Hyperlink to different parts of workflowy
Completed
Suggestion: be able to install hyperlinks to other parts of workflowy.
For example, I have workflowy separated by "Standup", "Jira", "Todo", and "Notes" (among others). In standup, I write the usual, "yesterday", "today", "opstackles".
In the "Todo" section, I put in the "todo" for a particular "Jira" ticket. I do the same for "Notes" for a particular jira ticket.
It would be especially cool if I could link "notes" from a Jira ticket to the "Notes" for that jira ticket--so as I don't have to go scrolling, or searching--my workflowy is now quite large.
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Audrey,
Tags = used for quickly filter all the nodes with a particular tag attached, either within the full document or within the part of the doc you have dived into, clicking on a tag or searching for a tag result in an overview of nodes with that tag attached
Hyperlink = used for quickly arriving at that particular url/node
Hope that helps.
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A hyperlink could be useful but a good structure in your Workflowy bullet list is more recommended.
Remember that Dave Allen created his 'Getting Things Done' (GTD) when computers where not that common and desk bound. So he jotted down all the things on a big list (the inbox) and then placed it in an other list like next, project, phone, shop, and so on. Now we have computers all around us (smartphone, smartwatch, ...) and a software way to handle a list. So one big list and then filtering is the best way to go. How do you organize your big list? Like it is an archive! So you have main branches depending on what kind of business your in. For me it is real estate and splitting it up in buildings is logical. A building has subunits. A unit has and had tenants and so on. If you are in accounting it might be clients, fiscale years, investments, ... .
Anyway, the purpose is that you don't have to move items around and around but tag them and use the tags as a selection methode. It is easy to make GTD-list like phone, shop, Rita and so on if you use tags. It is flexibel and easy.
A hyperlink can be useful when you have a checklist that you use over and over again. But copy/past would do the trick.
What I am saying is that a good organisation of your list in combination of the power use of tags solves a lot of problems. That 's why I ask for sub-tags to give the tags even more power.
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Hyperlinks already work, they just need to be made available in / from the UI.
I use links on my "home list" to quickly jump to a sub-node, that might be a project, a list I'm currently working on, whatever
With a tag, you arrive at a certain item (or list of items), all sub-lists collapsed.
Hyperlinks take you to a certain node, lists expanded and everything. Tags can't do that. -
@Marc Cools - I am using Workflowy for the first time and am interested in installing it for my Sales Team that I manage - and I'd be interested in using it as a RESOURCE CENTER for my sales reps - similar to how you mentioned it above from a GTD perspective.
Any chance you'd be open to jumping on a ZOOM Link and showing me your Workflowy environment so I can try to duplicate some features of your instance before I try to create and recreate the wheel myself?? I'd be forever in your debt if you're open to it - and you have my word we'll keep it under 10 minutes.
Cheers -
Corey
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Like Steffen mentioned, hyperlinks are already there, and they work great. What is missing is a way to extract them from Workflowy's UI; they have to be retrieved through a web browser. The places this is particularly a problem are the native apps.
Although something like this old mockup from 2014 would be cool too. :)
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Yes, I think it's two things that are needed.
1) A quick way to copy a link to the clipboard (hotkey in desktop, menu item in the apps)
2) A nice design for links. I think Trello really nails it here: you can paste a link into a text field and it will be displayed as a nice button with the card title (see the screenshots). Workflowy could do something very similary and it would look great.
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It is possible already. Simply hover over dot, copy link and past it elsewhere e.g. https://workflowy.com/#/ac5c813aee37
Another solution would be "wiki-links" e.g. [[Start typing bullet name here...]]
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I think OP meant hyperlinking within workflowy documents, not sharing workflowy nodes to others.
I've been looking for ways to quickly jump from node to node, but it's quite a challenge everytime.
# and @, don't quite cut it, because if you have a million of these, you can't remember all of em~
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Marc Cools,
I'm curious to what you mean by sub-tags in addition to tags?
This is what I have in my mind when referencing 'sub-tags' within my parent tags:
Marketing Accounts starts with the following: @ma-
then finish with the account name such as following:
@ma-Account1
@ma-Account2
@ma-Birdhouzz
@ma-SunshineState
@ma-ETCetc, but anytime I needed to refer to one of my marketing account, I could always start with @ma- and the dropdown of suggested tags are shown but are isolated to marketing accounts. This works when searching for tags or filtering your lists.
so all of my marketing accounts are prefixed under my parent tag.
Is this something similar to what you had in mind or was it completely something else?
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It is fascinating that the majority of these comments are from two years ago. What I have found most valuable about Workflowy is it's keeping its eye on simplicity. The simpler the hierarchy the better. I do love the star feature. this in combination with search provides 90% of of what I need in complexity.
