First impressions & suggestions (of the App and the community page)

[Chris1]

Hi, I have got access to Anytype just last week and I will share my thoughts here.
I am using Anytype on MacOS so it might be specific to my operating system.
My preferred app for my personal management system is the Layout of Notion with the privacy of Logseq, so I will compare Anytype with both.

First impression:

• The Layout looks stunning. (+)

• The app runs smoothly. (+)

• Sometimes I have to check it it is automatically syncing, so I have to klick on the sync button to check that. Otherwise the changes I do (most of the time to the title of the page/set …) won’t be saved (-)

• There is a lot of „friction" involved with the community page: (-)
  First: Unclarity
  Don’t get me wrong I do like the community page, but for me it’s way to unclear because any member can create a new topic (as I am doing right now, and reply to it) but how does the Anytype team / users keep track of all the incoming suggestions/questions/impressions without that one falls through the cracks … ?
  Wouldn’t it be better to create a survey with specific questions to ged rid of the "cleaning up“ in the chat rooms and the friction (writing in the chat takes a lot of time …) involved to give the team a quick feedback?
  (This maybe a reason why there isn’t so much of it).
  Second: Information distribution
  I wasn’t aware that I had to attend the onboarding session in order to get the code for the app.
  The informations of future updates/changes/new community content who stands out etc. could be sent by email/newsletter so anyone who has the app will be informed about it and doesn’t need to check all the chats on it and the roadmap of the app could be shown in Kanban view. (as in Logseq for example).

Suggestions (priority: highest to lowest)

1. Sets: multiple Sets on a page
   Possibility to create different Sets on a page graphically as in Notion

2. Sets: Board views
   Possibility to choose between different Board views: Kanban Board, Calendar, Formulas
   (Maybe even be possible to display the data graphically)

3. Pages + Sets: Text and Set editing Styles
   Possibility for various Text (3 Styles in Notion) and Set editing Styles (thickness of rows/columns in tables) More Layout Options (full witdh of the page/set on the display)
   Possibility to Write information right under the Title of a page.
   Possibility of Callout Blocks
   Possibility of square Checkboxes

4. Organization: Main Page, Sets, Favourites
   Possibility to change the order in Favourites and Sets easier by clicking in the Sidebar

5. Additional Functions: Deletion of relations / Objects / Templates
   Possibility to delete relations, objects and templates (also the premade ones).

Thank You!
I would like to thank the whole team of Anytype for the great work you have done so far. Although the app is only in alpha phase, it makes a very good impression and like everything in life: Good things take time.

The promising future
Anyway, I’m very excited to see where the road leads, with an eye on the promising future updates. I am really looking forward to the next update, in Order to use the full potential of the Anytype and switching to it 100%.

[sambouwer]

Hi @Chris1, thanks for sharing your first experience with Anytype!

On your first and second point about the friction you experience regarding the community forum: I’m happy you’re sharing this feedback about the community forum! There has been quite some feedback about the lack of communication from the Anytype team on any platform, but especially this (Discourse) forum. I recently posted an update on how the Anytype team is planning to improve on this. You can read it here, and I think you might be interested in the last part about the integration between this forum (and its contents) and the internal work tracker as it might address your first point at least partially. Additionally, the Anytype team is working to increase the interaction between the Alpha users and Anytype QA teams and devs, which should become more visible in the coming weeks or months (sorry, also here no strict ETA).

Update on communication towards the Anytype community

Hi Anytype community! An often-voiced point of feedback that we (moderators) hear is the lack of (structured) communication towards the community. Up to now, updates have been shared via release notes and ad-hoc replies from the Anytype team via different channels (Discourse forum, Telegram, Discord). The Anytype team shared that they are working on improving the flow of information to the community in several ways: Sharing the middle to longer term plans and directions in posts like …

Regarding your second point, I believe the Anytype is also revising what platforms to use for communication, as the spreading of information is now very dispersed across (IMO) too many platforms. I’m not sure whether a newsletter would be just adding another channel, but I fully agree that not only the content and frequency but also the channels/means of communication should be improved.

