One of the fundamental guidelines for my team in Fibery is “comment around just about anything you do.” The idea is to make sure there is context when entities get updates. We have been using the relatively new “big button” to create entities, very nice feature, and enjoy the ability to customize which fields show in which types of entities. However, one that is not available is “comments.” This would be very useful because it would allow with a few keyboard movements to add in commentary when originating an entity using the button. With out this, you lose a little time needing to first create the entity, then go back and comment into it, usually by picking up the mouse (which will slow down some keyboard “ninjas” who try to avoid using the mouse then possible ).
That strikes me as an interestingly specific use of “Comments”. For me comments are Updates in most cases, whereas if I am creating something from scratch I seldom have an “update” to add: whatever inspired me to create this entity is what dictates its original (new) contents. That said, can you use “Create and Open” as the action to get you more of the way there? (there’s a keyboard shortcut for it)
So one of the things that breaks productivity for us are new entities that do not have an explanation of how they got there. We reserve the Rich Text fields for permanent content around an entity - in fact we have multiple Rich Text fields in some cases - like a project: Description, Steps, Definition of Done, Learnings, etc. The comments however track the activity around the Project - and references would do the same if coming from another entity, so we always configure db’s to have comments and references near each other. One of the biggest areas of activity on any entity in our system is its actual creation. So being able to write a note in the comments stating how the entity came about in the first place is paramount for us.
Technically you’re right you can use the keyboard to get over to the comments field without reaching for the mouse at all after you hit “create and Open,” but I’m on a Mac and that takes a massive amount of tabbing - I tried it. In most cases we really just need a few fields in the initial window, like Assignee, status…and comments would be extremely useful to get the basics in place. We often create on the fly entities in fact with just that barebones level of attributes, and things like due dates, details, etc come later. For example when you want to quickly create inline a task or idea, which Fibery does a great job letting you do.
Ah yes, that makes more sense. I think fixing the tab order is low-hanging fruit that could help, but yes also “promoting” fields to the quick add form would be nice. If they made that button just optionally link to a Form like the ones in Views do, that could help?
Yes sure having the “quick create” ability function like a form, with comments available, would be good, too…I just thought that there are basically all the fields available in the “big button” create module, except comments, so wanted to see if that was something other people might benefit from. I assume comments, being a more complex type of field on Entities, might have been left off due to some difficulties in making them available on the “big button” module, but again if there was interest from others that might ultimately make it worthwhile to do the work to surface them.
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