Link to BOARD or PANE (not just item)

LauraH

I use a variety of different work flows for different types of work / projects throughout the day.

I would love to be able to link to a BOARD or a specific PANE, not just to an item.

Some possible use cases:
“Repeating Chores” - I’d like to have one task on my main list that is, “check ongoing chores” without all the clutter of every chore listed on my main list. The “open link in pop up pane” is IDEAL for this except that in that pop up, I then have to add the filters to show only things due today, etc. If I could create a link to a PANE and have THAT open in the pop up, that would be PERFECT.

Setting up Workflows - My “weekly review” process includes multiple different types of things to check. (ie: personal projects, kids projects, weekly menu plan, ongoing chores and routines, weekly calendar…) I have boards set up for all these types of things, and would love to be able to work down a list of my “Weekly Review”, clicking on links to open the relevant BOARDS in a pop up pane without losing where I am in my Weekly Review process.

🙂

webalstrom

I think this is a great idea. It would be similar to the “bookmarks” or “starred items” that other outliners use to go directly to a specific place or filtered view in the outline. While we nominally have this option with the sidebar list of saved boards and folders, being able to click into on from a link in the outline would make it that much more convenient and powerful.

Jerud

I like this too. When Jay switches to the “everything is actually one big Outline” backend structure that seems like it would open the door for this kind of linking. I think I suggested that once elsewhere.

I have to also add that I would not want this to mean the end of popup Panes, because I think that’s a feature that has a LOT of potential, given a bit more love and attention.

LauraH

Jerud To be very clear - for my use case, Popup panes are exactly where I see this being most useful! So I certainly would NOT want them to go away either!

I love the idea of being able to have a “master list” in my main window and a “pop up list” for whatever sub item I’m focusing on in that moment, and then go back to my “master list”. I have a seriously “squirrel brain”; so if I leave my “main list” to go look at details… I tend to get “lost”. Having my “focus on now” in a pop up, and my “master” in the background would work really, really well for me.

webalstrom

Yes, don’t get rid of the pop up panes! I don’t use them as much as I should, but when I remember they are there, they are great for doing a quick jot (such as an inbox item) and then get back to where you are. The right-click option to “Open in New (outline) Pane” is good for quickly opening up something that you’ll be spending more time in (without it inheriting the filters, which was mentioned here). And the option to save a filter/search as a new pane or board fulfills another need to create new views that will be used on a routine basis in the future. All three are useful and I hope they will stay around.

LauraH

BUMP on this request!
I’m working (again? still?) on setting up some work flows and again thinking, “I wish I could do it this way!”

Jerud

I’m also working (again, still) on my Boards. I’m keeping most of my Tasks in a Main Document, which is great for categorizing and prioritizing all the myriad unrelated tasks. But I have a few large side projects that are just on a different scale from that central backbone. They use totally separate # tags, follow a completely unrelated workflow, and thus have dedicated Boards just for them. I want to “point” to those “breakout Project” Boards from within my main backbone so I can schedule work on those projects interleaved with everything else. Being able to link directly to a whole Board (as LauraH is asking above) would be perfect for that.

Two things that keep breaking the rhythm of otherwise really slick workflows are both also mentioned in this thread, although my perspective is slightly different from what’s been mentioned:

Linking directly to Documents. The way links work makes no sense for me. When I click a link I want to see the link-target in context wherever it is, not zoom into it. The value of a link, to me, is that it takes me to another place entirely – but if I’m zoomed when I arrive, how do I know where I am aside from squinting at the breadcrumbs in the Pane Header? For that matter, how do I even know I’m someplace different? It’s like a flight with a layover. I’ve technically been “in” Chicago dozens of times…but I’ve never left the airport, it didn’t feel like I was someplace else, nothing around me looked any different. It could have been Milwaukee or Houston or Denver, I don’t care. That sounds a lot more like…a mirror…doesn’t it? I’d prefer for linking to take me to the linked-item’s immediate parent and scroll/highlight the OG item (as is done with “go to in all Panes”). Linking to the root of a Doc IS the one place the current behavior does make sense to me, but that’s mostly because there’s no meaningful ‘parent’ of a Document. The current behavior is obviously working for many people, but I’d love an option to do it differently. I do still create links, but every time I try to use one I get hella frustrated. I wish I could just open them in a Popup Pane, at least….
Popup Panes. I have a whole Project in My Legend Beta document for these. But for now I’d be super-duper happy to just get “open in popup pane” in the RMB. I keep wanting a Popup for an item (parent) I’m already looking at, but I have to do a Ctrl+P global search on that item so I can open it in a Popup. That’s…not awesome. This application is different from links (for exactly the reason I describe above) and opening the Popup zoomed-to the clicked item would in fact be my ideal behavior here.