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Now, let me link to existing feature requests or bug reports, or just comment on your suggestions.

@Chris1

Sets: multiple Sets on a page

This is planned but there is no ETA yet.

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@Chris1

Sets: Board views

Kanban board should be coming pretty soon, probably one of the upcoming releases.

Kanban boards

At the moment I currently use Notion’s kanban board view to manage my projects. While I like Notion’s interface, it’s far too slow for my liking and I hate how everything I do is just stored in the cloud I can’t take things offline with it. I’ve tried Trello and Asana but again, same problem with the cloud thing and I’d prefer a solution integrated with my notes rather than use a separate app. The ability to view databases in kanban board view in Anytype like I can in Notion would be really he…

Calendar view sounds like a great idea! I found this interesting topic discussing Kanban-like-calendar view (or calender-like-Kanban?!). It might be time for a topic to gather all requests around Set Views

Kanban like view for week view in calendar

What exactly is a “kanban view” in the context of a week/calendar? Isn’t it just a 1 week view of a calendar, like e.g. Google Calendar? [image] If you have something else in mind, can you provide an example, or mockup?

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@Chris1

Pages + Sets: Text and Set editing Styles

I won’t link to all feature requests for each and every (sub)request, but I think these two cover your requests pretty well:

Add options to change font size and style

A problem I’ve had with Notion is that there’s only an option for “Normal” Font and Small Font, but even the Normal is too small for some of my use cases. I don’t know the practicality of this, but I would love if I could scale it however much I want. A handful of text editing apps I use have this implemented in that if you hold ctrl and scroll the mouse wheel, you can finely tune how much you want it zoomed in or not. I’m not sure how this would work for the more complicated blocks, as I’m on…

Font type and options

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. While the built-in options for headings and various text types are there, I’d really like to modify them, because they are either too big or too small for my purposes. It is not very beautiful to have regular text and relations to be differently sized. In addition to that, headings are way too big and take up too much space. It is also impossible to center the text or justify it. Describe the solution you’d like I would like to be…

I would like to invite you to use the search function to search for the existing feature requests and submit one of your own if you feel your request is different/new.

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@Chris1

Organization: Main Page, Sets, Favourites

Ability to freely reorder Sidebar Sets and Favorites

Issue The Sidebar Sets and Favorites cannot be reordered. Solution Giving us the ability to freely reorder Sidebar Sets and Favorites, the same way we reorder blocks in Objects. Alternative Addictional context You can be guided by the visual of this proposal: https://community.anytype.io/t/ability-to-freely-reorder-objects-within-sets/2925 ㅤ Related although not the same as: https://community.anytype.io/t/a-sidebar-tweak/4999

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@Chris1

Additional Functions: Deletion of relations / Objects / Templates

Deleting Relations and other (default) Objects is an often asked feature request and the team is definitely aware of this request. See this FR and discussion:

Override the default object or relation

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. There are many objects/relations provided by default, but I may actually need to add/remove/modify them. The default objects/relations cannot be modified, but creating new objects with the same name can be very confusing. Describe the solution you’d like Add an option to allow new objects to override the default object

Larger Discussion on Built in Object Types in Library

Putting this here since it sounds related: • I think the Artist type should be an object, not a short text by default. I’ve created an object type Artist for my use case since I have comics objects and those tend to have the same author and artist. • Default types should be editable, to avoid redundancy (like what I did above). Why not just add some editing history on the type’s page inside the library? Like below: Created by: Anytype Edited by: [username] • When adding relations, I think i…

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It would be great if you are willing to share your experience again after a few weeks of usage to find out what your common workflows are, and what your main painpoints are (both in app and about the project/communication/etc.).

[sambouwer]

Closed because there is no reply. Feel free to open a new topic or flag this one to be reopened.