Can I link a note to multiple projects?

Hi,
can I link a note to multiple projects?

Thanks!

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No, a note is in a single project. But you can make links to that note from other notes, and you can also make saved searches where the note could appear. Eg. you could add a specific tag to that note and other notes you want to group, and then search for that tag. Save that search, and you have an overview that will always show notes with that tag.

Hope that helps!
Drew

+1 to the idea of allowing for a note to be added to multiple projects at once

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Well, @Gestaltist, we all have our preferences. I for one disagree. So may I have a -1?

Pro primo, what @drewmccormack wrote is sure good enough for me, that’s what I do “on instinct”.

Pro secundo, if I did things that way, my Agenda document structure would be cluttered and, ultimately, ruined. Links and tags feels like the natural way to bring the additional structure you look for.

Pro tertio, the developers must have time to focus on the things that propel Agenda forward, and having too much “special features” may lead to a broad but shallow system rather than a narrow but deep one (I’d prefer the latter). This community is flooded by requests, of which many merely amounts to alternate ways of doing already possible things. Of course, everyone has the right to express their wishes, I wouldn’t want to restrict that, mind you. But this is I, expressing my opinion. And I fear Agenda turning into a less coherent note taking “machine” if the developers (hard working guys, as I understand it) don’t have time to bring it forward whilst instead reinventing the wheel over and over. We users must see what in the long run is efficient and promotes a good usability. A “fits all” system is impossible to achieve. A system with ten new ways to do what there already is an efficient way to do will undoubtedly become hard to use, for natural system development reasons. This is fundamental, and I felt the necessity to emphasise it.

That said, again I want to note that the discussions in the forum are important, and a good way to give ideas to the developers. But in the end, the final word must be theirs, and we must let them work in (relative) peace to build a dream that we all can share reasonably much. My personal view (also as a former systems developer) is that they have the overview over the project at large, and their own vision, to boot, and that we must accept their decisions and not, as sometimes seems to be the case, keep nagging indefinitely to get our favourite feature, well, featured.

I hope I didn’t sound offensive; that was—I must emphasise—not my intention. I just wanted to add another perspective to the feature discussions. Maybe it should have appeared in a more general place, but I just happened to write it here and now.

Exactly, the final word is theirs which is why we can each express what we would ideally want, and they can take all that and filter it through their vision. Stating the obvious makes you sound condescending.

Then maybe you shouldn’t have used words like “nagging” or implied that implementing an idea you disagree with would make the system incoherent.

Also, I don’t think “pro primo” etc. is correct Latin and it did add to the impression of a condescending tone.

Sorry that you interpreted it that way, my apologies. But my experience is that some people actually do nag when they don’t get their ideas approved. I didn’t mean here in this discussion, but at other places in the community discussions.

The same way, building too complex systems intoduces risks for lessened coherence, and this note was also meant as a general comment, not on this particular subject. It was more in the line of “if taken too far”. I realise more and more that these comments of mine should have been stated elsewhere, and maybe with an even more humble tone (I, factually, thought that my explanations and comments would give it a general and important flavour without sounding bad). Just wanted to add this, in my mind important, perspective without pointing out something, or someone, in particular. Sorry that you interpreted it as if I was talking of your request. I wasn’t. I didn’t try to imply anything like what you read into it. Actually, I wanted to address the sad fact that some people get fairly aggressive when their requests are not given the attention they think they deserve. And then, instead of accepting, they keep “nagging” (I stick to that word for continuity) to, it seems, by sheer persistence force their ideas to get implemented. That seems more negative than positive for the air and the constructive mood in the discussions, hence I’d like to put the light on this. I did not target neither you nor the idea as such (but I gave my very personal reaction to it), because, as I said, we all have our preferences and our visions of what a good system means. I wanted a moderate tone and discussion level where it is needed (and it was a complete coincidence that this observation landed here), and obviously failed utterly.

Anyone that disliked my post, please accept my sincerest apologies for expressing my thoughts in a manner that you found disturbing and annoying.

No worries. I can struggle with finding the right tone too. Rule of thumb: if you feel the need to explain you didn’t mean to be rude, you surely do sound rude and should rewrite the comment :wink:

No hard feelings here.

First of all, thanks for these view points, they always help to shape our opinion, whether your in favour or against.

Second, I really want to see I appreciate how you resolved the discussion and respected each others opinion in the end, I’ve seen many such discussions spiral out of control with increasingly heated and opposing arguments. You’ve given a nice example that this isn’t necessary :ok_hand:

Finally, regarding the original request, allowing notes to be part of multiple projects. It’s a bit of a foundational decision, both from a mental modal as well as (or better, resulting in) implementation details. We’ve gone with the File <-> Folder approach where a note is really part of a project, enforcing a strict project -> note hierarchy, as opposed to for instance how a photo in the Photos app can belong to multiple albums or songs in Music can belong to multiple playlists.

Switching from one model to the other just raises complexity a lot, as now a lot of both UI and technical assumptions are no longer necessarily true. For this reason we don’t feel it’s something we should take on with high priority as other things are just more important. For example, improved search and overviews can diminish the need for this in the first place.

Which also brings me to what’s probably the real solution, that is that notes can only belong to a single project, but that would be able to create “playlists” like in Music, i.e. manual overviews in which you can add notes from any project together, and of which you could create as many as you’d want. We feel this would be a model that would fit better within the existing context. Now to not create unrealistic expectations, while we have it on the list of things we’d like to do, it’s not something to expect in the immediate near future, other things are higher up on the list I’m afraid. Hope that gives some further insights on where we stand in this discussion.

Thanks a lot for giving us a look into your vision. What you’re saying makes absolute sense to me. Let me also say that the way you interact with us here played no small part in my decision to pay for Premium. I really appreciate the engagement and the transparency.

This would be fully sufficient for my uses, TBH. It reminds me of KeepIt and its bundles. I believe it’s the same logic: they work with folders and files but wanted to provide the ability to band things together as needed.

To give one example: I have a few important stakeholders I regularly talk to - and we typically talk through multiple projects. Having such “bundles” I could add notes to so I have all the topics in one place for our next conversation would be awesome. (Right now, I create a note linked to the next call and link existing notes from there but it’s tedious. For one, I cannot open that note in a new window yet so it’s a lot of back-and-forth, and I also lose the core strength of Agenda which is seeing the full notes while being in a view.)

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