Weāve accumulated a lot of feedback about Automations in Fibery and thinking about full re-write of this area. It is not an easy project. Here are some things we want to hear from you that may help us to make a decision:
What use cases you imagined with Fibery, but canāt do them because of poor automations?
Do you compensate that with n8n, API, Make, Zapier or other external tools?
What a single thing more important for you to have in Fibery instead of better automations? Please do not provide many, just one
Hello,
The use case I can think of is āimproved workflowsā as discussed in this thread:
I think a lot of companies have complex workflows which mix automations, processes and manual procedures (tasks). Itās difficult to document the processes well and to mix both worlds (automation with human in the loop).
The most difficult thing is to follow each ongoing process execution. (e.g. a specific customer onboarding, a project lifecycle, a marketing campaign).
The alternatives are:
Domain locked workflow solutions. A lot of Saas products propose workflow solutions
And well.. N8N which is great. But it is not really āhuman in the loopā friendly
In the end, itās important for a company to track and improve the efficiency of its processes. Itās also important to quickly onboard on those.
EDIT:
Maybe materializing Workflows, allowing to manage a set of rules and their correlations. Properly handling the ātime / transition / contractā aspect of automation.
For an example. A task status can switch to āDoneā or āCanceledā only when it is not āDraftā. And depending of the ācompletionā or ācancellationā event. It would trigger other rules, like Creating a āReportā or a āTestā. To ācancelā a task, maybe it should be mandatory to fill a āformā with a proper reason.
And you could see all this logic on a proper Workflow page.
Before responding, curious what you mean by āfull re-writeā, and what (from the feedback collected) justifies re-writting instead of adding missing features. What features would a re-write unlock?
I personally think automations in Fibery are already much more powerful than most competing platforms. (The āStep 1 Linked Entityā is amazing for complex automations).
Are there things that could be improved? Yes. Looping, conditions, using step results are examples. But the workarounds needed (at least for me) have not yet justified spending the time and energy into a full re-write of automations. Again, Iām curious to understand what features canāt be added without a full rewrite.
Iām still incredibly new to Fibery, but as far as I can tell, the ability to templatize a project plan seems limited. If I could allow my users to easily build their own templates that capture the multi-level Milestones, Taks, and Subtasks needed to complete the project, it would be game-changing.
Our current approach is pretty time consuming and fragile due to how we have to map/look up field values using the native rule builder. I havenāt attempted to build this process with Zapier (which I use for some other automations), but I imagine it would still be really time intensive to set up and manage our templates.
As a simple enhancement, itād be a great start if I could just duplicate an action in the rule builder.
You can cascade this logic to as many levels as youād like. The āWhen linked to entityā trigger is so so powerful, especialy when combined with lookups. Do pay attention to the correction in the comments of the video to reduce the number of automation runs.
Webhook Action in Automations would be my top request for automations. I can handle scripting, but I often just want the more quickly understandable layout of a GUI around webhooks (both during setup and reviewing later).
Working with both collection fields and non collection fields. (perhaps this is more of a formulas item, but this is usually the āsimpleā thing that I find myself wishing I could quickly do in automations)
No
More robust communications within Fibery. For example, publishing something like the Threads feature (I think I put all my thoughts on this in other posts).
What use cases you imagined with Fibery, but canāt do them because of poor automations?
Address entities not linked to trigger entity ā This is a BIG restriction. Example: I want to record a transaction for a specific Contact. From that Contact entity, I want to create a Journal entry. That Journal entry should always have at least 2 individual Line Item entities. Because those line items are not directly linked to the Contact entity, I canāt create them with a button on the Contact. Instead, I have to do one of 2 things: create an unnecessary relation between line items and Contact (this really confuses and complicates the data model) or try to 2-step the automation: create the Journal entry and then have a rule that creates the Line Items (which is much more fragile than a button where I can specific what exactly needs to be done in the context of the button).
Loops ā e.g., I need to create an entity that pairs a single person with a single project for each new project. I know I can do it with scripts, but a āfor eachā automation is actually a pretty common use case. Scripts are a lot harder and so automations just end up not happening.
Variables ā this is one of the biggest things I miss from Notionās automations. Being able to introduce a variable and then operate on it is very helpful in calculations, dynamic automations, etc. Scripts compensates for this, but there are lot of things I just put off automating or suffer with manual entry because scripts are a quantum leap in complexity and I donāt have the time to sit and write them.
Conditional / case PER STEP ā e.g., suppose I have an automation for a Project. If itās a certain type of project, I want it to avoid creating one task or populate a given field differently. Right now, I have to do one of: a) script it (ugh - I just donāt do it then), b) multi-stage it with cascading rules (fragile because they are linked by conditions instead of directly ā and the logic might fail unexpectedly), or c) set up a different automation for EACH different case (complicated and becomes a behemoth to maintain).
For me the need is possibility to combine formula and manual input. The idea is that formula outputs value and I can modify it. When using formula only this is simple blackbox. Ability to alternate value is something I miss.
The reason behind it is that for me Fibery has the potential to be the best email client with relations and the whole system.
When I will be able to alter formula I can send emails.
Chains of automations where the next steps could use the results of the previous steps.
Chains of multi-layered If-Then-Else blocks in rules & buttons together with the flow visualization.
Variables in rules & buttons.
