I try not to mess with my Notion dashboard too much or I end up spending more time building than being productive, but I always appreciate your videos for staying up to date on the latest Notion features in case I see something I want to add. Thanks for another great video!
That's the right move IMO! I think it makes the most sense to bring a feature in once you feel pain in your workflow and realize the feature could alleviate it. In the past, I've been very guilty of trying to invent reasons to use features. Now I test them thoroughly since I cover them here, but beyond that I'm pretty focused on our team's goals and don't try to bring in new features without good reason.
Definitely agree about not being able to increment a number property. One of my biggest use cases for these would be keeping track of something like how many cups of water I have in a day. I currently have a button inside each of my "day" pages that, when clicked, adds a page to a separate database called "Water", which relates back to the day so I can count the related entries. While this does make it so I can click a button and it counts up my water for the day, it's still a massive workaround that requires an entirely separate database for no reason. I would love to see buttons be able to increment number properties, either by 1 or by a custom amount. Great video, wasn't expecting this update!
For the multi-stage button, I would imagine a button as 'Next Step' and an if-then statement to show each stage as it progresses (if already 'Editing', then 'Review') For the dates, it might be a bit more complicated. A working solution could be date properties as a formula but that's a lot for this use case I feel. Thanks for the video! :)
I can definetely see what you mean about the date function in the database buttons feature. That makes it hard to make changes to a specific time or day. And honestly being person who uses notion for my personal things and not work, I find it hard to see how I can implement many of these new features that notion has made.
Hard agree on all of these limitations - the bare minimum I need is to set prop1 = prop2 and then at least I could use my own formula to determine what the next value should be. Webhooks would also be very useful but at least you can monitor for database changes in the API and use that as a trigger.
Is your database locked? support.thomasjfrank.com/customizing-your-templates/78ZReSibJg7dV9R7ouqQrS/how-to-unlock-notion-databases/muCk11PNirQRjH5xaQRs9V
Agree on setting date properties as dynamic values - this would unlock a big number of possibilities for task management. Deferring, snoozing, recurring, bringing forward, do today, etc. Also, being able to have "move to" as a step option would be useful, for example in triage-like workflows such as processing an inbox of captured items.
@@ThomasFrankExplains Question about help making an addition to your Gap Formula (love it btw) due to having to work around notions lack of relative date options (the reason being that I can then have a 'relative date' calendar view that will show all my own relative due dates in Notion Calendar). As notion only has two relative date options for buttons (Now and Today) I made 4 database buttons: Due Today, Due 3-Days, Due 7-Days and Complete -- using a Next Review Date forumula and a number property for Review Frequency (the review frequencies being set to 0, 3, 7). I have essentially modified the Gap formula to work off a Last Review Date and Next Review Date (for relative due date). My question is this: I have a date property called Date Finshed, which is filled in with a date once the Complete Database button is hit. Is there a way to add an option to the Gap Formula that once the Date Finished has been filled in the Gap property can now say "Finished"
Oh man, so spot on re wishlist! This was EXACTLY my first thought when I saw this feature... that it'd be so great to say "copy the date in the Recur field" or "set the date to 1 week ahead" or whatnot.
Ha, if only votes were the only thing that mattered for bugs and features! 😅 Now that I'm building an app with my team, we're uncomfortably aware of how some bugs can be way more time-consuming and difficult to fix than others - and it's not always obvious which ones they'll be
@@ThomasFrankExplains couldn't be more true. I've been working in development too. Though eliminating bugs will improve quality of life and often will eradicate the possibility for future bugs building onto that certain bug. The fewer things that go wrong on a lower lever, the fewer things will go wrong on the coming levels. The leaner and cleaner your software, the easier to improve it.
I agree that the ability to set dynamic values to date properties would be great, especially for recurring tasks. But rather than having Notion look at a "Next Due Date" field, why not have the button allow us to change the date to "Tomorrow", or "Next Week", or "Next Month", etc.? Notion already offers "Now" and "Today", so let's just add "Tomorrow", etc. No need for an additional "Next Due Date" property with a formula. Makes sense? Great video! Thanks!
thanks for the video. i was about to be excited about this feature but i think it's limitations make it a bit useless for me right now. hopefully they implement your suggestions!
