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Old doc, new year: Part IV

How I improved my most-used doc with Coda’s 2022 product improvements.

When I’m not at Coda, I narrate audiobooks and do career coaching, which means I have a lot of projects to manage, expenses to track, invoices to send, and people to contact. For the past two years, I’ve written about how updating my doc for the new year highlighted just how much the product changed in 365 days (

part one⁠

and

part two⁠

and

part three⁠

After the whirlwind of awesome features in 2022, I’m excited to share the next installment in this saga. So here we are again one more time…Old doc, new year: Part IV — A New Doc.

One page to rule them all.

The biggest change I made to my doc this year would not have been possible without the undeniable glory of filter bar. Filtering has always been my favorite Coda building block, and Filter Bar makes my MVP even more powerful.

In the pre-filter bar era, I had a subpage for every category or project, which you can see in the image to the left. I then filtered my All Tasks table based on the project type, which led to 10 pages with 10 different tables. But now, I have a single page I call the Task Dashboard.

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Screenshot 2023-02-02 at 11.09.07 AM.png

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Before filter bar

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Screenshot 2023-02-02 at 11.12.31 AM.png

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After filter bar

When I head to this page, I use the filter bar to find my focus. Whether that’s the type of project, the month, the project name, or a particular client:

I love this set up because it keeps my doc nice and tidy, and gives me so many more options for viewing my tasks. I’m no longer stuck just looking at tasks by type. Now I can mix and match to find exactly what I’m looking for.

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Screenshot 2023-02-02 at 11.13.12 AM.png

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Callouts make dashboards pop.

Last year, I was really excited about the dashboard I built. Between canvas formulas and graphs, I always knew exactly how my sales metrics were performing.

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Screenshot 2023-02-02 at 11.22.58 AM.png

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But now Coda has callouts! With callouts, I know exactly where to look because they draw attention by using background colors and icons. I used the same formulas, but just by putting them inside a Callout, my dashboard is more pleasant to look at while also being more motivating. Because they are so vibrant, my eyes can’t miss them which means I think about my goals and how I’m going to reach them more often.

Before

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After

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Screenshot 2023-02-02 at 11.24.17 AM.png

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Select lists are so easy now!

My tables are FULL of select lists. Statuses, types, products, you name it. Because I knew that we launched a

big update to select lists⁠

, I wanted to try making them from scratch. My mind was blown. In the past, I used a lookup, then applied formatting, then made the connection. In this doc, I just chose select list as the column type then my options and colors. This took me maybe 20 seconds:

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Screenshot 2023-02-02 at 11.29.36 AM.png

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Then, for the attributes that I like to make calculations on (like total revenue per client), I chose the convert to table option.

Progress bars for the win.

One of my favorite Coda hacks used to be using the rectangle formula to create a progress bar:

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Screenshot 2023-02-02 at 11.38.55 AM.png

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Well, the Coda engineers gave me something way better:the progress bar. And I use it every change I can! Not only is the progress bar more visually appealing with its rounded corners and bright colors, but it’s much faster to set up. I also love that it shows the total automatically.

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Screenshot 2023-02-02 at 11.43.51 AM.png

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Screenshot 2023-02-02 at 11.47.47 AM.png

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This is how you remind me.

One of my new goals this year was to be more proactive about staying in touch with clients without spending my whole day in an email inbox. I wanted to turn my post it note reminders and email triage into something less stressful. Coda was the natural fit to help out. Because of the new editor, and page layout feature, I could put my card views side by side for quickly triaging who needed my attention. I now have three reminder types on my home page of the doc:

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Screenshot 2023-02-02 at 11.53.44 AM.png

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The orange and blue cards show up automatically. I have a date column in those tables where I can place my “next contact” date. These card views just filter that table to show me everything that needs my attention this week.

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Screenshot 2023-02-02 at 11.56.38 AM.png

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That pink card? Yeah, it’s populated by a form on my website so I get all the information I need before reaching out to a new prospect.

The invisible hero.

There was one feature launch that impacted my entire doc, but it’s invisible. This year the Coda engineers (my husband included!) finished their work of rebuilding the entire Coda editor from scratch. So even though I couldn’t point to the feature, all of my typing was faster and slicker. And all of those side by side cards and callouts? Those wouldn’t have been possible without the brand new editor.

Now what?

These features are only the tip of the iceberg of the more than 80 launches from 2022. Think there might be a building block you’re missing? Check out all the updates here <LINK

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