We’ve made a few UX improvements to the left sidebar. As you scroll in the sidebar, the current category and folder stay at the top of the sidebar as you scroll.
We’ve also updated the icons so they have better contrast and more differentiated colors.
We updated the table controls so they no longer hijack the right-click menu. That way you can still use spell check, copy/paste, and any other right-click menu items.
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You now have the ability to resize the embeds you add in the editor.
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You can now navigate to uncategorized pages in both the sidebar and dashboard.
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Next week when you log into your Tettra account, you’ll notice some changes to the app navigation. We hope you’ll find that moving around your account with this new nav will be much quicker. We also think it will be easier for new Tettra users to find their way around the app and learn what they can do with Tettra.
We know it can be frustrating to have the tools you use every day change suddenly, so I wanted to take some time to give you a heads up and let you know why we’re doing it. I think you’ll like what you see.
There are a few problems with our current app navigation that we can fix to improve the overall quality of the app. Quality is a big goal for us, so I think it’s worth making these changes for the following reasons.
Many of the actions in the app take multiple page loads to accomplish. For example, navigating from one page to another page in a different category takes 2-3 page loads. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but due to some page load speed challenges, it can feel really clunky. We think making more of the app accessible from anywhere will help alleviate some of that clunkiness.
When we did the current app designs for Tettra, we were one of the first modern knowledge management apps, so it was more of a green field. In the 2 years since then, expectations around what an app like ours should look and feel like have evolved a lot. I think we can make changes to be more in line with what a “modern” wiki feels like.
Right now the newest and most useful functionality of Tettra is hard to find (suggestions, templates, etc.). We want to help new users see what the app can do by putting all the different objects front and center.
In this new design you’ll see:
We’re going to continue to improve this new navigation over time, including an updated dashboard view and more investments in app speed. Keep an eye out for these changes later next week. We hope you’ll like the changes. Let us know if there’s anything we can help you with in the meantime.
As one of our favorite Tettra customers once said,
“Documentation is one of the last things my team thinks of doing, but when something goes wrong, it’s the first thing they look for.”
I couldn’t agree more. Documentation – whether it’s your wifi password, a standard operating procedure, or the data behind a new product feature – is a lot like saving for retirement. It might not be the first thing you think of each day, but you sure are glad it’s there when you need it.
If documentation is so valuable, why do so many people shy away? It often comes down to the fact that many teams see documentation as added work. These teams think that they can move faster if they don’t document anything. I imagine some of them think they’re being more efficient…after all, they’re saving all that time, right?
While it may be true that a team saves time by not writing down a common process, what happens when a new person joins the team? Someone has to spend time explaining the process. Now repeat this five more times when five other people join the team. All of this wasted time is death by a thousand paper cuts. Rather than spending ten minutes writing something down, the team repeats itself over and over again.
This isn’t even accounting for the costs of context switching. Interruptions cost us far more time and efficiency than we realize. It takes the average person 23 minutes to get back into the flow of what he or she was doing before an interruption. This means that each time someone has a “quick question”, they’re costing you the five minutes you spend answering, along with another 23 minutes. Just think of the impact of all of those supposedly “quick questions”.
Furthermore, what happens if a team member goes on vacation or worse when someone quits with short notice? Other people on the team are left to pick up the pieces and try to figure out the process with zero guidance.
So while it may feel tough to prioritize the ten minutes it takes to write something down, you pay for this shortcut in the long run. Your team risks hemorrhaging time and efficiency without proper documentation. Had you written it down the first time, image how much time and frustration might have been saved.
Hopefully, the value of good documentation resonates with the more organized people out there. (You know who you are; you probably do invest in your retirement, and you likely have a very neat tee shirt drawer or beautiful bookshelves.)
But still, we’re only human. Unless something is dead-simple, we’re prone to forget or procrastinate. Even the most organized among us fails to document things.
Besides, there are usually some disorganized people on every team, so documentation needs to be accessible and attainable to all. How do we make documentation so easy that it won’t even feel like work? Can we make it feel like part of our workflows, rather than like something extra we need to do? Is it possible to make documentation appealing to both the organized and disorganized factions?
This is where our new workflows come in. They make it faster than ever to write down the info your team needs. With our new Automated Documentation, you can easily log important knowledge about how you operate.
To build them, we’ve teamed up with one of the best in the biz, Zapier. Zapier is the glue that lets you build workflows with the over 1,000 apps on their platform. Whether you use Google Docs, GitHub, Trello, or email, you can pull info from these 1000+ tools and document it in Tettra. The best part is that once you set up some common workflows, your documentation will happen automatically.
Here are some examples of workflows you could create with Zapier:
The possibilities are nearly endless. Whether you’re an engineer, a product manager, a CEO, or project manager, Zapier likely has integrations for many of the tools you use.
From now on, there’s no need to shy away from good documentation. With Tettra and Zapier, it nearly writes itself.
We know that few things can feel as frustrating as losing documentation you’ve written. Tettra’s traffic cop helps ensure that never happens. We lock all published pages when two people try to edit the same page at the same time. No more lost work, and no more frustration with the other people on your team! Winning all around.
If you have open edits on a page, and a co-worker tries to edit that same page, we’ll alert them. Your colleague will see a message that you have unsaved changes and will be prompted to send you a message.
You’ll have the option to continue editing or message the other person making changes to the page. For those teams using the Slack integration, you can opt to go directly to a private chat with your teammate in Slack.
If you don’t use Slack, you’ll see an option to email your colleague. By selecting this option, you’ll be taken to a new message in your email client.
If you want to learn more about Tettra’s traffic cop , take a look at our support page documentation. Note that this warning will appear for any unsaved changes to a published Tettra page, ie not just pages that are actively being edited within an open window or tab on your co-worker’s browser.
For instance, let’s say someone on your team started making edits a few days ago and closed the window without publishing the changes. Those edits are retained in their drafts in case your colleague closed the window unintentionally. Therefore, you would still see this warning about your teammate’s edits, even though he or she might not realize she has unpublished changes.
Hopefully, this make for a smoother process when editing your Tettra pages and working with your team. We welcome any feedback you have about this feature or about how we can make life easier for your team, generally.