Cool, but no, I'm not going back to Notion for todo. Notion is too clumsy and I don't like the phone client. I'd rather write myself a todo service for my own needs, instead of building it using notion. I still use this service, but only for brainstorming and long drafts.
Hello, Thank you for the video. Do you think we can fill the key field of the table with the button using a formula ? Like updating the field with a unique key.
I'm a bit late to this but definitely seconding the wishlist! I was hoping to move my time tracking system over to buttons (so I don't have to use templates to add time tracking to every task page), but I can't fill in calendar dates on other databases to 'now' so I'll have to stick to templates for now. I would love to have the ability to move through statuses on other databases so much as it would allow me to keep my public-facing to do list (I'm a freelance artist so I keep my queue public but don't want to show client or project info) in sync with my private one easily.
It would be great if the button for status can switch/change between different status types (from not started, to doing, finished; for example). Now you can link only one type and I don’t want to create two buttons for doing and one for finished.
how do you use notion when theres no internet connection? it failed me in several several situations where i couldnt access my knowledge because there was no signal. no AI and fancy buttons could help me then. the app itself is cool but the lack of an offline mode outweighs the pros for me.
I tried using the button feature, but I scrapped it when I noticed that a message pops up on my phone screen every time I tap the button....something to the effect that the automation was successfully executed. I'd prefer something that only shows up if it *doesn't* execute properly. This appears to only be an option on phone/tablets.
Anyone know how to fix this problem : See the tab on the database 'Table +" when i add that to create another tab on my database it just copies all the data over to the new tab. When i change information in that tab it changes information in every single tab. How can i have multiple tabs with different information ?
I am struggling to get the same button to toggled a select or even text field to an On/Off property. I've seen it done on another template... is this a paid feature?
The two biggest things I've noticed with notion in my first week of use is lacking offline availability and the lack of a task manger view for databases to make having toggled to do lists be more user friendly to use on both mobile and desktop. I appreciate your tutorials and free templates that have gotten me started building my second brain. I integrated your video template with the para dashboard, updated the DB templates to my liking and added an inventory system to keep track of my belongings!
I agree. I think when it comes to robust task management, Notion is not good enough for it so I use actual to-do apps instead (love TickTick). I use Notion for my simple project and collections management cause no other software does (especially the latter) as well as it does.
What you’ll come to learn is that Notion purposely lags updates to build community participation. Then when they finally release tiny improvements everyone is ecstatic. (I’ve been using Notion for several years and they FINALLY made the calendar somewhat useful very recently). Don’t try to build the structure first. Start with data that is immediately relevant and wait for better updates :)
If they update the dates more dynamically it would remove the need to automate recurring tasks externally. That's the first thing I was looking for with that button and was stumped when I found they don't do anything besides today.
Hey Thomas, I got the PipeDream Recurring automation you set up for Ultimate Task and Ultimate brain, however it is bugged: every time it executes, it changes the formula of the Type such that every recurring task, after being delayed, becomes a non-recurrent one.. I sent you an email. Thanks!!
I wish I could see use cases of how you actually use buttons in your notion business. Because these tutorials are great but the hypothetical examples sometimes are not that interesting or relevant. But seeing how you use these features in your business in actual scenarios would be super valuable to see. I have often desired this from your videos but never voiced it until now.
Is this rolling out slowly? I don't have the feature on my desktop app but I do see it on the Web. Looks amazing, I'm really excited to put it to youse!
I don't see the use of this button honestly, if I'm gonna have a button change other properties in my database, i would just use the automation feature to have those parameters changed after a status change or something like that (especially since it isn't able to be seen by api integrations). Can someone help me see relevant use cases for this that aren't completely managable via the automations already in place?
The webhook would be incredible, especially if it would send data in the url. The relative date would be really helpful. It would be awesome to be able to put "3 days from now" in the field and have that be dynamically calculated when the button was clicked.
Another great video. Always appreciate your suggestions for future implementation. It's just as important to know what these things CAN'T do yet so we don't spend hours of time thinking or searching. Appreciate your videos always!