What I want to see is a way to define when completed tasks are deleted or saved. I have some tasks such as grocery lists that I never want to delete. I just want to hide the items I do not need to purchase now but will need to in the future and add them to my current shopping list by un-hiding them. Workflowy works perfectly for this.
However, on the other hand I would like to able to define when completed tasks, such as those on a todo list are permanently deleted. I want to keep my daily tasks 24 to 40 hours so I can see what I've finished but I want them deleted at them at some point. The system does not provide any way to keep these two concepts separate.
My suggestion is that each task is either dated our undated. defined in its hierarchy. Then, finished entries than can be sorted or permanently deleted based on date or date range.
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Hi James,
You can search for date ranges for completed items! Would you mind taking a look at this shared list:
https://workflowy.com/s/CKZJ.ak9BtViaZU
Please scroll down to the bottom of the list to see some examples using the "completed-since:" operator.
~ Frank
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Just want to bump this request.
What I think some of us would really love is more like what Marcin suggested above, where you have some kind of syntax that indicates you're intending to @ mention a specific node, rather than a tag. Then, the same kind of search/auto-complete experience you have for the [cmd+k] menu could suggest nodes as you type.
One more piece to the experience would, for me, be incredible — make the links bi-directional, similar to what Roam Research is doing. Perhaps have a section somewhere (below the content? in the [...] menu for the respective node?), which lists out all the other nodes in which the current node is referenced, so it's super easy to jump back and forth.
All of this is possible to achieve today with the [copy link] gesture, but it's a very manual process and doesn't handle maintenance or updates well. Having built-in @ mentions for links, paired with a back-link in an automatically-maintained links reference list at the target node, would create a first-class bi-directional linking feature. It would make what is now a very manual process feel effortless, unlocking a whole host of scenarios, including Gregory's.
I realize that there are probably a lot of reasons why this could be technically difficult to achieve (especially the reference list), but just for me, personally, it's a feature I'd use and love.And thanks for the incredible product. Workflowy is one of the few products I happily recommended to just about everyone who will listen. Keep up the great work.
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@Frank
This makes me so happy! Honestly I've been looking into a Workflowy alternative because I found it increasingly frustrating to manage my notes across all my other notes when they're related because the complexity just grows with more nodes (bullets). That's when I found Roam, and while similar to Workflowy it feels like the only feature they have that's an improvement on Workflowy is their bi-directional link and graph visualization feature. But it's a great feature, and that's why I went here to check if there was something like that planned for Workflowy! -
@Frank, what great news!
Bi-directional linking within WF would be an absolute game-changer for me. This is probably my number one feature request.
I am a researcher in academia by trade, and I take my notes in WF and often draft outlines and articles in WF. This gives me the option to reference my notes and create citations by linking sections of the outline to the actual notes from my research. Without easy bi-directional linking this has always been a pain point.
I have been giving Roam Research the side-eyed glance for a while now because it has this implemented in a very easy-to-use fashion. Added to that is their graph visualization of nodes and their connections. -
> As we speak, we're building bi-directional links into WorkFlowy. It's happening...
Super exciting! Looking forward to it. Can't wait to see how WF actually gets this done - your implementations of features tends to always be very simple and *out of the way* don't expect anything different here.
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> As we speak, we're building bi-directional links into WorkFlowy. It's happening...
@Frank that is unbelievable news. Very happy to be a beta tester!
I trust that you will prevent the creation of loops of link dependencies? To preserve the discipline of the tree, all roads from the leaves must still lead to the root without loops.
David
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I would be happy with just some kind of indication on any links that are creating a loop, so users can decide whether that's a problem for them or not, and delete such links if they don't want them. Some people might not have a problem with ending up with an infinite tree, assuming Workflowy itself can cope with it.
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The flag at the link level would be useful if infinite trees were permissible.
However, I have a lot of use-cases where being confident that the structure is guaranteed to be loop-free is an important invariant/ guarantee. E.g. Project planning and Requirements tracing
So if it were possible to create infinite trees, it would be most helpful if the whole tree was certified as loop-free or loopy. At the sub-tree level, a flag showing the status of the sub-tree having internal references only and no loops would be useful to preserve project by project guarantees.
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Hi @David and @ryan,
Thanks... we're taking care of the loopiness :-). Also, we've been deliberating a lot in our meetings about an interactive building experience... and so we're going to be opening up discussion more and more as we build new features. You can get in on any current conversation via the WorkFlowy Users Group on Slack. Please drop me a line at help@workflowy.com and I can shoot you a Slack invite. You're welcome to present this exact concern to the community and get a dialog going.
~ Frank
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