Workflows like in Jira in the way we could setup steps, rules & constraints.
Multi-screen flows & visual (flow) progress indicator. I want a sales rep to quickly see what needs to be done, like Account > Contact, i.e. Create Account, Create Contact. Or for an e-commerce order fulfillment process: Review Order Details > Approve > Create Fulfillment Order > Pick & Pack > Ship
Examples: https://youtu.be/oZ65kgmeie8?si=rqp9KCflZqdTJW_9 https://youtu.be/LN4xvSFU-9Q?si=2JPyVjCjzgluUuXr
Required fields not requiring me to pre-select a value like it is required now. I simply want a user not being able to submit the form unless they provide a value (like a required parameter in a standard html). Currently, I need to add rules to validate this simple fact & revert to the previous step which is counter intuitive.
Full-featured Email - Iād love to use Fibery as my only email client and build sequences of tracked emails and other actions.
Ability to select email template using rule or button based on a condition.
Support for OpenRouter API (multiple AI models under a single umbrella).
Execute client-side JavaScript or extend Fibery standard UI capabilities. This one is a big dream since this creates possibilities to extend Fibery standard UI features. There was a need of Jasperās client to visualize a 3D object based on the object properties that are stored in Fibery. It would be awesome not to rely on creating the specific browser extensions.
Required fields not requiring me to pre-select a value like it is required now. I simply want a user not being able to submit the form unless they provide a value (like a required parameter in a standard html). Currently, I need to add rules to validate this simple fact & revert to the previous step which is counter intuitive.
I needed to interface Fibery with WhatsApp for sending WhatsApp messages and documents from Fibery to customers and receiving WhatsApp messages from customers into Fibery.
The only way I could do it was to interface Fibery with Make (formerly Integromat) where the WhatsApp interfacing and automations were done in Make.
Hi, I would like to see an option to convert an automation workflow to a script using the API.
With this approach, you can start with the workflow, and when you are running out of options, you can switch to a scripting aproach and have full control.
This will also lower to bar to use the scripting API, I assume.
Just my 2 Cents Marc
Syncing two Select Fields is currently pure cancer.
Letās say I have 2 different select fields, both with the same number of items, but one might have longer texts and one shorter,
for example
One might have a single select field option called:
āHigh - critical features are not working or data loss imminentā
the other might have a single select field called simply āHighā.
Both of them have the same values, so I was expecting I could sync them by Value but nope, itās not possible.
Are you talking about two select fields on the same db? If so, whatās the use case for two select fields, where they need to always stay in sync? Why is a single field not sufficient?
I am inclined to agree with @RonMakesSystems , pretty much everything I want to do I can do with scripts. I could see that in the long term it makes sense to have the visual Automation system be as functional as scripts for non-technical users, but it seems like in the short term you could enable the most functionality by adding scripts back to the standard plan. That said, there are still a few specific improvements that would be helpful for me:
Add a secret manager to the Automation system. I understand that putting API keys into automations if fairly secure, it would be really nice to have all of your external API keys in a separate, secure place and call them by variable in scripts/automations.
Add the ability to call Custom Integration Actions in scripts and send integration actions for batches of entities.
I currently use Make to sync some appointment entities to an external calendar, partly because of no secret manager and partly because the Google calendar API is annoying.
Polymorphic/multi-relations, I keep hoping to see these on the roadmap but Iām worried theyāre gonna stay on the backburner. I frequently find myself working around not having these when trying to model all sorts of data and having to add extra, unnecessary fields to combine two distinct datatypes.
My use of Fibery revolves around the great linking and referencing/backlinks, and I am yearing for that start to integrate thoroughly with the great commenting features for the ability to see disparate items around a business that are tracked in Fibery and how they relate, and generally just see more information at a glance without searching endlessly. Tying comments and references together would go a great length to solve this, so Iāll say one feature Iād like to see before further automation improvements is For Activity Stream, ability to see in chronological order References & Comments
Iām not a coder, but I love using automation through simple tools like buttons. For example, in Coda, I can trigger a webhook directly from a button ā this lets me send data like invoices or expenses straight to my accountant.
It would be amazing if Fibery buttons could do something similar ā trigger a webhook or external action directly.
Button Filters & Conditional Logic
Having filters or conditions in buttons would make workflows much smarter.
For example:
When I create a Quote or Invoice, Iād like the system to automatically choose the language based on the clientās language (English vs. Spanish).
I have a button that transforms a deal into a Project entity, but depending on the client type, I need different behaviors (some require line items, others donāt), Currency Symbols are different depending on the client as wellā¦
A conditional filter or logic in buttons would make this much simpler.
Formula-Based Filters & Colors
It would be super helpful to use formulas in entity filters or color rules.
For example:
Color an entity red or filter, if the bank amount doesnāt match the invoice total minus expenses.
This would reduce the number of extra calculated fields I currently need.
Smarter Lookup & Relation Filtering
When linking entities, it would be great to:
Filter lookup options dynamically, exā¦ by Client Name from the current entity.
Filter by specific date parts, like date.year, when selecting related items.
So, yeah! Better automations would be my first request! Otherwise, instead, I would love more freedom in the way that the Fields are organized/look inside an Entity. To be able to have fields next to each other so you donāt need to scroll down so much. (Column Style)
