(Vertical) timeline view

I tried Linear app and one of the neat ideas I found there and which I’d like to shamelessly copy into Fibery is a project status updates history,

Here’s how this works is Linear:
You have this field where you enter a short summary and status for the status update, which remains visible at the top of the [Initiatives] details page.

You can also view the updates history which I think could be a huge help for teams working on multiple projects, or ones that span across longer periods.


To replicate this in Fibery I would probably use a Form with

  • project
  • update text
  • status update (single option select)
  • date (defaults to today)

And then a simple list view or table view, sorted by date, to display the timeline.
This would work but the result would be quite boring and not have the impact that it could.

For that I wish we had a view such as this, a sort of vertical timeline

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Rather than focussing on a solution, let’s check we understand the need.

The idea is that, on a given day, a user is able to write something about a particular entity (plus maybe update a status field value) and then subsequently, other users can see a history of what was written by different people, on different days.

Questions that come to mind for me are:

  • In your image examples, Nomen nescio has written on the 23rd January “We had an excellent demo with the client” and then later on the same day “The client could not get financing …”
    Do you expect that when viewing the Initiative record (i.e. normal view, not the updates history view) only the text from the latest update gets shown? (that’s how your upper screenshot looks)
  • The screenshots show the ‘status’ value (‘On track’, ‘At risk’, etc.) in the updates history view, as well as the text of the update. Is that essential?
  • Do you expect to be able to use formatting/entity mentions etc. in the text?

To me, it overall sounds a bit close to one or other of the following:

Do any of these existing functionalities come close?
Could they be tweaked in such a way as to meet the underlying need?

It feels to me like you’re approaching this from an engineering point of view, while I’m describing this from a UX/UI point of view.

I can create a setup that covers the needed functionality. For example I can make a DB for Status update and present it like this

And then I can embed the latest item in that list in a view, on a Project, to display the latest project update

And that gets me 90% of the way there to the desired target.
However, I feel like this won’t have the same impact to the user as something like this

Interfaces matter. Views matter. Otherwise you’d only offer tables as a way to view the data.

To me this Vertical Timeline view would work almost entirely as the feed view you already have, but visually it would be presented to look more like a timeline, like the image above.

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I am trying to approach it from a need / use case point of view, rather than from a solution point of view.

Setting aside the UI, I am trying to determine which elements of the need are ‘must-have’ in order to achieve what you want to achieve, vs which elements are merely implementation-specific.

For example, are we talking about a ‘vertical timeline’ view that is specific to an single entity?
If so, then any of the existing data views (table, board, list, feed) are not going to be suitable, and a new type of data view (= ‘vertical timeline’) is not going to address the need, since these views are designed to present aggregated data from multiple entities.

Also, it’s not clear to me from your description whether the text provided by the user as the update text is expected to be ‘ephemeral’ (and only available as ‘historic’ information) or whether it persists / is added to (i.e. an entity’s current state includes all update text that has ever been submitted to date).

Obviously this will determine where the data lives. If you think that this means I am taking an engineering approach, then so be it.
But that’s where my questions came from, and I think it’s worth getting them answered.

And when I asked about existing functions, I was asking in order to understand where you felt this ‘view’ might live? Not because I thought any of them could achieve what you wanted.

Yeah, and I can understand why this is clunky. A separate database for updates seems overkill (especially when it would potentially need to exist for all databases)

But what if there was an optional Comments-like field (called Updates) that was configurable so that it could show attributes, as well as the text the user added, and if it could have a UI that showed the timing of the comments, vertically grouped by month (as shown in the screen shot)?

The direct answer would be “date” and the “status update” text. A “status” single select would ne a nice bonus.

For example, are we talking about a ‘vertical timeline’ view that is specific to an single entity?

Shouldn’t be. Just like current views can display data from whatever databases they want, it should be the same thing here.

For example, are we talking about a ‘vertical timeline’ view that is specific to an single entity?

No. it should apply to all entities that have a date field.

Also, it’s not clear to me from your description whether the text provided by the user as the update text is expected to be ‘ephemeral’ (and only available as ‘historic’ information) or whether it persists / is added to (i.e. an entity’s current state includes all update text that has ever been submitted to date).

It would be better if it would persist, for example for adjusting the date field if needed, correcting the summary text for typos, etc.

But what if there was an optional Comments-like field (called Updates) that was configurable so that it could show attributes, as well as the text the user added, and if it could have a UI that showed the timing of the comments, vertically grouped by month (as shown in the screen shot)

That could work as well, though it’s worth pointing out that the latest one should visually stand out, as that would be the hero, the latest update for the entity,