Awesome video, super excited to use database buttons! 100% will test out triggering formulas with them 😄 We set up an automation so that when something is set to a certain status it updates a date field. Eg: we change the status to "Done" and it updates the "Completed by" field to the time and date it is now. We're also using this to track project approved date, kickoff date, sign off date, etc. You don't need separate buttons for every stage, you can just use the status property to trigger the automations. I will caveat this also depends on if you want a matching status for all the things you want to track the date for. It's possible someone might want to keep it simple for the main users using the status property, and keep something like "signed off" or "approved" for the few with that responsibility to do so. There's a million ways to solve the same problem in notion and I think that's what makes it so fun to use. What I would love is for an automation or button to update the start and end dates separately in the same field. Aka when status is set to "In progress" it sets the start date, and when it's "Done" it adds the end date
Nice. Your last feature request sounds like it could be the same as your first: instead of incrementing a number property you're incrementing the status property. Since it internally stores an order for the status I imagine that would not be too different.
I tried this feature too and found something other that could be done by Notion team. I have database with my learning content and I would like to add button, which add new task to my tasks database with name of the clicked lesson. Using other items properties as values of the button action would be really nice.
Amazing content as always and so fast! One thing I would absolutely love from Notion (especially with the latest release of Notion Calendar) is the ability for buttons to set the start time and end time of a single property by clicking buttons. Having “Now” is great but we should be able to create a range rather than using 2 properties and a formula to show the range on the calendar that you don’t have the ability to adjust.
This is a neat new feature! Up to this point, for tasks I marked as Done, I had to use a Make automation in order to set the Done Date to the Last Edited Time. Now a Notion button can do the same thing by setting the Done Date to Now, as shown in your Task Tracker example.
Add it anywhere you like! This feature doesn't immediately lend itself to an obvious product update in our templates, but you can easily add it if it supports something you're doing. Just remember to unlock your database so you can add the new property: support.thomasjfrank.com/customizing-your-templates/78ZReSibJg7dV9R7ouqQrS/how-to-unlock-notion-databases/muCk11PNirQRjH5xaQRs9V
@@ThomasFrankExplains I tried with "edit pages in", but "button property" is non-editable I guess (the option to edit did not present). I assume it might be able to do it with "⚡automations" feature but I cannot confirm.
Notion is Apple. Other platforms (Android) have the functionality months or years beforehand and then ppl go googoogaga when Ap... Notion catches up. Coda's had buttons for +counts fingers+ a really long time w/ tons more functionality. Well made video though, thanks
Regarding your request for Notion to automatically update the next Due field automatically (around 8:40), I believe I have a more straightforward solution than your current workaround. For example, in a Houseplant Tracker I made, I use the following three properties: "Last Watered" (date); "Watering Frequency (days)" (number); and "Water Next, potentially" (formula: dateAdd(prop("Last Watered"), prop("Watering Frequency (days)"), "days"). Now, the rest of the work is done with a filter rule: where "Water Next, potentially" start date is on or before today. That's it! This way I can also have a variable number of days between each entry rather than applying that same number of days to all entries. Hope this helps! Your videos always teach me so much. I really appreciate your content!
I don't believe that method would work for recurring tasks, but it seems perfect for your use case! If I'm reading this correctly, there's a key difference: The date you need to filter by is "Water Next", which is determined by "Last Watered". And crucially, "Last Watered" can always be set to today's date when you click the button - which we can do, since "Today" is one of the dynamic date options we have. But with recurring tasks, we need to filter by the Due Date, and that date needs to be set to whatever is displayed in the Next Due property. What we're missing is the ability to automatically grab that Next Due date and set Due to that date.
Appreciate the short videos on new features! Quick and to the point with some great ideas and critiques for the Notion team. 👍 Question, does anyone have a workaround to quickly key in dates and times in the date field of databases? Clicking that mini-calendar and turning toggles for time is painful. 😢Thanks for the video Thomas and team - already added to my dashboard 🎉🎉
I feel you on those dates and times! For dates, you can type with abbreviated month names, which does speed things up. E.g. "Jan 23 24" will work. Dragging dates around in Notion Calendar is probably the best way to add times and end dates/times. Hoping they'll improve the in-app datetime picker soon!
Tomas, About the webhook part, for now you could create a webhook trigger table and with the button create a new page in that table. In the trigger table you add a automation that would call a webhook. You can't do anything with the result but it is a start.
If I'm understanding correctly, that still requires API polling by an outside application. And in that case, we don't even need to create new rows; you can create a button that even just changes a prop on an existing page. Your app can poll the DB for recently updated pages that meet a criteria and operate on them. If you can poll quickly enough, this works decently well. But I'd still love to have a near-instant "click button, thing happens", which we can't do with API polling.
