I couldn’t find any request for this, maybe we have one already, but here goes.
As an Admin or Creator, I’d like to quickly find and navigate back to a Database in the Space DB admin area.
I find it’s quite inconvenient to:
- find and navigate to a particular DB (especially if i don’t know which Space the DB is in already)
- navigate to a DB in the Space DB admin area, when I’ve recently visited it
I’m talking about navigation to the Space DB admin area here.
What I mean by the Space DB admin area
When I work in the Admin/Creator role, I often visit different DBs for managing Fields, Relations and Automations. The area I continuously return to when doing non-trivial configuration, that I call the “Space DB admin area”, is shown in this screenshot:
As an admin, I find this area very useful:
- I can see data next to relations
- I can open up items to check the user experience, etc
- I can check for and easily access Automations
- Easy to switch to (often) related databases
- Easy to see different Views referencing this database
- Check access/shares
Inconvenient to find and navigate to a particular DB
If I try Ctrl/Cmd-k, I cannot get to the Space DB admin area even though I know the DB’s name (full or partial):
Navigate to a recently visited DB in the Space DB admin area
If I recently visited a DB, it doesn’t show in my history (Ctrl/Cmd-k). The only option I have is browser back/forward. I find back/foward is very reliable, so it’s not that, it’s mostly that my own memory doesn’t track this unless it was like the previous 1-2 pages I visited 
.
My workaround to find a DB when I don’t know which Space it’s in
If I don’t know/don’t remember which Space a Database belongs to, I visit the Settings > Workspace Map. Since I have many Spaces & DBs (exploring Fibery), I do a ctrl-f to find it:
Then I’ve learned that I can use this icon, to get to the Space DB admin area:
Until I became more familiar with Fibery, and sometimes still, I access the quick-DB config via Alt-click on entity name:
But when I do non-trivial changes, I’ve found I always want the full Space BD admin view!
What I’d like
As an Admin/Creator
Trying to remember my initial user experience when I was very new to Fibery, and my expectations then, and my experiences and expectations now, I think in both cases, I’d be happy if:
- I can search for an and enter a DB in Space DB Admin view via Ctrl/Cmd-k (partial or full match on DB’s name)
- Navigation history via Ctrl/Cmd-k remembers visits to Space DB Admin view (it doesn’t have to remember my state on that page precisely, but it should remember the selected DB in the space)
If the Ctrl/Cmd-k feature is extended in the way I propose, I’d be happy if there is something that visually distinguishes a DB search hit from a normal entity.
As a regular User
I’m not as sure on my expectations on as a non-Admin/Creator, but I think it’s something like this:
- if I have permission to view the DB, I expect that I can search for that DB with Ctrl/Cmd-k
- but if I navigate with that search result, I’m navigated to the first accessible entity in the Space that belongs to that DB
- i.e. at bit similar to how today, if I try to access a Space by clicking on it in the left sidebar, and don’t have Admin/Creator permissions, I get navigated to the first accessible entity in the left sidebar
But I’m not sure here - maybe I expect to be able to search for and navigate to a Space the same way? I do find it inconvinient that I cannot quick-search and focus a particular Space in the left sidebar. Instead I scroll a lot, which is mitigated perhaps but not fundamentally changed, now when we can hide Spaces. But I feel this is a separate product request, e.g “Making it easier to navigate the left menu”.
