consider it concrete. Thanks

[lars]

• Timeline view with multiple databases shown, Display → Group by has a common field selected. Adding another database will remove the group by, even if the added database contains the common field. Has to be reselected, and all filters/sorting options related to lanes have to be recreated. (Also change is irrevocable, so you better remember to check filters and sorting beforehand, otherwise it’s lost forever)
• Similarly, when changing a filter field, the filter type selection isn’t preserved, even if shared between selections. For example “field A [is not empty]”, and you select “field B”, then the type reverts back to “=”, even if “is not empty” is available.
• New fields added to database get added to every view on detail page and have to be removed from every single one of them if it’s just helper fields.
• “Pinned fields” dropdown in 2-column entity view only accessible after first field has been pinned
• Display of icons not consistent across UI (e.g. entity icons in timeline view not shown “natively” in timeline box, but inside of “data wrapper” like regular fields; entity icons not shown for grouping entities in timeline lanes; icons for smart folders/folders (thank you!) in sidebar cannot have a different color associated)
• Sometimes it would be helpful to select a different name field for certain occasions, e.g. have a full editable name in detail and table view, but show a generated short name in lists or in timeline etc. (not sure if that’s a UX thing or a general feature request )

[DiegoKamp]

In the views, the description is truncated, despite there being available space to the right of the field

[DiegoKamp]

In the case of lookup relationships, resizing is not possible, unlike what happens with normal relationships

[gok]

My main UX/UI improvement relates to improving writing and editing text in Fibery using the keyboard. Currently, much of the editing in Fibery requires using a mouse, but I would love to be able to do most editing using the keyboard without having to pick up the mouse.

Concrete suggestions for improvements:

• Keyboard shortcuts. In general it would be great if most editing actions got shortcuts, with shortcut displayed in context menu or tooltips. For example formatting as bullet lists, numbered lists, etc, would be useful to toggle on/off by keyboard shortcuts.

• Universal search command. It is great that you can access formatting commands by typing ‘/’ and simply start writing the action you want to perform. It would be fantastic if this could be used for most (all) editing commands, like in text editors like e.g. VS Code and Sublime. It is also very useful if commands have the related shortcut displayed in the search list.

• Moving paragraphs. Writing feature specifications often requires re-prioritisation or re-ordering of lists. It would be great to move paragraphs up and down using the keyboard, such as most other text editors (Word, Docs, etc.) can (e.g. using alt+up/down). Moving using cut and paste, or using mouse today is very cumbersome today.

• Math edit. I love that you implemented math (Latex) capabilities, but there are some strange behavior:

  • To switch to inline math, I have to write a letter, then select it (or start typing /eq), and the inline math shortcut (shift+cmd+e) will not work unless text is selected.

  • I cannot delete a math equation by backspace. If cursor is right to a math expression, backspace moves into math editing mode and places cursor at the beginning of the expression. This makes editing math cumbersome.

  • Navigating with the cursor from the right of a math expression and left, places the cursor in at the beginning of the math expression. It should rather enter math mode with the cursor at the end.

• Math edit improvements. Improved access and navigation in math mode would improve usabiltgy greatly:

  • It would be great if inline math could be triggered by simply writing ‘$$’ in the text, which is quite common in other editors. If not possible, at least the shortcut should be able to switch to inline math without having to select text first.

  • To switch to block math, the only way is to start typing ‘/eq’, and there is not shortcut. It would be great to have a math block triggered by ‘$$$’ or similar, or if not possible, add a keyboard shortcut (e.g. shift+cmd+f)

• Keyboard navigation. Using tab to move focus and enter to open entities does not work as expected in Fibery. Hitting tab does not move the focus where I’d expect. It would be great if tab moves the focus to the most relevant field to open by pressing enter or edit.

[lars]

Oh, speaking of keyboard shortcuts: Fibery rich-text fields seem to capture my usual browser shortcuts (Cmd+L for location bar, Cmd+Y for history), leaving me stuck inside that tab without grabbing the mouse (because “tabbing out of it” doesn’t work either)

[gb_carbone]

There seems to be multiple problems with filtering and using “Hide Empty Groups”, which needs to be toggled manually back and forth for the view to update. There are instances where the list view is completely empty until that Hide Empty Groups button is toggled back & forth at least once.

