Brand new user here. I run a growing construction company and we run in Clickup. Currently at 7 users.
We find Clickup to be awesome, however we have many things that aren’t tasks and aren’t handled properly in CU. I started looking at Notion, Coda, and found Fibery which seems to be the most flexible of them all. I have a call with Polina tomorrow!
Some thoughts and questions:
Board view columns seems to be limited to specific fields. In Clickup we live in a view that shows all tasks by date so we can drag from today to later. Seems like that can’t exist here. Why not?!
There should be a Clickup clone template for tasks only. Specifically, each task can hold lots of things inside of it (like in Clickup). Also, you should be able to set recurring tasks easily.
This would make it really easy to switch over from Clickup. All spaces, folders, and lists, from click up would just be a field in the task itself in fibery. There would be a smart folder allowing you to set up that same exact hierarchy that you had in CU.
If you had this, it would be so easy to move!
Once moved over, the user could then start creating other types of items, like jobs, customers, etc, and connecting them to tasks.
Why do spaces exist? Why not just have a collection of databases and views etc. Are they an arbitrary hierarchy? Any difference in putting two databases in one Space vs one in each space?
If spaces are arbitrary, and do not actually make a difference, why have them built into the structure? Why not just have fields in each database talking about these types of questions of hierarchy. If you had that, you could set up smart folders that could reorganize all of your hierarchy with the click of a button. For example, and click up we have a space called jobs, each folder is a different construction job, in each folder are different lists. One is administrative information about the job, one is the materials we have to order, one is the actual job tasks such as scheduling the plumber.
Our sidebar is now locked to this hierarchy. But what if I wanted to see it in a different hierarchy? What if I wanted to see a folder of administrative tasks, a folder of materials, and the folder of job tasks, with each folder having subfolders for each job.
My argument is that this would create far more flexibility. Let each database stand as a top level item, let the hierarchy on the sidebar be something that can work based on whatever hierarchy is set up by the user in specific views. In essence making sidebar views/hierarchies that can be changed with the click of a button.
Perhaps this exists, I don’t know if it does or does not. I think it would make things a lot easier for users who aren’t as technically inclined.
Say for example I’m creating a database of customers. And now I want to add a phone number. And then, I realize I need to have multiple phone numbers per customer. Non software engineers intuitively start making multiple columns. Phone number 1, phone number 2, phone number 3. The correct way to do it of course is to make a separate database with connections between phone numbers and customers with a relationship.
It should be pretty simple to build this in automatically. In
any field, there should be an option to have multiple of that item. For example, I want to make a field of a phone number. There should be an option to have multiple phone numbers. Automatically, and behind the scenes, fibery would create a second database connecting customers and phone numbers. This would make it a lot easier and more intuitive. Instead of having to create a separate database, and then linking them, I should be able to generate it on the fly.
I’m thinking of perhaps a general purpose option in any field called “allow more than one entry”. Clicking that option for any field would trigger this automatic second database building and connection. Even non-software engineers would end up with much cleaner database structures because the program would be encouraging that behavior in a very intuitive fashion.
A general thought in closing. I’m not a software engineer. But I am a geek and a techie. I have a lot of friends who are just like me. Analytical, geeky, and builders of businesses. Most of them end up getting really good at Excel or Google sheets and use that to store an enormous amount of data. Of course it doesn’t take very long for things to get out of control, and then they enter the hell of trying to find a software that does it for them. The very simple idea of being able to add multiple entries to one field as I described in the last point above, would be a game changer. Work in your familiar Excel or Google sheets world, but don’t be limited to one table/database. Have it be set up correctly, automatically. Throw in some form behavior, and the learning curve to turn this into something that’s usable off the bat for people like that would be very easy and simple.
Perhaps some of my suggestions already exist, perhaps things that I think are a good idea are not, I would love to hear about it from the rest of you.
Just not yet. It is hoped that there will come some improvements to the date field, including allowing it to function as a board column (or row).
In the meantime, is there a reason why calendar view wouldn’t get you close to what you needed?
We should look into this.
Spaces allow for grouping of databases and views, and importantly, they control the permissions for the databases and views. If everyone is an admin, then they have no effect, but in a large organisation, it can be really important to determine who sees which views and who has access to which data.
This sounds like exactly what smart folders are available for.
You can create multiple smart folders (in different spaces if needs be) and configure them for whatever hierarchy you want.
Feel free to chat with us if you want help setting this up.
Great idea. An option to convert a field into an array (which is actually a hidden database) is a nice suggestion.
