Sep 21, 2023 / 🥹 Watch Entity (through tears), AI Search is out of beta, no fixed bugs

[mdubakov]

Watch Entity and get notifications

This feature was requested by at least 50 accounts and has been in our backlog for three years. Finally, we have it in Fibery. Now you can watch any entity and receive all activity changes in your Inbox. Click the icon in the top right corner of any entity view and then click the Watch button.

There are several automatic rules that make you a watcher:

• When you created an entity.
• When you are assigned to an entity.
• When you add a comment to an entity.
• When you add an entity to Favorites.

There is also Watch action in automatic rules, so you can make some users as Watchers in your unique workflow.

Limitations:

• Changes in rich text fields and documents are not tracked.
• Watch notifications are Inbox-only, you can’t have them in Email or Slack so far (we are working on it, stay tuned).

Try it and share your feedback. We are listening . Watch user guide is here.

AI Search is out of beta

We’ve renamed Semantic Search to AI Search and now you can try it for free without OpenAI account for 1 database. Learn more about AI Search here.

To try it, navigate to Settings → AI and add one database to the index.

AI search works best for highlights/references creation, when you select some text and want to find relevant entity to link.

Trim Field names to remove leading and trailing spaces

Leading and especially trailing spaces in names lead to unexpected errors in scripts and “duplicate” Fields in Formulas:

Moreover, troubleshooting is tricky unless you know exactly what you should be looking for. We’ve seen Creators cumulatively spending hours debugging these cases.

From now on, we automatically remove both leading and trailing spaces when you save a Field to avoid the trouble(shooting).

Escape quotes and new line \n in Formulas

Previously, our Formulas have been harsh on " within ':

// you wrote
'Fibery is "awesome"'

// we replaced ' with " on saving and showed an error when you edited Formula next time
"Fibery is "awesome"" ❌

Now we truly allow " inside '. As a bonus, we allow escaping quotes and…new lines!

'Fibery is "awesome"'
"Fibery is \"awesome\""
"Fibery is awesome\nSo are you"

Comments reactions notifications

We’ve improved reactions notifications. Now they are combined, comment text is visible and aesthetic is better.

Fixed Bugs

None.

[YvetteLans]

Awesome release! So much new features

[smoran]

Thursdays used to be boring… Not anymore because it’s Fibery day!!

Another good release

[YvetteLans]

Would it be possible to have a setting so that the user can determine if they want to be automatically watcher or not?

Our clients work in context grids with ‘My tasks’ → if they add a new entity then they are automatically assigned to the task.

We have 100+ automations and formulas in the workspace so that all information is shown in the correct place.

The above screenshot shows what happens when a user sets a task to done:

• The ‘completed by’ user is linked
• The ‘date completed’ is set
• That triggers that the correct ‘weekly overview’ is linked

(it’s a bit odd that the state change from in progress > done is missing)

This is just one example. We have multiple automations that run every day/week/month/quarter/year to make sure the correct period entities are linked, tasks are updated, etc.

TLDR: can understand why it’s helpful to watch entities, but I hope we can also turn it off or modify the settings to avoid a complete overkill of notifications

[Matt_Blais]

Great update!

@mdubakov

As a bonus, we allow escaping quotes and…new lines!

newlines in Formulas makes me unreasonably happy

[Matt_Blais]

@YvetteLans

Would it be possible to have a setting so that the user can determine if they want to be automatically watcher or not?

Perhaps Rules and Buttons (or individual Actions) could have a switch for “Don’t generate Notifications”?

[YvetteLans]

Yes, that’s an idea.

But more generic:

I think in all cases where it’s not directly necessary to receive a notification, it’s because the ‘user who triggered rule’ = empty.

You do want a notification when a human does something. But IMO it’s most of the time an overkill to receive a notification if a system has updated the task.

And if it is helpful (for example ‘notification when deadline is overdue’) then you can ad a watcher via automations.

[mdubakov]

@YvetteLans

This is just one example. We have multiple automations that run every day/week/month/quarter/year to make sure the correct period entities are linked, tasks are updated, etc.

Indeed for such scenario it can be easily an overhead of notifications. We will think what we can do here. Technically we can disable all notifications from rules, but I am not sure this is the right move.

So far it will be very hard to make a notification per-rule…

[matth]

We are also getting a large amount of notifications from this.

I think one solution could be if you can set on a Database level if Entities should auto-watch or not. Most of the extra notifications now are from the creating of entities that never need notifications at all and if those didn’t get auto-watched then the extra notifications wouldn’t trigger.

[mdubakov]

Can you provide some real example? It will help us to catch the gist of the problem better.

[matth]

For one example. We have Projects database and Time Log database.

A user can log time to a project by creating a Time Log entity attached to that project. When that Time Log entity is created that Entity is then set to Watched by the creator.

We have a bunch of Automations that run on the Time Logs that update them on creation. So, when a user creates that Time Log entity, they are getting notifications of these updates.

So, if we could set Time Logs to not auto-watch then those notifications wouldn’t go through.

I guess the other mention here about notifications on automation might solve that as well.

[YvetteLans]

@mdubakov

Technically we can disable all notifications from rules, but I am not sure this is the right move.

Maybe as a step 1 create a setting so that the user can completely turn off the ‘auto watch’ function.

So that the workspaces that are experiencing a notification overload since today don’t have any problem anymore.

And they can create rules if they do want auto watching for specific scenario.

I think that’s already a very (!) valuable feature that offers so much flexibility for different databases/users/use cases.

[matth]

To follow up more on my previous note, we love the watch feature and Auto-Watch makes sense for most Entity types. So, I’m glad it is here even with some of the extra notifications we don’t need right now.

Overall

[njyo]

Huzzah for white space trimming!

[mdubakov]

We’ve removed automatic Watch of entity when you created it.
It seems this is what causing most of the problems.

If you still need this rule for some Database, you can create an automation rule and use Watch action.
Here is an example:

[dukevannori]

Amazing Update! to put my own “watchers” feature to the bin it would need one more thing i am not sure its possible right now: add other people as watchers. sometimes I want to make sure people know about stuff in a task, but dont want to assign the task to them.

[mdubakov]

@dukevannori

add other people as watchers. sometimes I want to make sure people know about stuff in a task, but dont want to assign the task to them.

It is possible via automated rule, here is how you do it
https://the.fibery.io/@public/User_Guide/Guide/Watch-entity-and-get-notifications-210/anchor=Add-watchers-via-automated-rule--e6405219-5622-4574-afde-0f1b60976393

[dukevannori]

amazing! thats how i do it … then i just have to change the automation a bit… thank you!!

[YvetteLans]

@mdubakov

We’ve removed automatic Watch of entity when you created it.
It seems this is what causing most of the problems.

That’s already a big step forward for most clients I think

(editted)
For us it doesn’t solve the amount of notification.

• More then 50% of the task in our workspace are created via templates (for example when a new client/internal project is created) and then Fibery creates the task + sets the assignee.
• When you are an assignee and therefor autowatcher, you will still get all updates that are caused by automations and ‘system databases’

What are the chances that we get a setting to completely turn it off?