Launched: New features to manage your structured data with precision and ease

After a string of performance updates to help your tables load and calculate more quickly (while also optimizing column data to decrease doc size), we dug-in to improve some of the most common table and formula experiences based on your feedback. Here’s what’s new!

Better enumeration of copied objects

When you copy a table or control and choose to duplicate data instead of creating a view, we append the number 2 to your copy. However, if you continued to copy, Coda would continue appending a number 2, so it was not uncommon to have a table named something like “Table 2 2 2.” We’ve updated this behavior so that the number increments by 1 each time, so you can have “Table 2,” “Table 3,” “Table 4,” and so on.

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Discover hidden table names more easily

Hiding a table name is a great way to avoid redundancy or clean-up the visual appearance of a doc. But sometimes you need to reference that name in a formula or quickly confirm the table title to disambiguate from other data. Doing so has historically meant accessing the table options menu or unhiding the table, but now you can simply hover over the 3-dot ‘kebab’ menu next to the top of a table to see its name.

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Live in the Now that you choose

The Now() formula has always returned values down to the second; starting today, you can select whether the output rounds to seconds, minutes, hours, or days.

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Create button, scale, slider & control columns from the Explore panel

In our first step of making the Explore panel a bit more universal, you can create button columns or scales and controls simply by dragging your item into the column you wish to update. Now, instead of clicking through a few menu options on your table, you can drag a “modify row” or “add row” or any other type of button directly into your table.

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Reduce data-entry errors by disabling auto-complete

We’ve toggled auto-complete to “off” in text columns, since we’ve heard that it interfered with typing in them. Do you prefer to auto-complete text in your cells? No sweat — just toggle the "Suggestions” setting back on in your Text column settings.

Easier ‘blank’ selection for People columns

Previously, you had to do some cursor gymnastics to delete a value from a cell in a people column in Coda. Starting today, you can search for “ blank ” to reset a people value just as you’d search for any other name.

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Color scale maximum and minimum values

We’ve loved hearing about the ways you’re using color scales since we launched the feature a few months ago. One point of feedback we’ve heard a few times is that filtered views can make the results feel less intuitive—so, starting today, we’re giving you the power to customize the max and min bounds for your color scales.

To fix that, whenever you open the color scale option for your conditional formats, you can now set a minimum and maximum value for your scale. Any value below the minimum will receive the same color treatment as the minimum value, and any value above the maximum will receive the same treatment as the indicated maximum value.

Thanks for your incredible feedback, and helping us make tables even better for our amazing Community! Be on the lookout for more updates, and some exciting previews at our Block Party event on October 6th.

43 Likes

@Teresa_de_Figueiredo

Could we get the option to set this default at the doc level? Otherwise, those of us who very much depend on auto-complete will now have to manually turn it on for every column where we want it. What about big docs where it is wanted consistently throughout the doc? Does the user now have to manually toggle it to on in every one of those columns?

Ouch.:sweat_smile:

EDIT: For these types of updates, in general, it would be a more programmatic UX if we Users could set the default settings first at the User level, next at the Doc level, and then make granular overrides at the Object level.:grinning:

4 Likes

It’s “Awesome Friday Time” at Coda :partying_face: :raised_hands: !!!

Thank you Dear Codans for all those sweet improvements :partying_face: :raised_hands: !!!

9 Likes

The copied objects feature will be really helpful. Thank you for all of these cool updates today! Happy Friday!

3 Likes

Stacks of quality of life improvements made my (next) week. I can’t say too many of these were on my personal short list but nonetheless, thrilled to see these kinds of things.

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Thanks so much for the feedback @Ander! Do you mind sharing examples of columns you rely on auto-complete for?

2 Likes

@Teresa_de_Figueiredo

Any column that contains common values or variations of common values which are shared by many rows, but which don’t rise to the level of meriting structured Lookup status and also require the flexibility to customize variants.

It’s a powerful technique to leverage auto-complete in this way. It also gets in the way sometimes, so I understand why many users would like to turn it off. But some users may want the default to be that it’s turned on, and they could then override that default when necessary.

The bigger takeaway is making the UX more programmatic for the user, and it seems that the infrastructure is already in place under Account Settings > Document Defaults. There we can set the Timezone default for docs. Why not other Doc properties?

For example, on every single new doc that I create I have to go to Settings > Page Options > Wide, because I never want Auto or Standard. It would be nice to set this just once at the Account level and be done with it.

But that’s just a Doc setting.

What if we could set table and column defaults first at the Account level and next at the Doc level? That would be a huge time saver, because it would empower us to handle all these settings in bulk, one time. And then we could override our own defaults when necessary.

$.02.

4 Likes

@Teresa_de_Figueiredo can you please pass along for a request for a toggle to turn off auto-complete in the duration column?


Example)
2021-08-06 at 02.10PM

  • if the gif :point_up_2: I attempt to input 6 minutes of duration for each of 4 rows
  • when I mouse click on the top 1/2 of the cell, type 6 and keyboard press enter = the desired 6 minutes
  • when I mouse click on the bottom 1/2 of the cell, type 6 and keyboard press enter = the column auto-completes to 60 minutes, which is not desired
5 Likes

What does one call a positive gish gallop?

A Codan gallop?

1 Like

really love the min/max for color scales. so much better now:

I liked setting the min value to a negative number as well, so even the smallest values don’t show as completely white

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@Ander this is super helpful context, thank you for sharing! I definitely hear you, having the ability to change the document properties more broadly than the document level would be really helpful and save a lot of time. I’ve flagged this to the rest of the product and design team and will keep you updated :slight_smile:

Hi @jeo thanks for the context on a toggle to turn off auto-complete in the duration column! I will definitely pass this along to the rest of the product and design team. Thank you!

3 Likes

@Teresa_de_Figueiredo

I personally think that the solution to this problem (which I also reported here), shouldn’t be to only be able to disable the auto-completion, but to disable this behavior of being able to select a suggested value by only hovering the cursor over it (without explicitly clicking on it). To select the suggested value you should click it or hit TAB or one of the arrow keys (up or down, depending of its position in the suggestion list). Otherwise, if you “accidentally” have your mouse cursor over one of the itens in the suggestion list and hit ENTER, you will select the suggested value without meaning to. This still drives me mad about Coda.

A similar problem also happens in the autocomplete for formulas (which I also documented in my previously mentioned post).

2 Likes

:bulb: Tip: You can optimize doc performance by using the level of precision for Now() that you need.

The precision parameters to Now() affect how often the formula is recalculated. For example Now(“hour”) will recalculate once an hour, whereas Now(“second”) will recalculate 3600 times an hour.

9 Likes

Hi, @Teresa_de_Figueiredo. It would be great if you could turn off auto complete in the number column too.

When copying a table or control and duplicating lead enrichment, the numbering system now increments by 1 each time, avoiding confusion with repeated "2"s. You can now hover over the 3-dot ‘kebab’ menu next to the top of a table to see its name without unhiding or accessing the table options menu.
The Now() formula now allows users to select whether the output rounds to seconds, minutes, hours, or days. The Explore panel is more versatile, allowing users to create button columns, scales, and controls by dragging items directly into the desired column. Auto-complete has been turned off in text columns to prevent interference with typing. Users can toggle the “Suggestions” setting back on if desired.

2 Likes