It’s good to have ability to save filter in the board somehow:
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Filters are always saved. What’s the exact problem you’re having?
That is correct but in real world you usually use several filters. Right now I can’t save them and have to edit every time I need different data. Basically I meant “Quick filters” feature.
2 Likes
Yes, that is an important need.
Same requirement here. Jira allows filters to be saved which then appear as buttons on a view so they can be quickly selected. Typically they might be filters to restrict a sprint board for each developer, for stories that are blocked, or for particularly critical epics. This way a single sprint kanban board can be used which can then be filtered for various needs
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I am just learning the system.
- One workaround would be to create new table and apply filter(s) as needed.
- For other set of filters - create another new table(and rename table accordingly) etc
- Filters are saved for the table(as mentioned by @Shafqat_Ullah ) - so each specific table can be used for specific set of filter(s)
- It can increase lot of tables in the left hand side of screen if there are many tables created for many sets of filters.
Neal
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Yes, I talked about similar goals in a post comparing with Notion and others here:
The UI conventions to handle this seem fairly straightforward and well-exemplified in a few other systems. I hope Fibery can add such options in the future.
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As part of learning I created :
MiniApp : Organize Tables for sets of filters
Each table has unique link which is stored as Link inside TablesViews.
From each record of TablesViews one can go to specific table with specific filters.
I found out I can post only image per post.
So I will post one image per post - Sorry it will be more posts than I anticipated.
Neal
I think it could be useful to have 1 click pre-defined filters for given views.
That way, instead of using different views, you can quickly in one view get to the things you need fast.
Adding a screenshot from one of our JIRA boards where the team leader created quick filters for this purpose.
Unless you mean that these filters would be system-level and available automatically across any new View, then I guess it is the same request as this?
Yep, pretty much the same request.
We are using filtering extensively, and we have two options:
- Set the different filters by hand every time we need.
- Have a different view for each filter
Both are really less comfortable.
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Adding my vote and thoughts to this.
Reduce the number of views needed
Less views will help with navigation and UX I believe.
We end up with lots of views, but many are variants, because using “My filters” only work in very easy situations, like filtering out “Priority” or “Assignee”.
As soon as we want to for example only show entities created last month on, it starts feeling too complicated, and we create a new view for it.
This quickly grows into views like:
- All features
- High priority features
- Features created this month
- High and recent features".
Views 2-4 are views that are basically variants of the main view 1.
Ease maintenance and helps with consistency
When we create many variants of a views because we essentially use the views as saved filters, maintenance grows quickly. If I decide to change a fields visibility on view 1, or to add an additional global filter to it, I need to remember and then update view 2-4 so they are consistent. Besides the additional work, it’s easy to forget to do this, and you end up with slight variances, that leads to confusion, and is hard to compare views and see how they differ, often its easier to just clone then main view, recreate the filter, remove the old view, rename the cloned view.
This assumes we are talking about a saved filter, and not a saved “something else” that also redefines field visibility, sorting etc.
Less mistakes
As an admin, I find I tend to forget to use “My filters”, so I accidentally redefine the “Global filter” and forget to change it back - and then everyone is thrown off. With a saved filter we can invoke with a click, this is not an issue.
Easier to cater to team needs
If we have a particular focus for a while and wants to quickly filter out select entitites, it’s pretty easy to create a new quick filter and otherwise leave the board alone. Creating a whole new view just for a short while and bothering admin with it, sometimes is not great.
Helps in meetings and exploration
So when we are in a meeting, quick filters like Jira has, so we can one-click and filter high priority issues, filter by assignees, filter out and only see newly created or updated issues, are really helpful.
When alone and grooming a backlog view, quickly filtering by things “Features without projects”, or “Older than 1 year”, “X-Small, Small” are very handy.
Some concerns
Today the views (in search and left navigation) shows “exactly” what exists. Sidebar and the account might be cluttered with views and it might be a bit hard to find/navigate or find in search sometimes, but the views are defined with no ambiguity.
If we add saved filters, it feels like it would encourge us to create more views that start out listing everything, and then use filters to narrow down what is shown. E.g. more views like “All features”, “All bugs” etc. Then users navigates to the board and uses quick filters as needed.
It feels then like a risk we might get some indirection introduced. E.g. if we want to refer to - by link or just talking to each other- view that shows “high priority bugs”, and we have a single bugs view and a quick/saved filters for “priority is: high”. Users would have to know to check the “All bugs” board, then use the quick filter for high priority there. Then if we want to link to high priority bugs, how would we deal with that? I think this is solvable, but just a consideration.
Another concern is that if you take the time to define many saved filters, and then clone that view (assuming the saved filters are also cloned which I would expect), keeping the filters in sync might become a challenge for us administrators, assuming they are not defined somewhere else, so they can just be referenced.