You can find it in this example template! thomasfrank.notion.site/Advanced-Recurring-Task-Dates-2023-484ab7302d8e43e29d2ca722b287c5e5?pvs=4 It's a feature that's built into all our task templates, including Ultimate Tasks (free) and Ultimate Brain (paid, includes everything from Ultimate Tasks, incorporated into a full productivity system). We also provide a Pipedream script to automate them. We've done as much as possible to make recurring tasks fully work in Notion - but still, I'd like to see them fully implemented in the product itself!
a great idea and a request is to have different buttons for a single row that i can choose from, for example, we can have a completed button, an in progress button and other possibilities to choose from. that would be huge
It seems a bit more flexible than that. Now we have three types of in-app automations: - Button blocks: Buttons outside of databases that can create pages, add blocks to the current page, or automate things in databases (but you have to target page(s) through filters). - Database automations: These automatically run when your trigger condition is met anywhere in the database or view where you've set them up. This feature is also only on paid plans. - Database buttons: Very similar to button blocks, but they show on every page of the database, and have the added benefit of being able to affect properties of the page you click them on.
I try not to mess with my Notion dashboard too much or I end up spending more time building than being productive, but I always appreciate your videos for staying up to date on the latest Notion features in case I see something I want to add. Thanks for another great video!
That's the right move IMO! I think it makes the most sense to bring a feature in once you feel pain in your workflow and realize the feature could alleviate it.
In the past, I've been very guilty of trying to invent reasons to use features. Now I test them thoroughly since I cover them here, but beyond that I'm pretty focused on our team's goals and don't try to bring in new features without good reason.
I feel the same pain! I love to build notion pages but its not really an income for me so its not very producitve
Definitely agree about not being able to increment a number property. One of my biggest use cases for these would be keeping track of something like how many cups of water I have in a day. I currently have a button inside each of my "day" pages that, when clicked, adds a page to a separate database called "Water", which relates back to the day so I can count the related entries. While this does make it so I can click a button and it counts up my water for the day, it's still a massive workaround that requires an entirely separate database for no reason. I would love to see buttons be able to increment number properties, either by 1 or by a custom amount.
Great video, wasn't expecting this update!
Dude, i love you
Was scratching my head trying to think of a workaround within a similar problem and you just came with this banger of a solution
For the multi-stage button, I would imagine a button as 'Next Step' and an if-then statement to show each stage as it progresses (if already 'Editing', then 'Review')
For the dates, it might be a bit more complicated. A working solution could be date properties as a formula but that's a lot for this use case I feel.
Thanks for the video! :)
I can definetely see what you mean about the date function in the database buttons feature. That makes it hard to make changes to a specific time or day. And honestly being person who uses notion for my personal things and not work, I find it hard to see how I can implement many of these new features that notion has made.
Thank you for using your influence to put the pressure on Notion in a constructive and respectful manner. They clearly need it..
Fantastic review as always Thomas! Will be using this ASAP.
Without webhooks, buttons are barely beneficial
Hard agree on all of these limitations - the bare minimum I need is to set prop1 = prop2 and then at least I could use my own formula to determine what the next value should be. Webhooks would also be very useful but at least you can monitor for database changes in the API and use that as a trigger.
02:40 I dont get the option for "Edit Property" when I try to do the same thing. Already tried with browser version as well. Any ideas?
Is your database locked? support.thomasjfrank.com/customizing-your-templates/78ZReSibJg7dV9R7ouqQrS/how-to-unlock-notion-databases/muCk11PNirQRjH5xaQRs9V
Hey Thomas, I found out it's because I didn't have the Automation Subscription. That leaves only the basic functions like "Add Page"
Agree on setting date properties as dynamic values - this would unlock a big number of possibilities for task management. Deferring, snoozing, recurring, bringing forward, do today, etc. Also, being able to have "move to" as a step option would be useful, for example in triage-like workflows such as processing an inbox of captured items.
Hey! Can you share the completion date property template? it seems very helpful!