As you say, it is possible to do manually, but an auto-convert would be v cool.
By the way, this topic is posted in ‘Ideas & features’ which means people can vote on it, but given that there are several ideas here, perhaps it should be split into multiple topics (maybe some are feature requests and others are ‘help & support’)
Thank you for the insightful feedback! Let me provide some comments.
Spaces
This is an artefact of our initial vision. We had Apps before Spaces, and the main idea is to assemble your solution with many quite independent Apps with custom database schema, logic and even UI. Later we abandoned this idea (or moved to better times) and moved into a more unified solution.
But Apps as an organization unit remained. Right now it is a container of everything: Databases, Views, Rules, etc. However, I agree that fundamentally Spaces should NOT be mandatory. We wanted to do it as a part of getting started experience, but didn’t get to it yet
I hope eventually we will implement this simplification and starting experience will be easier.
Note that Spaces in Fibery are just containers, so you CAN create Views that will display content from other spaces. Thus you have a flexibility to build your left panel in a way you want.
Boards
Fibery boards can construct axis based on real database schema only. That is why we don’t support dates and number axis. We want to add it in the future, but demand is not high so far.
Databases structuring
Your idea to change fields into database relation is cool and it was implemented in Dabble DB
I think this feature is relatively advanced, but indeed it supports databases evolution and make changes easier.
P.S. All people have some frames how to think about processes and tools. When you have deep experience in ClickUp, you will inevitably want to apply this experience to any tool that resembles ClickUp. Fibery is quite different in its composition, so maybe this article will be helpful to you https://fibery.io/blog/fibery-vs-clickup/
Calendar shows too many days at once. So if I have a lot of tasks today I won’t be able to see them all in Calendar. If I have 25 tasks for today and I need to sort them really quickly, the fastest way is with a board view extending off to the right, and drop them from day to day.
In general, from what I understand, Fibery should be flexible enough to clone most anything. And so if you build 1:1 clones of existing solutions, people will be able to seamlessly switch from that to Fibery and then continue to build out using the awesomeness you have. This will allow people like me (Geeks) to switch without any friction or heartache from my users who will have a 1:1 replacement for what they are doing now, while I have the freedom to go and expand the system on the backend.
Good point…
The question is why smart folders are tied to being inside a space. Why not be able to create a top level smart folder…
You know that calendar view can be set to just show one week at a time, right?
Yeah, that’s what we would hope. In some cases it’s tricky though. For tools like Airtable, Notion etc. because they are also very flexible, it’s impossible to make a template that would match what all users might be familiar with.
I need to dig into ClickUp to see what the standard views/configs are that would make Fibery a like-for-like replacement as much as possible.
Indeed, as Michael mentioned
and we have investigated allowing space-less setups to ease the getting started experience.
There are some technical challenges, and we haven’t allocated the needed resources yet.
Of course, getting feedback from new users like yourself is so helpful in driving prioritisation of development activity.
Can’t do a week view in Calendar unless you have a time set with the dates.
Also, in week view, you can’t sort by priority.
But (maybe!!) a simple coding fix would be to allow calendar view, week view, do not show hours of the day, and allow sorting of items in that day by a different field (in this case it would be priority). So reuse week view, just allow sorting by another field and ditch the hours!
I am also in construction (and a bit of a geek also) and I’m building a system in Fibery to manage an entire department.
Having tried all the alternatives, I am loving Fibery.
Fibery has almost unlimited potential when it comes to managing a construction and I have been able to replicate a lot or systems with Fibery.
However I have also run into a number of quirky things like Joe (Polina usually comes to the rescue though).
I am wondering if there is any benefit to setting up a construction section in the forums or a working group to help implement some construction based templates and features?
I can definitely see Fibery being adopted by micro, small and medium businesses with the right support.
Someday I look forward to being able to be a Fibery partner and help small businesses use Fibery.
Anyway, just my two sense not really related to Joe’s issues!
We probably have users in too many niches to make it appropriate to have forums dedicated to each of them, but maybe you want to start a topic to discuss the features that you would specifically want in a template/workspace for construction-related businesses.
I’m happy to help turn the ideas into reality.
Welcome! Lots of good feedback and discussion here. I have moved the topic into “Second brains for teams” category as it seemed the most closely related to the broad ideas, features, etc. discussion. It might instead belong in “Get help”, just mention if you want it moved there.
If you want specific feature requests to be voted on, it’s best to make one new topic for each one (after searching to make sure the request does not already exist, for example: Simpler reminder functionality in addition to automation-based approach That way everyone can vote on the features most important to them.
