We would like a new system level property called “Sequential ID”. Whenever a new object is added with a type that had this property, this item should get a sequential ID that is incremented by 1 from the ID of the object of that type with the highest ID.
So if I have an object of type “User Story” that has the “sequential ID” property, and the object with the highest ID for that type had the value US-23, the next object of type “User Story” that is created gets the ID US-24.
HOW COULD IT BE DONE?
Ideally, the user should be able to set the prefix for the ID, such as TASK- or PROJ-. So there can be multiple “ID systems”, one for tasks, one for bugs for customr 1, one for bugs for customr 2 and so on.
REAL WORLD USE CASES
One use case that we used Notion for is tracking bugs or user stories, or tasks. These ideally should automatically get a sequential ID that we would like to avoid having come up with every time.
This would enable using Anytype as a bug tracker or task manager, because we could refer to the task by ID within our team.
I am also wondering if there is a workaround… have you found a way to get unique IDs? I don’t know, maybe easily display what the highest ID number is so far so we can enter the next one?
i have not yet, but i also haven’t really looked. you could obviously do it manually by having a property and sort descending, but i’d rather wait for a way to automate it personally. i think that’s the last thing i’d need for Anytype to work for my personal project management!
Now I have understood Anytype a little better – what we need here is a new system property called “sequential ID” that can be added to types.
Whenever a new object of that type is added, a new ID is created with that type, it gets an ID that is incremented from the last object of that type.
If I have an object of type “User Story” that has the “sequential ID” property, and the ID for that object had the value US-23, the next object of type “User Story” that is created gets the ID US-24.
Honestly, and correct me if I am wrong, I think what you want is variables on templates.
So a template could have something (on the title or on some property) like: PROJ-<%SUM+1>, where ID would be the count of objects of that type plus 1. Or something like PROJ-<%TODAY>, etc.
This would be a very flexible and powerfull system.
That would work too – assuming there will a variable for, say the “object count at the time of creation”. Otherwise if I have 100 objects they all have ID PROJ-100.
I really hope they add this feature. It’s literally the only thing holding me back from transforming not only the documentation, but also the task management for our whole team, to Anytype.
I am generating reports in Anytype and would like to give them an ID number.
In my opinion it should be a type of property “ID” in which you can specify a prefix, number of digits, character type and if you want a sequential counter or a random (and unique) number.
So basically it is the functionality you need to number documents in an ERP software.