[jean1]

@gok

For example formatting as bullet lists, numbered lists, etc, would be useful to toggle on/off by keyboard shortcuts

There are existing FOSS components such as marktext that provide such keybindings.

[billyjackson]

A few that affect us:

1. Table Columns with the same names no longer combine if they have different data-types
   Table columns with similar names no longer combining - #5 by billyjackson
   We used this (previous) feature to see similar but not entirely identical datatypes together at a glance; i.e. looking at vendor info alongside contractor info; vendor type and contractor type are similar but not quite the same selects, for instance.

2. Adding new items to a table when grouped by a non-editable field is very difficult
   If data is grouped in a table by a lookup field, (e.g. Contact Type for one of the contacts that’s set), there is A) no button to easily add a new one except in the “No Group” group, and B) somehow adding a new entry immediately teleports it to somewhere on the table that is not in focus. (Coda has a nice solution to this; creating the new entry but marking it in yellow to let you know it’s scheduled to move once editing is done)

3. Some Mirrored views in smart folders won’t disappear when selecting “delete”
   Currently, we have to move them to another space to get them to behave.

4. Unable to put mirrored views into a subfolder inside a smart folder
   Maybe it’s required to do this in the originating smart folder, but mirrored views are so helpful we end up with lots of them, and it would be nice to organize.

5. Relation views in an entity and Smart Folder views require creating twice
   Often, all we want are two different ways to see the same information, but currently they’re treating as different things.

[njyo]

Not sure where you draw the line on what is a UX enhancement, and what is not (all these things affect my UX), so I’ll put here a list of new and old issues for you to pick and choose.

1. View as other user for Admins → As it’s very hard for me to check what other users can see, and what not despite all the sharing improvements.
2. Recovery from broken fields → Both in Reports but also Formulae just break when rewiring data in Fibery. Worse still, when looking at the result, which is either Broken Field or [Deleted field].[Deleted field], I cannot see what the previous configuration was. I’d rather see the old field name in a formula, but have it marked as invalid so that I can re-connect it with the new wiring.
3. Headers and background colours for text tables → Right now, we can only Mark cells, which is not the same as having a sticky header. Also, colour coding is missing.
4. Improved printing and PDF export → The new markdown export is nice, but if I actually want to generate a PDF of a page (even a Document), there are still a number of problems like 1) embeds need to be loaded manually, 2) page breaks simply cutting through Views, 3) whiteboards not displaying well and 4) tables being cropped. I understand some of this stuff is tricky and probably better solved via Markdown export and a tool like Marked2. Still, I would at least hope that direct content like rich text and tables make their way onto PDFs.
5. Allowing formulae in View filters → By not having this, we need to add a lot of helper data fields with Entities, even when a filter is just used somewhere.
6. Conditions and automation triggers in automations → While we can chain automations and even can do conditional logic through property changes, it gets complex very quickly. If, instead in an automation I can trigger another automation and use if conditions to control flow, that would be much easier.
7. Simple usage stats → For me as an Admin I can look at the Activity log to see what’s happening, but I would like to get some basic usage stats for pages, such as: Total number of visits, Most visits by (above median), Most edits by
8. Better timezone display in date fields → It’s very unclear for people looking at DateTime fields, that the information is in their local time zone. If that could be displayed and an option can be given to always show UTC, that would be great.
9. Board View to add sub-levels → One thing that JIRA does well is that in a Board of Epics and User Stories, it shows the User Stories under the Epics. Fibery has grouped levels in the Table view. It allows multiple Entities shown in a Board view, but when trying to display such a hierarchy, the entities get jumbled together. Enhancing the Board view with the ability to have levels would be very helpful
10. Level grouping in tables messes with entity creation → If using a table and then grouping by a property, the + New Entity option defaults to creating a new groping, not a new Entity.
11. Creating entities with name formula inline is cumbersome → When creating an entity wit ha name formula inline, the name gets wiped once the entity is created, rather than trying to match the formula structure and populating fields.

This is a list of some of the biggest UX challenges that I have on a daily basis.
Thanks!

[Bronn]

Some great ideas here already! Here are some of my main niggles and wants (in no particular order because everything on this list would be really helpful):

Lock Fields
I’d love to be able to lock fields after they’ve been filled or based on the state, etc. to avoid accidental changes to fields that need to be visible but shouldn’t be edited after a certain point.

