Sprint Review (53)

[sambouwer]

It has been a bit quiet from my side the last few weeks… Apologies for not posting a summary of the bi-weekly sprint review meeting the last month ! Work and personal life required my full attention the last weeks, but now there is some room again for Anytype related stuff!

In the last sprint review meeting some very exciting updates were shared about the new infrastructure. This project has been cooking for a while now, and similar to the “Relations as Objects” and Decluttering projects, it has been mostly invisible, apart from some mentions across the different platforms where the Anytype team is active about the existence of this initiative. That is about to change! Read all about it in the sprint review meeting notes below .

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Please take note, these are not the release notes for the next update, but rather a list of items the teams have worked on and are working on. Release notes will be posted in the Latest News & Announcements/Release Notes category. As part of the Release Train, the next release is again planned for the end of the month.

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Completed in past sprint

Middleware

So, to start with the highlight of this sprint review meeting: the middleware team has been working tirelessly on the complete rework of the Anytype infrastructure, being the core of how Anytype clients synchronize and interact with (backup) nodes. This new infrastructure adds not only improved sync performance, but also better scalability and is future proof with the implementation of the AnySync protocol . You can learn more about this new protocol in the Townhall (topic here , recording here ).

• Migration logic to migrate from old to the new infrastructure is mostly completed
  • Migration of account (locally) is completed
  • Migration of Objects (locally) is completed
  • Migration of files (locally) is in progress
  • Migration of files (server side) is in progress
• Migration steps for alpha users to get on the new-infra-train
  1. Export account on old version to local zip file on local machine
  2. Download and install new version from Anytype website
  3. Import account via zip (creates new account in new infrastructure and on the local machine, imports data into new account)
  4. If anything goes wrong during import, you can restart it at any time

note: the new infrastructure is not yet released. The steps above indicate the steps that need to be taken once the new infrastructure is ready and released.

Desktop

• Goodbye dashboard/homepage, hello Personal Space, goodbye old sidebar, hello new sidebar with Widgets and a Tree view! Widgets will allow you to fully customize both your personal space and the new sidebar. Happy customizing
• Collections
  It’s Sets with a twist: you can choose what’s in and what’s out . Manually reorder with drag-'n-drop, remove multiple Objects from your Collection, or completely delete them from your account, it’s all up to
  you!
  PS: Importing a database from Notion will add the content of the Notion database into a Collection, which should make it a lot easier to find back all those Objects you’ve imported
  

Android

• Library development is completed!
  • Find and uninstall your own / existing Types and Relations
  • Find and install Types and Relations from the Marketplace
  • Create new Types and Relations from scratch

and that, all on the go without missing a beat

In Progress & Next Up

Platform

There are many preparations ongoing to support the public launch. Still a lot to do, but there has been done a lot of work on cleaning up code in preparation for going open source, the necessary legal stuff (), writing documentation.

Desktop

• Migration UI (so you don’t need to write command line stuff to migrate your account from the old to the new infrastructure )
• Self-hosting (prep work for Q2)
• Use cases: some out of the box Anytype combo’s to get you started with some often seen/requested workflows or, use cases. For example, a habit tracker, a movie database, a to do list, a reading list.
• Onboarding flow to allow users to fully self-onboard with signup, training, and all the things you need to get started .
• Import improvements: import from csv, html, txt.

Mobile

• Widgets (within Anytype, not the Android or iOS widgets)
• Collections

Before finishing up, I want to point out the great work the team has done in the background to publish the roadmap on GitHub. It’s again one of those things: many hours of hard work summarized in a couple of words on a website… Take a look and see if you can spot your favorite feature. Mine is (self-hosting).

Anytype Feature Roadmap 🪩 • anytypeio

Thanks for reading and catch you next time, bye!

[Jeroen]

@sambouwer

Goodbye sidebar, hello Widgets! Widgets will allow you to fully customize both the Dashboard (your home page) and the sidebar. Happy customizing

Isn’t it, goodbye homepage?

I also wanted to quote @Angelo’s message from the Anytype Café (he posted a short version of the sprint review).

Major Highlights of Mid-Feb Sprint were:

• the removal of the Homepage/Dashboard
• Widgets
• Spaces
• and the implementation of our new sync infrastructure.
  All of which has seen significant progress and are currently being tested.

Some Context:
Soon we will remove the Homescreen and replace it with your Personal Space. Fixed navigation points will exist primarily in the Sidebar through the use of Widgets and Tree views.

In version 0.31.x we are testing:

• more intuitive Recovery Phrase introduction
• better import support for html/txt.
• Collections (stable target 0.32.0)
• protocols for self-hosting (stable target 0.33.0)

Additional Info:

New infra was brought up to date w/ middle-ware and testing in mobile devices is already underway.

