⁨Dario da Silva⁩'s Posts

Dario da Silva

Sep 29, 2023

Attachment field type

Explain the problem as you see it

There needs to be some basic file storage available in order to become an all-in-one productivity solution for teams.

When working on certain types of project, one needs to be able to add documents into records (i.e. nodes), e.g. a contract PDF.

This is particularly important in a collaborative environment, e.g. a marketing team working on a campaign needs to be able to access media files.

Why is this a problem for you?

I recently worked with someone on a collaborative project, and the other person was using Apple's Hook Productivity to add links to documents. This made me realise that we would have to have a joint storage solution (e.g. Dropbox / GDrive) if we wanted to work on the same files, which would be another SaaS expense (although admittedly, one that most companies would have - still, it would mean leaving the workflow to access another program).

At the moment, one can insert images, but accessing the original image file is cumbersome.

Suggest a solution

A field type for attachments, similar to Airtable, which enables you to add attachments that are easily accessible directly in Tana.

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Dario da Silva

Aug 7, 2023

A simple way to attach concepts to nodes inline

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Explain the problem as you see it

The introduction of supertags means that the # is no longer available to 'map' concepts by the simple tag, a mechanism familiar in other popular TfTs.

It complicates the resurfacing of specific nodes of information that would ordinarily be available by filtering the outliner tree based on tags.

Why is this a problem for you?

In order to map concepts, I now use a supertag with my own concepts field, or sometimes I use an @ reference to an existing node. But this presents a number of problems:

Adding a supertag with a 'Concepts' field feels clunky. It clutters up the visual interface, and feels like it takes me out of the flow. (The one benefit is that I can have my 'Concepts' field be an instance of my #concepts supertag)
Using the @ reference brings up **all ** the nodes, rather than a list of 'concept tags'. This makes it more difficult to use my concepts consistently.
I don't have the ability to filter my References based on other nodes, which nullifies the ease of resurfacing pertinent information. For example, if I'm writing about TfT painpoints, I could navigate to my #TfT node and then filter by all nodes which are also mapped to #pain-points, an example of which would be the below:
Tools for Thought are game changers #tft
- But sometimes getting back to the information I want becomes difficult when I have so much content #pain-points

I know that I can do this using live searches, but it feels more complicated.

Suggest a solution

It would be great to have some design primitive to replace the 'tag' that we have in other TfT programs.

This might mean using a new symbol, e.g. '+' which would then bring up all the concepts in your database as you're entering information.

Example:

Tools for Thought are game changers +tft
- But sometimes getting back to the information I want becomes difficult when I have so much content +pain-points

It might be that it simply adds the 'Concepts' field to the node, but displays the '+concept' inline.

The filtering of References is probably another topic altogether, but maybe 'promoting' this concepts structure would simplify the filtering mechanism, such that complicated live searches are not required.

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