At Coda we are always looking at posts from our community for ways to improve the product. We’ve received some feedback on how team members occasionally make unintended changes to your docs. We identified some of the top ways these mistakes are made and improved the UX to prevent them. Here’s what we did:
1. Harder to accidentally edit formulas
Previously, clicking into any cell in a formula column would open up the formula builder for editing which often resulted in unintended edits. Now, to open the formula builder, you can (1) click on the formula icon next to the column name, (2) click the message at the bottom after double-clicking the cell to edit the formula, or (3) select any cell in the column and type ‘=’ to pull up the formula builder.
2. Option to disable quick adding of select lists/lookup items
Currently it’s easy to add additional options to a select list or lookup format. You just type the new value into the cell and hit enter twice. We’ve now added the option to disable quick adding when you want to make it harder for your teammates to accidentally add new options to your list:
3. More obvious entry point to customize item layouts
We used to have a pencil on the top right corner of a details view to edit the layout. Some users mistook this as the entry point to edit values and accidentally edited the layout. We moved this entry point into the settings menu and added a label that better explains what’s being edited:
4. Link to source table
Since the details view of a row can be opened in many ways, such as from a row reference in a section or from a lookup column in another table, we heard that users were accidentally editing records without realizing how they impacted the rest of the doc. To make the row context more obvious, we added the source table name and a link to the table in the detailed row view:
5. Easier to view & edit lookup details
We also received feedback that row references were sometimes too hard to navigate. Previously, when you hovered over a lookup reference, you would see a card with a link at the bottom to view or edit the full row. We moved that link from the bottom to the top of the card to make it easier to access. A simple but useful update:
Additional permissions (
TEASER )
In addition to this feedback, we’ve had many requests from the Community to add restrictions on actions like editing section text, modifying tables or views, adding columns, etc. We are actively working on more granular permissions, so stay tuned for some exciting announcements in the next month!
Hope you enjoy the new updates.
-TJ
Product designer @coda