We’re also better defining our file upload limits.

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In the Community we have:

• surpassed 7k members
• improved flow if bug report content into our internal issue tracker
• and held our monthly Town-hall event about Anysync and shared the recording
• added to Knowledge Base support / Topic Tags for R&D
• fixed various image problems:
  a) custom profile pics
  b) images loading in topics
  c) image/vid size limits
  d) images/vids forwarded to issue tracker

[sambouwer]

@Jeroen

Isn’t it, goodbye homepage?

Good point! It’s a bit of both . The sidebar as you know it today will go away, but you get a new sidebar with widgets in return. I’ll rephrase it so it is clearer what I mean there and take @Angelo’s message into account, too. Thanks for the feedback!

Edit: I’ve rewritten the relevant part. Additional feedback is welcome

[Angelo]

@sambouwer

Please take note, these are not the release notes for the next update, but rather a list of items the teams have worked on and are working on.

Just want to highlight the above statement, and emphasize that most of what’s being discussed in the latest Sprint Reviews, is currently in testing, and have projected delivery targets of ~Public Launch (ie. v.0.32.0 - 0.33.0)

[jannis]

Great! Thanks for the update @sambouwer.
I did not see anything from the iOS team: Are those updates missing or do they still need some time to focus?

[sambouwer]

Unless I just completely missed it, there was no update from the iOS team

[ignatovv]

The main progress was on the widgets and collections fields but it is still work in progress.

[fredmarkle]

Great update! Thanks for all the great info and amazing job team. Can’t wait to see all of this come together.

[PhoenixYu]

Thanks for these important message and the Anytype team. Nice work~

I have check the roadmap in Github project page, but I still have a question: when will the feature “rename/delete file/picture/music object” developed and released?

I think it is an important feature to me. Thx.

[gdbb]

Holy moly! So many upcoming features!

[dzlg]

Awesome job everyone . Personally I can’t wait for using the new widgets

[isle9]

Don’t think it’s on the roadmap yet, but feel free to upvote the thread.

[jannis]

For file deletion, see here:

How to delete files?

This is too small feature to add it on the roadmap. We are working on this at the time and hopefully will ship it in a 2-3 next releases.

[jp.touma]

• Migration steps for alpha users to get on the new-infra-train

1. Export account on old version to local zip file on local machine
2. Download and install new version from Anytype website
3. Import account via zip (creates new account in new infrastructure and on the local machine, imports data into new account)
4. If anything goes wrong during import, you can restart it at any time

Hey everyone! I’m really impressed by the improvements AnyType team is making and I’m trying to use it now and then to keep up with the progress. I’m trying to migrate to the new infrastructure. I’ve done all the steps, however, I’m still not seeing any widgets on the sidebar and there is no add to collection option in the options menu. The first two steps of the migration process were done successfully, in the third step I tried to create a new account but I had to use a code to create a new account. Am I doing something wrong or do I really need to obtain a code again to continue the process of migration?

Thanks in advance!

[sambouwer]

Hi @jp.touma let me clarify this in the text above. This is a summary of what is discussed in the meeting where the progress of the past two weeks is reviewed. None of the contents as written above is available in Anytype at this moment. Some parts will be available with the next release, while others will be more of a glimpse into the future of Anytype. Sorry for not making this clear enough in the text above.

[gcsapo]

It is so awesome to read about all these stuff you are working on. Can’t wait to see them in action.

[nikm07]

Just a question regarding import/backup options.
Will there be an option (or a planned feature) that allows us to export and then re-import Anytype data without losing existing links to different objects and the associated formatting?

[gdbb]

For now, it seems like the only way is to backup the anytype2 folder, but I didn’t try the whole procedure of exporting and re-importing.

[Angelo]

@nikm07

Will there be an option (or a planned feature) that allows us to export and then re-import Anytype data

Just going to quote myself here from another comment:

@Angelo

Account export will part of migration flow from the Legacy version to the Beta version with new infrastructure.

For the record; the migration to Beta will not be automatic, as we hoped. If you wish to keep your content, you will need to do an export/import. It is not mandatory, if you’re willing to start fresh you can simply skip this migration step and just run the new software.

The Legacy version will be maintained, polished occasionally and whatever features it has will continue to function. But all new features and UI improvements will only be implemented in Beta versions.

Beta will be different software so it will not be backwards compatible, therefore all Testers will be required to install the new software to enjoy new iterations of Anytype.

We will provide clear instruction and illustration as to how to do it per device, and also host a Town-hall/AMA devoted to migration, prior to the release.