Sure thing! thomasfrank.notion.site/Completion-Date-Template-2688429792c4422f904d1b9958db0870?pvs=4
Thank you so much for the prompt reply :D
Love your content!@@ThomasFrankExplains
@@ThomasFrankExplains Question about help making an addition to your Gap Formula (love it btw) due to having to work around notions lack of relative date options (the reason being that I can then have a 'relative date' calendar view that will show all my own relative due dates in Notion Calendar). As notion only has two relative date options for buttons (Now and Today) I made 4 database buttons: Due Today, Due 3-Days, Due 7-Days and Complete -- using a Next Review Date forumula and a number property for Review Frequency (the review frequencies being set to 0, 3, 7). I have essentially modified the Gap formula to work off a Last Review Date and Next Review Date (for relative due date).
My question is this: I have a date property called Date Finshed, which is filled in with a date once the Complete Database button is hit. Is there a way to add an option to the Gap Formula that once the Date Finished has been filled in the Gap property can now say "Finished"
Yes DYNAMIC DATE with Natural language processing (like Todoist date picker) would be so amazing! Just two options of Now and Today is sad story :(
Oh man, so spot on re wishlist! This was EXACTLY my first thought when I saw this feature... that it'd be so great to say "copy the date in the Recur field" or "set the date to 1 week ahead" or whatnot.
Let's create a global database with all Notion bugs and vote on which to fix first. How does that sound?
Thanks for updating us Thomas!
Ha, if only votes were the only thing that mattered for bugs and features! 😅
Now that I'm building an app with my team, we're uncomfortably aware of how some bugs can be way more time-consuming and difficult to fix than others - and it's not always obvious which ones they'll be
@@ThomasFrankExplains couldn't be more true. I've been working in development too. Though eliminating bugs will improve quality of life and often will eradicate the possibility for future bugs building onto that certain bug.
The fewer things that go wrong on a lower lever, the fewer things will go wrong on the coming levels. The leaner and cleaner your software, the easier to improve it.
is there a transposed table where the rows are columns? I just want a list of properties without horizontal scroll
If you open any page in a database, you'll see all the properties as a list! But there's no option to list them elsewhere.
This sadly appears to be much more limited in the free version of Notion than the video seems to suggest. 😞
I really hope there's dynamic dates and granular permissions in a near future... please Notion 🙃
I agree that the ability to set dynamic values to date properties would be great, especially for recurring tasks. But rather than having Notion look at a "Next Due Date" field, why not have the button allow us to change the date to "Tomorrow", or "Next Week", or "Next Month", etc.? Notion already offers "Now" and "Today", so let's just add "Tomorrow", etc. No need for an additional "Next Due Date" property with a formula. Makes sense? Great video! Thanks!
thanks for the video. i was about to be excited about this feature but i think it's limitations make it a bit useless for me right now. hopefully they implement your suggestions!
Cool, but no, I'm not going back to Notion for todo. Notion is too clumsy and I don't like the phone client. I'd rather write myself a todo service for my own needs, instead of building it using notion. I still use this service, but only for brainstorming and long drafts.
Hello, Thank you for the video. Do you think we can fill the key field of the table with the button using a formula ? Like updating the field with a unique key.
I'm a bit late to this but definitely seconding the wishlist! I was hoping to move my time tracking system over to buttons (so I don't have to use templates to add time tracking to every task page), but I can't fill in calendar dates on other databases to 'now' so I'll have to stick to templates for now.
I would love to have the ability to move through statuses on other databases so much as it would allow me to keep my public-facing to do list (I'm a freelance artist so I keep my queue public but don't want to show client or project info) in sync with my private one easily.
Why in Dates I cant see set Property to Now and Today? Sometimes I cant find the "This Page" option even I follow step by step the videos. 🤨
It would be great if the button for status can switch/change between different status types (from not started, to doing, finished; for example). Now you can link only one type and I don’t want to create two buttons for doing and one for finished.
how do you use notion when theres no internet connection? it failed me in several several situations where i couldnt access my knowledge because there was no signal. no AI and fancy buttons could help me then. the app itself is cool but the lack of an offline mode outweighs the pros for me.
I tried using the button feature, but I scrapped it when I noticed that a message pops up on my phone screen every time I tap the button....something to the effect that the automation was successfully executed. I'd prefer something that only shows up if it *doesn't* execute properly. This appears to only be an option on phone/tablets.
"Here I created a SLIGHTLY more complicated notion formula."
yeah right.
Anyone know how to fix this problem : See the tab on the database 'Table +" when i add that to create another tab on my database it just copies all the data over to the new tab. When i change information in that tab it changes information in every single tab. How can i have multiple tabs with different information ?