LauraH

Jerud
#1 - I also run into this frustration that the link makes the item the zoomed into item - making the actual zoomed to item unactionable without zooming out. I’m a little torn if I think that should be changed though.
#2 - 100% agree with this. I would love to see “Open in Popup Pane” as an option on the right click menu. There’s lots of times I would right click an item I’m looking at to open it in a popup.

LauraH

Just a nudge to keep this request in the mix. I’m (again / still!) wishing for this feature! 🙂

It seems it might also be in a similar vein to the request here: https://forum.legendapp.com/d/579-how-to-create-a-desktop-shortcut-to-open-legend-in-particular-node ?

Jerud

I think you’ve got a good point about the two requests being potentially linked, and I think the linked feature (opening Legend to a specific location from desktop) would be super slick.

Today for certain tasks that I kick off in Legend, I link out to desktop directories or files that I’ll need for those tasks. Being able to “close the loop” by linking back in to Legend would further solidify how integrated Legend is to my overall filesystem and workflows that can’t happen in-app.

LauraH

Adding another BUMP to this discussion… with @Jay s recent fix of pop up panes, and adding the ability to open one from the right click menu (YAY!!!!!) this becomes even more of a powerful tool.

The ability to link to a BOARD or PANE - and easily open it in a pop up window….

Well that would be just BEAUTIFUL for my workflows of setting out a time blocks for the day… then going to specific lists to action in that time block…

SamMarrocco

Yet another Bump……
I have a slightly different alternative solution to this suggestion.

Having a list (similiar to the Documents or Boards lists in the current view) called Bookmarks would be a very fast method of “jumping from place to place”.

It would be short-sighted to make something like this limited (as searches currently are) to a current document. Therefore I would propose something that would help with LauraH’s need for ’jumping anywhere" and provide more flexibility. I am currently experimenting with a document containing only Links as my “lack of a Bookmarks workaround”. The problem with using Links is that the name of the link inherits the name of the destination for the link.

I would propose a true bookmarks list (like the Documents List). I would stress that it NOT be a popup window, as you would want it to be visible during a lot of back-and-forth navigating.

Knowing that screen real estate can be at a premium and that, for me, the Documents List wastes a lot of vertical space (with a lot of blank space below my few Documents), the Bookmarks window be located below the Document List in the same vertical window. Of course, you would need the preference setting to chose whether the bookmarks were visible by default. Since a Bookmarks window would be specific to a Document and it’s view pane, selecting a Bookmark would cause that document’s view to jump to the Bookmark’s destination item.

As a true bookmark system, unlike links, this would allow you to have an item whose name does NOT necessarily need to be the same as the destination, i.e. “My Current Project” can point to “Document All Projects/Project 17/Sam’s Portion of the Work”.

Also, using a system of UNC-type paths for the Bookmarks items would allow the user to use a simple naming nomenclature to describe the path to the destination for the bookmark, i.e. "//DocumentName//Item Level 1/Item Level 2/…etc

At first I thought a bookmark could be similiar to a Link or Mirror, using something like {{ to initiate the process. But after letting the idea percolate a bit longer, I realized that a Bookmark might best be suited as an entirely new type of Item (i.e. Bullet, Heading, Project, Task, Bookmark). Then it could have it’s own icon (perhaps an arrow?). Like a link, the display of a bookmark could be:

ICON <Blue Text> Sam Current Project <light gray test> —>//All Projects Document//Project 17/Sam’s Todo

At any time, the user could edit the Blue Text without breaking the link in gray. And, of course, there would be a preference setting for whether the display would show the gray destination text for those of use that don’t need to see it. Perhaps it would show when the bookmark is hovered upon.

Bookmarks should also be allowed to be nested, i.e.
Home Bookmarks
Grocery List
Car todo

scaryterry

This feature would be useful to (and regularly used by) me also