That said, I would really like a way to predefine filters on a view and then use them to one-click filter it like toggles, applying an AND so they can both filter the views, e.g. if “High priority” and “Created last month” filters are both toggled, I see high priotity features created last month.
So a saved filter feature very similar to how Jira does it. It works very well in Jira, I think it’s a really good feature, and I really wish Fibery had it already.
2 Likes
Pleasse tell me this has been fixed. A filter definition should be saveable and then selected from a picklist…
Per-view pickable filters are not available for left menu views.
At the moment, you would need to create multiple views, each with a different filter.
Note, for relation fields, it is possible to have multiple (filtered) views of the same data, accessible via the drop down
Sort of resurrecting this. It’s been 4.5 years since this was first requested.
I propose that this is a fundamental information architecture opportunity in Fibery and this feature request should be escalated. Here’s why. This does feel a bit UX-theoretical but please bear with me.
In Fibery’s information architecture, Spaces are databases, but in experiencal terms, they’re just logical groupings of tables. Yet even then, you don’t interact with tables, you interact with Views. So Spaces really just equal Groups of Views.
Groups of Views then = Main Categories of Work (i.e. departments or major functions in a company).
A single View then would be like one large set of tasks or a top-level focus area.
We don’t say “Views” though as in plural. A View is singular - a single thing, and a single View is a single perspective. A fixed position you travel to in order to achieve something. But what if the View contains a high level of information density and complexity (very common for the industries Fibery customers are in)? This implicates a far more complex environment than is captured by the concept of a single View.
I believe this is what sits at the heart of this feature request. The thing we’re viewing isn’t just about a single primary perspective anymore. It becomes plural - it becomes multiple jobs, not just one - and the current UX environment in an average view isn’t supporting the jobs to be done.
Software design mimics the physical world and also speaks of our senses (Spaces, Views, etc.), so what we’re saying is a View isn’t really just a View (i.e. fixed), but it’s rather more like a unique physical environment with a many-faceted information-object inside. An object that can be viewed from many different angles. With high information density and complexity, in reality we’re constantly shifting our position to see this multi-faceted object from many different angles, each angle crucial, each angle providing a different perspective and often a different task. The potential number of angles to look at the object (the data), the implications of each, and the tasks, considerations and questions than can come from each angle, are incredibly numerous. It intuitively makes sense, but it’s also pointed out by users in this thread and is a common paradigm now in software tools. All within a single View. The Jira screenshot from @Aviad illustrates the point - not to mention that I’ve lived that same JIRA UI too for well over a decade and have used the same saved filters.
So we have filters. Often very numerous filters. Way more than what you’d ever want in the left nav bar. It’s be a giant mess. But that’s not really the point of this feature request.
If you’re locked (the default) into one fixed View of a multi-faceted object, you literally can’t see all the other angles. You can really only focus on one thing at a time because you can only be in one place at a time. With enough information density and complexity, you actually become unaware of the angles you can’t see. You could force it into your working memory by re-imagining it from memory, but with stuff like complex roadmaps and others, this is nearly impossible.
So Fibery already has filters - but they aren’t saved AND aren’t displayed in the UI (whether active or not) and it carries a huge cost.
Its not just that you have to go and re-create the filter, it’s that you’re forced to first remember and then re-imagine the other perspectives that you don’t currently see and then manually re-create it. It’s two costly steps, not one, with the first step being far more expensive. There’s cognitive friction and (very faulty) memory cost in re-imagining what it is you need to see, then there’s an actual time cost in re-creating the filter. They literally serve as reminders, and then transport you effortlessly to what is like a unique sub-view.
What we’re saying is without saved filters, the ‘cost’ to move around in the environment to see all the different perspectives is extremely high. It’s almost as if table Views had to be re-created each time you needed to navigate to a View.
The architecture of access doesn’t match the complexity of the information. Like a sky-scraper building with 100 floors, but the elevators only stop at every tenth floor, you’re left to the stairs 9 times out of ten, and some floor-groups have hidden floors that you won’t even visit if you can’t remember they’re there.
Fibery wants to replace ‘everything’ - sort of, but you get the point. And it’s one I agree with (just not Dovetail 
).
So if Fibery is meant to be the GOAT tool - and it can be, then it’s going to have a lot of different Spaces and 1st-class Views. A ton of information complexity and density, multiplied by many different work contexts. Saved filters, some set as sticky (whether active or not), even though it might feel like a trivial or ‘noisy’ UI feature on the surface, IMHO are incredibly valuable.
In the end, this isn’t at all about copying or not copying other tools. It’s about adding a vital and universal tool into the Fibery toolkit, because this really is a shared information architecture paradigm that is missing.