The move to next status is possible if you use buttons (with filters), formula, status, and relation property (Limit to 1)
I am struggling to get the same button to toggled a select or even text field to an On/Off property. I've seen it done on another template... is this a paid feature?
What tools are you using here to register mouse clicks and keyboard key downs? super smooth
Such a missed opportunity with not being able to set columns to values in other columns of the same page
I want to use buttons to move page to another database, but that's not possible now, right?
I added to the same properity you have when i click on add action it doesn't show the properity
No thanks :)
let(
gap,
dateBetween(prop("Complete Date"), prop("Due"), "days"),
ifs(
gap < -1,
("🙌" + gap.abs() + " days early").style("c", "b", "blue", "blue_background"),
gap == -1,
("🙌" + gap.abs() + " day early").style("c", "b", "blue", "blue_background"),
gap == 0,
("✅On schedule").style("c", "b", "green", "green_background"),
gap == 1,
("⚠1 day late").style("c", "b", "yellow", "yellow_background"),
gap > 1,
("⚠" + gap + " days late").style("c", "b", "red", "red_background")
)
)
can you toggle a complete button? so if you made a mistake you can click complete to make it incomplete
I am actually heartbroken about the lack of webhook trigger 😢💔
The two biggest things I've noticed with notion in my first week of use is lacking offline availability and the lack of a task manger view for databases to make having toggled to do lists be more user friendly to use on both mobile and desktop.
I appreciate your tutorials and free templates that have gotten me started building my second brain. I integrated your video template with the para dashboard, updated the DB templates to my liking and added an inventory system to keep track of my belongings!
I agree. I think when it comes to robust task management, Notion is not good enough for it so I use actual to-do apps instead (love TickTick). I use Notion for my simple project and collections management cause no other software does (especially the latter) as well as it does.
What you’ll come to learn is that Notion purposely lags updates to build community participation. Then when they finally release tiny improvements everyone is ecstatic. (I’ve been using Notion for several years and they FINALLY made the calendar somewhat useful very recently). Don’t try to build the structure first. Start with data that is immediately relevant and wait for better updates :)
This is amazing
Thanks for the video! Its very useful
If they update the dates more dynamically it would remove the need to automate recurring tasks externally. That's the first thing I was looking for with that button and was stumped when I found they don't do anything besides today.
Yep, you are 100% correct
Why I can't find the app on playstore ??
Hey Thomas, I got the PipeDream Recurring automation you set up for Ultimate Task and Ultimate brain, however it is bugged: every time it executes, it changes the formula of the Type such that every recurring task, after being delayed, becomes a non-recurrent one.. I sent you an email. Thanks!!
I wish I could see use cases of how you actually use buttons in your notion business. Because these tutorials are great but the hypothetical examples sometimes are not that interesting or relevant. But seeing how you use these features in your business in actual scenarios would be super valuable to see. I have often desired this from your videos but never voiced it until now.
Is this rolling out slowly? I don't have the feature on my desktop app but I do see it on the Web. Looks amazing, I'm really excited to put it to youse!
I noticed that you completed the task “Defeat Steven Segal”….is that future content? 😂
Only if I can learn the secret kung fu and become powerful enough to defeat him
can any one give me the Formula at the 5:28
I don't see the use of this button honestly, if I'm gonna have a button change other properties in my database, i would just use the automation feature to have those parameters changed after a status change or something like that (especially since it isn't able to be seen by api integrations).
Can someone help me see relevant use cases for this that aren't completely managable via the automations already in place?
With the webhook trigger I will just have fun toggling my smart devices and even auto change colour when I start working!
The webhook would be incredible, especially if it would send data in the url. The relative date would be really helpful. It would be awesome to be able to put "3 days from now" in the field and have that be dynamically calculated when the button was clicked.
Another great video. Always appreciate your suggestions for future implementation. It's just as important to know what these things CAN'T do yet so we don't spend hours of time thinking or searching. Appreciate your videos always!
