Hi, new to Fibery, but familiar with concepts and similar tools.
For those more experienced, I’m wondering if this is within reach:
Multiple Spaces/DBs will all have a “Notes” field for majority of my Entities.
For those entities, I will use them within the Feed list context.
Any time I have a new meeting, or switch contexts, I’d be selecting the “New” button, and selecting the appropriate Entity. This is working. Here’s where I want to ensure I can take the next steps.
I’d like to associate an automatic time capture alongside the feed.
When a new record is created in any of the “Notes” entities, I can create a new time log, with starting time of now.
But upon creating a new time log, how do I stop (update an end time field) the previous “active log”?
I tried using the “unlink” trigger with an associated 1-record 1-to-1 DB for “active log”, but it didn’t seem to work.
Any advice on getting this setup?
Thanks
I’m not sure it’s clear whether ‘Notes’ is a rich text field that is present in many databases, or is a database itself?
Is this making a new Meeting entity, or making a new entity in the Note database?
Perhaps you mean that the Note database will have relations to multiple other databases, and if a new Note entity is created it will be linked to an entity of one of these dbs?
Is TimeLog a database, or are the time log fields (start and end) present in another database (the Notes db perhaps?)
Maybe instead of discussing implementation, it’s better to discuss your ideal process / workflow (independent of the tool) and your use case/needs/objectives.
Hi Chris,
I’ll add a couple images to help explain my ideal process.
I’ll have DBs for Clients/Projects/People/Employees, anything I want to be able to backlink to so that when needed, I can get a consolidated view of anything related to that thing.
My main workflow in a day is spending time in meetings, or working on code (usually for a specific project). When I switch from one meeting to another, or from a meeting to coding, etc. I want to keep my focus in a single area. This is how I got to the “feed” setup.
Within the Feed view, when I switch context, I will be clicking the “+ New” button, and selecting the DB I want to add a record to:
In order to get these options listed, I had to make sure each DB had a “Notes” column as Rich Text type:
This workflow seems to be working, but I would also like to track time against each entry automatically. Additionally, would like to be able to “stop” manually.
I believe it would be a separate DB called “Time Logs” with each entry corresponding to a related item (task,meeting,etc.). I’m not sure if I need an additional junction table to support the relation to multiple other DBs.
Perhaps I am thinking about the structure incorrectly. Perhaps its a setup where Notes is a DB and holds a Start/End field set? And then for each entry, I relate it to another entry in one of the various other DBs. Ex: I take some notes against a Task, and then I take some notes against a meeting. I would just need to be able to easily select the related entry.
Thanks for the elaboration. It’s a nice use of feed view and I can see why it matches your flow.
I’ll think about possible ideas and post when I have something to suggest.
In what ways do the DBs for Daily Meetings, Other Meetings and Tasks differ? Or is the use of three separate databases merely a way to distinguish the type of notes you’re making? akin to tags perhaps?
Tasks will have additional fields like status and and ID to relate to an external tool.
For the Daily vs Other Meeting, for now that’s really just akin to tags as you pointed out, but I wanted to ensure that the solution comes from a perspective of Multi-Space and Multi-DB.
However you try and solve it, there’s probably going to be a trade off between duplication of fields/relations/automations and ease of use.
For example, you could create a single Log database which you use for the feed view (and for time tracking). This db can have the Notes field and the time fields for tracking the start and stop of work, but every time you create a new log, you would have to open it to ‘tag’ the activity type (Task, Daily Meeting, Other Meeting etc.) and it either would need to support all the needed fields for all 3 types (which would lead to redundancy in some circumstances) or it would need to link to all 3 dbs.
For the tagging/linking, there is a nice trick you could use, whereby you type the name of the type of activity when creating a new Log, and use an automation to update the tag/link by parsing what is written.
Alternatively, you could stick with your current setup and link the existing 3 databases to a TimeLog db. You can define an automation to create a new TimeLog every time a new Task is created, and then you would also need to define the same automation for every time a Daily Meeting is created, …and another automation for every time an Other Meeting is created, etc.
Also, since you want the option to manually stop the time logging, you would probably want a button automation to do this, and this would need defining for each DB used in the feed view.
Personally, I would choose the former method because it is more scalable.
Let me know if this is sparking any thoughts about what might or might not work…