[DONE] Request: 🔀 Sort Related Entities within Parent Entity View

Hi! It would be amazing to have “sorting” related fields within a parent entity’s view so that you can move items automatically. For example, “Sort by State ― Done ^.”

Cheers

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Agreed. I think there are a lot of wants around making the “Collections” area (I think that’s the official name for this part of the card) more functional. Things like being able to sort in there like you can a board is very useful - for example if you have some “done” entities vs. not done.

I’d also like to see some more ability to work directly inline in those Collections, that is this request, and there are a few others related out there:

Hoping to see this functionality soon!

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Hi!
So, telling the truth that is a rather valuable insight/request, we haven’t found a perfect solution.

So, do you really track done things here, not on a View or in a Field (like formula)? And how often do you have a look here?

Thanks for the link!
Will merge these two requests :hugs:

Sorry, maybe I should clarify!

It’s not so much that I am tracking things by “Done”, in this scenario, but rather — tracking things by current state or status.

I am absolutely looking at this consistently. I am actually never using “table view” to looks at tasks. I am using Kanban to look at “Projects”. Then opening and reviewing it in it’s entirety. From there, I get an idea of what else is needed to be completed for the task. And add more if needed.

In the screenshot, the entity is a “Project” and each linked record is a “Task”.

It’s extremely valuable to be able to open a Project Entity and see related tasks. Having the ability to sort would make it very powerful.

A few examples:

  1. Let’s say I have a project with 15 tasks and each Task has a “Due Date”. I would most certainly want to organize them by due date automatically, the the one due first shows at the top of the project.

  2. Intercom Integration: When viewing a “Contact”, you can see the related “Conversations”. Being able to sort the related Conversations by “Last Updated At” would be helpful.

  3. We are storing customer data and we have “Charges” type attached to the “Customer” type… when we open the Customer, being able to sort by most recent charges within the related fields would be helpful.

See an example of Clickup’s subtasks and the “Reorder” option.

image

I believe, in theory with Fibery newer feature Smart Folders, we could technically create a “parent” folder and sort related types by their respective fields… I’ll have to double check. But having this native to the Entities would be great.

Another potential suggestion — the ability to also “filter” what’s currently shown in the related entities. Meaning, if a task state is done, hide it. Or, if another related entity field is abc, hide it.

Smart Folders definitely provide some of what you’re looking for (filtering, sorting etc.), and it’s worth noting that if you create a view within a Smart Folder (e.g. table or board view) you can choose to have this view available for every entity of the same type in the smart folder hierarchy. So you only need to create a view once, and it will be everywhere you need it.

image

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Absolutely, very aware of this. Though — it is awesome; it doesn’t fully accomplish the intended with this request.

Fair enough. I just couldn’t identify what you hoped to achieve that couldn’t be done with, for example, a board of tasks under each project in a Smart Folder.
Is there something concrete that you just can’t manage? Is it because you want to see specific project information whilst looking at the child tasks? I guess the board view limits you to only seeing ‘simple’ fields for the parent project (not rich text) but apart from that…

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Hey there! Yes, that’s correct. Smart folders are amazing, but it’s much simpler to open a project from Kanban view, and see the related subtasks, whilst simultaneously seeing any fields we’ve selected to pull in on that view.

Referring back to my original post image, you can see in the Project (Purple parent entity) view (after clicking on it from Kanban), it has opened up to show the Project itself, with all fields and “Related” entities (tasks; the blue entities).

As you can see, I am currently displaying on each Task — “Status” (researching, shipped, etc) and “State” (in progress, done, etc).

Let’s say I also wanted to pull in due date and priority as a field as well to each Task (so that when someone opens a Project from Kanban, they see all those fields on each Task).

Now imagine I added 20 more “Tasks” (child entities) to this Project, and my team and I are commenting back and forth on the Project… the inability to sort, makes each child entity’s placement random and disorganized (when looking from within the Parent entity).

Currently, the “Tasks” can only be reordered by dragging to different positions. Which is great, but also indicates that Fibery Team put some form of importance on the ability to “reorder” child entities within a Parent.

Smart Folders are great, but only show the title of the related entities — not field data from the related entities (e.g. priority, status, state).

Ability to sort 10, 25, 50 child entities, directly within a parent entity, seems like it would be a very useful feature.

Hopefully that makes more sense. If it doesn’t, I’m happy to make a video. I’m sure the lack of screenshots isn’t helping either.

