Now, I wonder: given all the discussions about scripting and automation, and ‘context restoration’ etc., there should be a way to automate that, like an automated search. But then, a simple search will show entitites, but not ‘views’ in which they are used (and whiteborads, unlike in some other PKMs, where they are linked containers / contexts are just ‘views’ in Fibery, I learned).
Given all that, and the fact that I am not a coder but an antique user, I thought I´d ask the community:
is there any way to get there via scripting / automation? Pointers for that? Maybe even someone already having a script, given this is a standard problem in PKM?
Long answer:
Automation/scripting allows you to query (and edit) the data (a.k.a. entities) in any given database.
Fibery data views (tables, lists, boards, timelines, etc.) represent the result of a query on a database, e.g. “Show me a board view all the Tasks, with due date this week, that are assigned to me, and for each entity, show the following fields: name, project, creation date.”
The results of the query are presented to the user, but the individual entities that get displayed do not ‘know’ that they are being shown on a view. Similarly, if a view were to be deleted, there is no way for an entity to ‘know’ that it is no longer being shown. Furthermore, what gets shown can vary from user to user (e.g. if you have the ‘Assigned to Me’ filter applied) so there isn’t even a single answer to the question “In what data views is this entity being shown?”
Unfortunately, I don’t see that there can be any easy way to solve this, given the underlying architecture of Fibery (database vs views).
However, whiteboards and documents are not ‘data views’ but are ‘content views’. That is to say, they display
information that is not present in the databases
– in the case of Documents, this is text, with formatting, embedded images, etc.
– in the case of Whiteboards, this is scribbles, text, shapes post-its etc.
information from databases
– in the case of Documents, this is entity mentions and embedded data views
– in the case of Whiteboards, this is entity cards and relation arrows.
Note: everyone sees the same thing when they visit a Document/Whiteboard (except where access restrictions mean that entity data is ‘private’).
We do already show in which Documents an entity is mentioned (via the References field on entity view) so it might be possible to implement similar functionality to show on which Whiteboards an entity appears as a card.
However, this is not something that is being actively worked on, and I haven’t checked with the devs to know how hard it would be.
On the last: yeah, that is definitely related! I commented there also, and made a link to my initial enquiry, all of which describes the motivational context and relevant work flow / scenario in which my problem arises.
I took from those discussion that there is, as you say here again, no way to represent the fact that something is placed / ‘visualized’ in a view, or as in my case on a whiteboard in particular.
So, I am aware of that context, and have initiated a likewise (more conceptual) discussion, in which you also have kindly contributed!
This, therefore, was / is the attempt to find a workaround, given the strong ‘under the hood’ capabilities of Fibery – and my restricted coding versatility. So I was / am hoping something is there in the collective community intelligence –
Now on what you saying in particular:
It would be awesome if the devs find a way to make things for whiteboards as for documents!
The whole discussion (the one you reference; my inquiry thread), I would say, is exactly around this question as one of the central ones: aren´t whiteboards (and other kinds of more visual & schematic ‘scratch’ documents) nowadays increasingly just that in more and more institutional contexts: documents on par w/ traditional text-documents and places where ‘stuff is done’?
… but here I wanted to leave those principal discussions aside, as there are other places for that; here I was primarily looking out for a practical solution (sideways solution, hack etc.).
Again, appreciate your attention for this. And look forward to get the take of the devs!
It requires a bit of time for a developer to investigate the context in order to make an estimate of how long a feature will take to implement, and they won’t spend that time until it is decided by a product manager that the feature is something to be considered for the near future.
This feature is not under consideration, so there is no sense me asking, since the answer will be ‘don’t know’.
I think this is a misunderstanding.
I thought I was just following up on what you seemed to have brought up as a potentiality here (– see the quote), and after initially this all was about a pragmatic ‘work around’, anyways.
So, in no way did I, as a user, mean to fiddle in any way with the internal decision processes or pathways of your company.
so, all good and clear for me.
thanks for the insight.
If/when this issue percolates through our development prioritisation process, to the point where product owner/developers are investigating possibilities, we’ll come back to this thread and provide an update.
].
– 
‘don’t know’.