Lock Entity by Rule
For example, when marked as final state, lock the entity.

Filters: Personal Filters & Quick Filters
I think View filters needs some work in general. These need to be quicker and more intuitive for non-technically-minded users. Quick filters have so many limitations and you often need a LOT of them so it just becomes visual overload.

• On the grid view, I’d like users to be able to filter each visible field similar to how you can with an Excel table, for example. This is pretty common functionally, so users are used to it.
• Also, in personal filters, it would be better to be able to choose which fields users can filter so it’s not overwhelming. Currently they see all fields, including a lot of helper fields that are irrelevant to them.

Fix Hide Empty Groups
This would be such a great feature–but it doesn’t work when you’re changing the filters, which makes it functionally useless for us! I’d absolutely love a fix.

Logic In Date Fields
If I have two dates, Start and End, I want the End date to always be after the Start date, or maybe the End date to always be within 7 days of the Start/Created date. Therefore, I’d love some simple date options such as:

• Date must be after: choice of field (i.e. Start), or relative dates as already used in filters.
• Date must be before: as above.

Formulas in More Areas
Being able to use formulas in Filters would stop so much helper field clutter. It would also be extremely useful in automation rules.

Rule If Logic / Branching Paths
Or even just filters for each Action of an Automation, because sometimes I only want to do a second action for some items, which means creating a whole new Rule atm. It would help with clutter and limits to be able to keep several related things in one Rule.

Show More Fields in Relations, etc.
In large lists, there may be more than one entity with the same name. Icons help a bit, but I want to use different icons in different scenarios and I can only choose one. Therefore, I’d love to be able to show other fields, or perhaps group fields (like tasks per stage, or per assignee). Showing more fields would also be useful when searching entities.

Forms
Forms would be so useful, but they currently aren’t in most cases because:

• You cannot filter or sort fields.
• There’s no if logic or branching.
• You can only use one database. [I’ll use the example of setting up a new project: To keep it simple let’s say I need to add the client as a contact (1 database), then create the project (a second database). A form would make setting up a project a lot easier for users.] Being able to add more databases, perhaps as separate pages so the previous item would save and allow for linking of the entity to the next new form item, would make forms so much more useful.

Show Field If
We have several databases where entities may need slightly different fields based on (for example) their type.

View Permissions
I have several fields which a general user doesn’t need to see. I can move these to another View, but to keep things simple for general users, I would like to be able to hide these ‘Admin’ views from non-Admins as they can get quite complicated.

Hide + New Button
If a user has View access rights only, any + New buttons should be hidden for clarity. It’s still visible on Grid view.

Calendar View
I’d love to be able to hide weekends (as a business that doesn’t work weekends it would give more screen real estate).

Timeline View

• To to create a Gantt-type view like showing tasks under stages, I currently have to create a complicated ‘Order’ formula and sort on this, otherwise the two databases show after one another (so all stages then all tasks, or vice versa).
• A button to move to the previous/next visible entity would be good for when you’re looking at historical/future items.

Dependencies
A great start with dependencies, but I’d love to see it expanded beyond timeline view. Tasks often require dependencies, but if you prefer to see these in a Grid or List view, then dates won’t change and update. I’m currently sticking with a complicated formula with several helper fields.

Documents
This one isn’t a priority for me, but would still be useful.

• In Notion and Loop, you can drag and drop paragraphs/blocks. This would be useful because if I’m copying and pasting something with certain formatting (like a callout or quote), it can be a difficult to get it to copy to where I need it without it messing up.
• Tables could do with some work as well. If I copy a table from elsewhere, it sometimes brings formatting that I can’t change. This means I have to create everything from scratch. Being able to freeze rows/columns and mark as header, etc. with different formatting easily would be great too.

[Chr1sG]

@Bronn

Here are some of my main niggles and wants

Thanks @Bronn
Some of these seem to be requests for new functionality, rather than UX/UI enhancements. It might be worth voting on these things here in the community, or if they don’t already exist, creating new topics in the Ideas & Features category.

[Bronn]

I was only going to mention a few things, but got a bit carried away! I’ll take a look through the Ideas & Features category to see which have already been raised and create the others as you suggest when I get a chance. Probably best if I then edit my comment above to link those for clarity.