Best

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I tend to agree with @Illusory, although I will say part of me is inclined to think this could be solved in a different way with Embed Views in Rich Text, where you would essentially just embed a normal Table view, which should include sorting, etc. In other words I wonder if the sorting (and potentially other table-like functionality) should be added to Collections, or if embeds would be a better way to handle more extended/complex use cases. Or alternatively perhaps an option to replace the current Collections view with a table view, and all the functionality that implies (filter, sort, color)… Maybe I’m overthinking it though. :smile:

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I totally get the solution your describing, but I can’t help but think that you’re presenting your request as a desired implementation rather than as a need/use case.

From what I read, you seem to be requesting a sortable list of all the tasks for a given project, and as far as I can tell, a board of tasks within a Smart Folder gets you that.

Admittedly, if you’re starting from the Project kanban view, then with the Smart Folders solution you have to click on the task board for the project of interest, instead of opening the project entity by clicking on the project card itself.
This is why I asked if you specifically needed the ability to see all the parent project’s fields when viewing all of its tasks? In a task board you can (only) see the ‘simple’ fields of the parent project.

Please forgive me if I’m coming across as being contrary, it’s not my intent, just keen to help if I can.

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No worries at all :slight_smile:

Yes, but then in your solution ― now a user is forced to sift through all the tasks, in a project, in another Kanban view. I think it has become way more complicated than my initial request. As for need/desire ― I feel most requests are “desires”. Tbh, if Fibery didn’t fit most of my “needs”, I would look elsewhere. In theory, most of anything can be worked around… it’s just a matter of what could be better and if others agree it could be useful. Which is why I said: “It would be amazing”!

I just simply thought it would be useful to see, in a birds-eye―quick―easily accessible―overview of the child entities in a sorted fashion, “within” the parent entity.

Here is another example:

I have a customer with 11 charges and has had 7 different subscriptions.

Now, let’s say I want to sort each charge by “highest amount” and subscriptions by “highest amount + active status”.

Yes, I can make a smart folder for this, but then ― I would have to go to another screen to view it. We have a Kanban for Tasks as well… but not always working in that area.

All in all, it would be nice to just see, what I need to see, when I open the project entity (straight away). Then, I can get the gist for what is next and move forward, instead of getting entrenched in yet another Kanban.

Though Fibery is vastly different, and in my opinion working to be a superior platform ― this “has” been a request on other, slightly similar style platforms; and has been implemented on Clickup (for example).


Clickup:

Again, yes, in Clickup, you can go to a board with subtasks, but seeing it (sorted) within the project is very useful.

In any case, if others don’t find it useful, then they don’t. It’s just a +1 for me.

Cheers

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I’m with you on this definitely being a “nice to have”. It’s just a question of how best to implement it. But I think you’re right that it’s best to avoid over-complicating it. The idea itself is simple and would be met with a “sort” button right next to the Field button that already exists.

What I note about this idea is that it focuses work and more “dynamic” interaction (i.e. “temporary” views of data in a particular configuration) on the Entity, rather than e.g. cluttering up the main navigation (which should be for more long-term necessary things). Perhaps I’m wrong, but I get the sense from your request - and from thinking about it myself - that it’s not just useful to sort of set-and-forget the sort, but that one might interact with the sort order from time to time, and having it right there, rather than having to edit a Table that makes changes across the left nav, you can feel free to just adjust the sort in this one entity for your needs of that moment.

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@Illusory Thanks for engaging :slight_smile: I like hearing what other people’s ways of working are.
And yes, you’re right, it would be a great feature, and I can see why the apparently minor pain of switching between the project kanban and the task board actually becomes a ‘quality-of-life’ issue (a good term others around here sometimes use).
Coincidentally, I came across this issue in my own workspace just after I wrote my last reply(!) and this feature is potentially a subset of what @Oshyan notes is the ‘bigger picture’:

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Agreed. Another point on this, what if your Tasks have Subtasks? Then, you’d have to use the left pane to leverage sorting again and again. So, having this as a general capability for child entities imo could be helpful, useful, etc.

Absolutely! Not a problem.

Haha, amazing :joy:

Cheers

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Good stuff in here and I would love to see more done direct in the entity view as opposed to have to go to the “Context Views” as they are called to see related stuff out of an Entity in a Table, Board, etc.

I have thought that a few ways to handle this would be, for example, to just expose a full table like your suggestion here:

in the collections area. Ideally you could edit inline, which is a major differentiator of Coda/Notion and you can’t do that now in Fibery in Collections.

Another thing that has occurred to me that in each of the Context Views, instead of having only the rudimentary info about the Entity here:

Image 2020-11-18 at 2.44.57 AM.png

Expand the info like you can now for the Rows and Columns in Boards, so that you get a pseudo-embed, because you’d see so much basic info from the Entity at the “top” area of that view - if that makes sense.

Really great discussion and hopefully this will help get us some more useful views and functionality shortly!

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Some good news - that is finally ready :sparkling_heart:

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