Latest notes for Anytype 0.28.0

Forenote

during my conversation with Charlotte i mentioned a few times that im trying to find work arounds for features i want to see, but probably arent in scope and as such, i know these features and desires are most likely going to be far down the line if implimented at all.

As the following notes are mostly features rather than bug fixes i may also outline implimentation ideas for the features themselves. I am fully aware that i dont actually know anything about the backend of anytype and they probably wont be applicable, however its just an idea to get the feature idea across clearer. they are in no way supposed to be seen as AC or an indepth user story.


Features that could be of use

Highlighted Data

during my attempt to create some form of task management in anytype, i found it almost impossible to create some sort of method to easily see subtasks and their completion status from the card view (and now kanban is available, that too). im trying to create a todo system that lets me see at a glance how much i have completed for any particular task. My idea for this would be to replace the image in card view or, in kanban view, have an expandable drop down that show some highlited section of an object that is selectable ( a relation e.g. status, a collection of other object relations or a simple table as some examples) where a user could colate some data that gives them specific or more detailed glance of information that they can personalise.

Jira has an example of this where larger tasks with subtasks show those subtasks in a box with a grey background below the major task. (this breaks a little when the status’ are all over the place but it is the only example i could think of).

Smart Sets

With sets already being an extreemly powerfull tool in their own right as they are, i currently use them to construct an overview of any subject or project i wish to tackle. My idea for Smart Sets would allow the user to export some form of specific piece of data either in a section below or above the “View” that puts it in plain view and is easy to see at a glance. (there is a pattern forming here and im very aware of it. Anytype isnt hard to navigate, im just a lazy person :wink:).

Imagine Excel. great start when trying to make something interesting, i know, But one thing Excel, Sheets and other data management and spreadsheet tools does well, is not only managing, filter, and autofill information that you might find useful, but also lets you do things with that data. for example a table i made in notion (unfortunately its deleted now) was made for finding a house to move into, i had a column for the address, another for the listing, another for the date it was available, another for its price, another for estimated tax, another for internet speed, another for estimated bills, another for pros and another for cons. what i ended up doing was taking that notion table with all its links and so on and dumping it in Google sheets multiple times a month to find a good candidate to move to, counting the pros vs the cons taking the price and estimated bills and internet speed and finding the best fit for everything. it was a long drawn out process and it took me a while to figure out a method of doing it in notion with a bunch of nested and and or statements that would have been so much faster if i could just, code it. however i am very aware of the fact that not everyone knows how to code and it needed to be user friendly, but it was frustrating!

basically, let me do stuff with the data ive put together, instead of having to do the exact same filtering process over and over again to find what i want!

Set View Links

Currently if you link to a set, you just get sent to the default view of a set, due to sets by default being used to display object types first and foremost, different types of things will always fit in that. personally i use my task set to view all my tasks and being unable to put a link to my project tasks view is somewhat painful, knowing im always 2 clicks away even though im only going to use that link to go to one specific view.

Calendar Integration

this is a pretty simple one, and it stems from a stupid place, but essentially im jealous of notion buying cron, i recently started using a calendar more often and would be great if i could try and schedule stuff from inside anytype, but thats a moonshot request. (if not a plugin :wink:)

Vertical Dividers

pretty simple one here, would love if we could style the vertical division of segments, the dotted and line dividers look really nice.

Cloud Map Improvements

im completely out of my depth when it comes to developing a cloud map visually, never done it before and have no idea what it entails but ill outline the improvements i would like to see, but i have no idea if they are viable.

Forward and Backward Relations

currently bi-directional relations overlap the arrows and text in the same position which looks rather bad. and it makes one of the two relations unreadable in its current state

Bunching Items

large amount of items bunch up to an inordinate amount and items with a large amountn of collections tend to overlap each other. its easy to move them around but would be nice if they didnt take up eachothers space like that.

Miscelaneous objects section

currently unlinked objects just chill in the top left corner in a group which is fine, i know where to find them and i expect them there, but the look kinda lonely on there own up there, would be nice if they had like a misc cloud to hover around or something.

Bugs

page deletion

Still cant seem to delete 2 pages that i made. the option to delete just plain isnt there not sure what to do about them :man_shrugging:t5:

Adding object in kanban with filter

adding an object to a kanban with a relation filter dosent apply that filter to the object like it does in table or card view. creating an empty object and ignoring the filters causing it to disapear as soon as you try and open it.

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@LiteLotus thanks for posting an elaborate review of the 0.28.0 release! It is always good to see notes and remarks on the latest release.

I’ve tried to link all relevant topics that I can think of, but some might not be as relevant as I think :wink: .


Reading your description of your desired functionality these topics came to mind:

Column aggregation to for example see the total number of tasks (with a certain status) in your Set:

Similarly, derived formulas or calculations might allow similar functionality, but also within an Object (to for example count number of Blocks with a specific state):

Adding these kinds of calculations inline to also use this data in another Block (in another Object) would make this even more useful! For example, a nice Card block with a KPI of how many open tasks you have.

Some of these remarks come back in the meta-discussion:


This sounds like a crossover or combination of Simple Tables and the “collections” feature the Anytype team is working on. @Charlotte you might be able to comment on this?

Additionally, some of the stuff you mention remind me of the proposal of another kind of Object specifically designed for making comparisons:


Loosely related to (also for linking within the app, not only externally):


Yes, yes, yes! Combination of Calendar View for Sets, Calendar overview on the dashboard and a notification system would supercharge my productivity in Anytype!


You are not alone:


There are actually two bugs that cause issues with displaying Relations in the Graph:


Could be similar to:


There is no feature request for this yet, but I like the idea! Are you willing to create a feature request for this?


Known issue, could be due to a “broken” Object created in an earlier version of Anytype…


Kanban is v1 (or maybe even v0.1?) so there are many issues with this feature. This should improve over the next few releases :slight_smile:

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