[interr0bangr]

Like others have said, it’s maybe a fine line between what’s an enhancement and what’s a feature request, but I’ll try!

Table/List View UX:

• It’s extremely hard to select multiple entities for bulk editing when using relation/context views. In many cases, it seems like there’s only 1-3 pixels between the dead zone outside of the view and the actual clickable entity inside the view, so it takes way too much fiddling with the mouse to actually select what we need. Table view is the worst offender here.

• Context filtering UI is completely non-usable in most instances with often hundreds (maybe thousands?) of combinations that can’t even be rendered properly within the UI. How it hasn’t been addressed already kind blows my mind. Context filtering is fibery’s most essential feature since there’s so much data everywhere and I feel like it hasn’t gotten the love and attention it needs and deserves.

• Context filtering in the “All Databases” tab only applies to the first database levels, even though as a user I would expect it to recursively apply to all database levels, since, you know, it says “All Databases”.

• In table view, pasting in bulk data from an external source is the most awkward thing ever. You need to manually add a blank row first, then unselect it so you’re not editing the name, then select the name box again (but be careful you don’t double click it, because you’ll be editing the name again!) then paste in your stuff. God help you if there’s a required field involved. ClickUp makes this so smooth and easy and I miss their UX for this daily.

• You can’t quickly expand and collapse all levels. This is a really bad UX when working with a lot of data in multiple levels (like epic → tasks → subtasks in a sprint that could have multiple epics in it). You just added this into the sidebar though, so hopefully it comes across all areas of Fibery soon.

• In table view, calculated columns are almost never useful for us, since we use multiple levels and the calculations get counted across all levels, which often results in a number we don’t want to see and user confusion. Need to be able to exclude certain databases from being calculated.

• In table view, I wish it acted more like a standard spreadsheet sometimes. It’s a jarring when frequently bouncing from say Excel to Fibery since they visually look similar, but you can’t do really basic things like changing the alignment of the field to left, right or center, or having multiple fields with the same name (but different data formats) get displayed in the same column.

• In table view, when screen size changes the columns should automatically get resized to fit the screen

• In list view, there’s got to be a way to better display fields than just in a never ending row. For users with small screens, there’s a lot of scrolling when I think the line should be able to be made taller (like row height option in board view, which are also just “lines” at the end of the day, right?) that would allow fields to be displayed on multiple rows. Also, there’s some layout inconsistencies with horizontal alignment, because if the name is displayed, the fields are right aligned, but if the name is hidden they get left aligned. Can’t this be a user option?

• I’ve mentioned it before, but the fact that when sorting by dates that any entities with no dates show up at the top of the view (where it’s assuming the lack of a date means it’s in the past) instead of the bottom (where if the date isn’t known, one wouldn’t assume it’s happened already) is absolutely infuriating. There needs to be an option to toggle a user preference here if it’s not universally accepted as crazy.

Entity UX

• There’s just a ton overall useless space in entity views due to how limited the visual/layout options are. Some fields can be expanded full width and some can’t. Will never understand this, especially with Rich Text that needs to act as a “dashboard” since entity layouts aren’t as modular as they ideally should be. Results in an ugly jagged entity view when relation views are wide but rich text isn’t. Also, when putting simple fields in a single column layout, there’s absolutely massive amount of dead space to the right of them, when they should be able to have multiple fields in a single row.

• You can use context filtering for “to one” relation fields but not “to many” relation fields. So frustrating to have to explain that to our team that sometimes the dropdown select provides easy and clear options and sometimes they need a PhD to know exactly what the name/id of the thing they want is, among a list of thousands of things that are all named the same.

• Related to the above, trying to select anything in a relation field dropdown is often like shooting in the dark, because there’s no information provided at all other than the name. Would love if a additional fields besides name could be shown, so we can easily tell database entries apart.

• Files field is very ugly and rudimentary. Doesn’t visually match the rest of the UI. Also, it’s lightyears behind the competition on basic things like previewing media in a lightbox before having to download it. I think you’ve mentioned improvements here are coming soon which is great.

Board View UX

• There needs to be more visual separation between columns. They’re just one homogenous white canvas now.

• An entire columns worth of space is wasted by the “Edit” button on the right. Please fix this!