Please consider elevating this 
. Love what you’re all doing and major kudos to all the amazing releases and work of 2023. Thanks for reading this book 
.
4 Likes
Ok I admit, that last post was a little too much coffee and theory.
But it still comes from a place of UX frustration and honest analysis, and there’s still a deep IA challenge here to solve.
So here’s a more clear approach. Fibery’s flexibility is more powerful than any other tool I’ve seen. This unlocks power, but can also be more complex out of the box - and when really humming, could arguably encounter a much higher level of IA and UI complexity.
And even though I usually greatly dislike comparing to other tools, let’s look at some UI’s of competitors. These are all tools I’ve used in the past (and 2 that I currently use).
Asana 
Notion 
Trello 
JIRA 
Airtable 
They switched Nav to the top and Work (i.e. working within the same data context) to the left panel.
Monday 
Aha.io, ClickUp, Coda, Flow, Wrike, Zen Hub, Smartsheet and nearly every other tool I can think are all the same. There’s a pattern here. Navigating to an area of work is always separate in the UI. It’s its own first-class IA.
Then, when you’re actually doing work, once you’re in a fixed data-set context, it’s all grouped in another area. They’re always separate.
Now… if they’re separate - and this seems a very clear and nearly universal UX design pattern that also makes sense intuitively - for apps that have far less potential complexity than Fibery… wouldn’t it make sense to at least attain to that minimum level of IA coherence?
And now Fibery
Fibery is the only tool that combines a less powerful UI architecture with a more powerful data flexibility architecture.
And THEN after all that, there’s the idea of having Saved Filters - which may be more like ‘Saved Views’, or ‘Snapshots’ or call it whatever… i.e. combinations of saved filters and sorting, etc. each made sticky in the main view, that gives you the power to instantly see (and remember that you can see!) all this complex data from many different viewpoints.
I’ll stop now. I swear. But @mdubakov and amazing team, please consider. Much love 
3 Likes
Thank you for the very detailed analysis. Let me provide my quick thoughts here:
- I do agree that the problem exists. In relatively many cases a user wants to tweak the view slightly (or heavily), play with it and delete or save for later. But the solution is less clear:
– Saved Filters only give you filters, but sometimes you want to change sorting, visible fields, maybe colors, etc. So I am not sure it is enough.
– Maybe what you need is a new view then based on a current view that you can tweak? Like Temporary View? We added My Space to help people build temp views and delete them later and it serves its purpose to some degree.
– If we decide to add something like Saved Views to all Views, where are the borders? For example, you have a list of Tasks and in this new temp. view you changed Task database to Feature database. It will be weird to have this saved view in Task View. We can say that Database selection can’t be changed though. Anyway, how these Saved Views will differ from usual Views? Now you will have one more place to have and organize Views (Left menu and, well, View itself). It is quite complicated
– So in a nutshell, I don’t think we have a good solution ideas here right now. - I treat the examples you provided as a different way to show Views. For example, in Notion these Views are visible in left menu AND in main area. Not sure it is the best solution for Views…
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I’ve hacked this in our workspace 
Left menu is only navigation; no views.
When you open a page (which is an entity itself) then you have the ‘work area’
We show a lot of data there since I believe that the user needs to have all information in one place to save time.
The weekly overview page is to big for screenshots but if I collapse all databases (deze week) you’ll see what we are showing on a ‘menu page’.
It’s in Dutch but there are
- Shortcuts (to the Wiki ‘how this works’, financial plan, next week and this month’
- Weekly goal
- Planning per day
- Tasks
- Content
- Resources
- Appointments
- Projects
- Client projects
- Marketing events
- Milestones
- Weekly review
It’s fully automated. So when a user sets a deadline (January 5th) or a ‘vague planning’ (this week, next week, this month) then all entities are automatically in ‘this week’ (or week 3, 4, 5, etc.)
Same for this month, quarter, year, etc.
One space
We only have 1 space that the user uses, the rest is hidden.
The whole left menu is basically entities that are shown via smart folder configuration
And we’ve created lots of databases that only act as a ‘menu page’ so that we can build the view.
I know this is not a ‘normal Fibery set-up’
As a Fibery partner delivering Fibery workspaces is the core business of my company. We’ve started November 2022 with building and hopefully the first pilot customer will go live this month.
It’s not very doable for a normal user to achieve what we’ve achieved via these ‘hacks’. But I think the UI that we have is pretty awesome for a user. That’s why we’re spending a few thousand hours to achieve this and sell the solution to customers with the same problems/needs as we have.
Would be great if Fibery can achieve the same for normal users 
And if we can have default full width when there is no right column (I’ve made a hack for that this morning) and ‘tabs’ for the multiple views instead of dropdowns. With full width you will have enough space
(And copying a context view would be really really helpful as well That’s a pain in the ass and is so time consuming)
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