• The board column names should be rendered independently under each row, instead of only once at the top, because it feels very strange and confusing to have a visual element (the row’s entity name and fields) between the actual entity cards you want to see the statuses of. It always makes it look like the row is in the first column, because its name is right under it.

• Most kanban boards in other tools have a “column summary” at the top or bottom that contextually summarizes the data grouped in a column. Like if there’s 5 “Quote” entities in the “Quote Sent” column, and each quote was worth $10,000, I would expect the UI to tell me that there’s $50,000 worth of quotes in that column. Not having this in Fibery, is a major UX issue with boards.

Whiteboard UX

• Relation lines between “to one” related entities do not get shown, but they do for “to many” related entities. Makes no sense.

• Can’t selectively display relationship lines between entity cards. It’s either they’re all on, or all off. If you have any entities that are related to multiple entities that are also on the whiteboard, good luck because now there’s a crazy web of useless (in the context of the story you’re trying to visually tell) lines everywhere.

• When you copy/duplicate an entity card on the whiteboard, it doesn’t actually duplicate the entity in the database, but just duplicated the card on the canvas. It’s very inconsistent with what “duplicate” means throughout the rest of Fibery and every other tool on the market. Would expect it to create a brand new entity with the same attributes as the original one that was copied.

• No real consistency in how the auto align button decides to sort and display related entity cards. Want to show A, B, C in sequence? Nope, B, C, A is what you get…unless you remove an entity and then add it to the canvas again, now it might be A, C, B. Manually move them on the canvas and press the auto align button again? Lets ignore what the user did and move the order around again… so frustrating. We need consistency and control on how our flows are ordered on the canvas.

• Text box inside of a shape is missing some basic rich text formatting options, like numbered/bulleted lists and being able to apply a different font family and font size for each character instead singularly applying to all the text in the entire box. It’s annoying to have create and manage 2 separate text boxes if you want to have a title styled differently than to a paragraph below it.

• Can’t style entity cards. Need resize and color (background/border) options to be consistent across all visual elements on the canvas. I know there’s likely some complexity behind the scenes, but to an uninformed user, an entity card is visually a “box” just like a shape object can be a “box”.

• Can’t edit fields directly on entity cards, which creates UX inconsistency because you can edit fields directly on a board view that to an uninformed user, also uses entity “Cards”.

• Can’t automatically map entities, they need to be added manually each time. For mind map & flow/journey map style usage, which is all we use whiteboards for, this is very time consuming. Looking forward to some of the mind map features coming soon.

Timeline UX

• The name breaks out of the box when it’s too long, instead of wrapping and making the line taller. Makes timelines look broken!

• I can almost never visualize the date range I want since the middle of the view is always the current day and that can’t be changed. Why can’t users drag the timeline to the left so on a Friday for example, they could still see the last Monday and get a full picture of the full 5 day work week without having to zoom out and see other days/weeks they might not care about?

Automation Rules UX

• There’s “steps” but the user cannot actually use the data from those steps in subsequent steps in the no-code interface. You can if you use scripts though. Hoping for consistency here.

• You have to edit scripts in a small little box, or expand it to a huge box that takes over the screen. Is there not a middle ground that could allow it to be resized without expanding it fully?

• The loop detection is extremely sensitive, even with very specific and restrictive filters. It’s frustrating to have to turn it on and see if it fails the loop test generically instead of being able to test that before it gets activated. What can be done to minimize the wack-a-mole that is constantly fiddling with automation logic to please the Fibery automation police?

Formula UX:

• The editing window for formulas cannot be resized, which is very annoying when dealing with complex formulas. You can make the script editing window bigger, so why not the formula editing window too?

• Related to the above, formulas can get very complex and therefore there should be a way to add inline comments to them just like we can to scripts.

• UI for auto-linking is confusing because Fibery only allows “AND” operators but it feels like it was designed with AND and OR in mind, which causes user frustration and many a community post about it. Same deal with “=” where I would also expect “contains”.

• If a field referenced in a formula is deleted, it would be infinitely more helpful to have it say the name of the deleted field instead of just saying [Deleted Field], because now we have to reverse engineer what/where that old field was.

• Formulas in filters, please! I put this under the UX category since inconsistent implementation of features drives people crazy. You can use formulas elsewhere, so it feels important to be able to also to use them in this context.