Awesome video, super excited to use database buttons! 100% will test out triggering formulas with them 😄
We set up an automation so that when something is set to a certain status it updates a date field. Eg: we change the status to "Done" and it updates the "Completed by" field to the time and date it is now. We're also using this to track project approved date, kickoff date, sign off date, etc. You don't need separate buttons for every stage, you can just use the status property to trigger the automations. I will caveat this also depends on if you want a matching status for all the things you want to track the date for. It's possible someone might want to keep it simple for the main users using the status property, and keep something like "signed off" or "approved" for the few with that responsibility to do so. There's a million ways to solve the same problem in notion and I think that's what makes it so fun to use.
What I would love is for an automation or button to update the start and end dates separately in the same field. Aka when status is set to "In progress" it sets the start date, and when it's "Done" it adds the end date
Nice. Your last feature request sounds like it could be the same as your first: instead of incrementing a number property you're incrementing the status property. Since it internally stores an order for the status I imagine that would not be too different.
I tried this feature too and found something other that could be done by Notion team. I have database with my learning content and I would like to add button, which add new task to my tasks database with name of the clicked lesson. Using other items properties as values of the button action would be really nice.
Webhooks would be extremely useful in general - so especially on the API!
Amazing content as always and so fast!
One thing I would absolutely love from Notion (especially with the latest release of Notion Calendar) is the ability for buttons to set the start time and end time of a single property by clicking buttons.
Having “Now” is great but we should be able to create a range rather than using 2 properties and a formula to show the range on the calendar that you don’t have the ability to adjust.
This is a neat new feature! Up to this point, for tasks I marked as Done, I had to use a Make automation in order to set the Done Date to the Last Edited Time. Now a Notion button can do the same thing by setting the Done Date to Now, as shown in your Task Tracker example.
Still can’t open a url with a button? It would be nice to launch zapier webhooks to automate even further.
How to use this feature in your Ultimate Bran Template?
Add it anywhere you like! This feature doesn't immediately lend itself to an obvious product update in our templates, but you can easily add it if it supports something you're doing. Just remember to unlock your database so you can add the new property: support.thomasjfrank.com/customizing-your-templates/78ZReSibJg7dV9R7ouqQrS/how-to-unlock-notion-databases/muCk11PNirQRjH5xaQRs9V
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Just improve speed...
1 serious question bro Frank, Is there a way to 1 click to vote all ideas (instead of clicking one by one) ?
Might be able to do it with a normal Button block!
@@ThomasFrankExplains I tried with "edit pages in", but "button property" is non-editable I guess (the option to edit did not present). I assume it might be able to do it with "⚡automations" feature but I cannot confirm.
Notion is Apple. Other platforms (Android) have the functionality months or years beforehand and then ppl go googoogaga when Ap... Notion catches up. Coda's had buttons for +counts fingers+ a really long time w/ tons more functionality. Well made video though, thanks
This is an apt comparison, but not one that puts Notion in a bad light by any means.
Regarding your request for Notion to automatically update the next Due field automatically (around 8:40), I believe I have a more straightforward solution than your current workaround. For example, in a Houseplant Tracker I made, I use the following three properties: "Last Watered" (date); "Watering Frequency (days)" (number); and "Water Next, potentially" (formula: dateAdd(prop("Last Watered"), prop("Watering Frequency (days)"), "days"). Now, the rest of the work is done with a filter rule: where "Water Next, potentially" start date is on or before today. That's it! This way I can also have a variable number of days between each entry rather than applying that same number of days to all entries. Hope this helps! Your videos always teach me so much. I really appreciate your content!
I don't believe that method would work for recurring tasks, but it seems perfect for your use case!
If I'm reading this correctly, there's a key difference: The date you need to filter by is "Water Next", which is determined by "Last Watered". And crucially, "Last Watered" can always be set to today's date when you click the button - which we can do, since "Today" is one of the dynamic date options we have.
But with recurring tasks, we need to filter by the Due Date, and that date needs to be set to whatever is displayed in the Next Due property. What we're missing is the ability to automatically grab that Next Due date and set Due to that date.
Great vid. Why is this not available in m6 notion?
Great!
I have to update all my Notion templates in the upcoming month to add all these awesome new features.
Great video and explanation as usual!
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Manual automations - for free. Nice!
Appreciate the short videos on new features! Quick and to the point with some great ideas and critiques for the Notion team. 👍 Question, does anyone have a workaround to quickly key in dates and times in the date field of databases? Clicking that mini-calendar and turning toggles for time is painful. 😢Thanks for the video Thomas and team - already added to my dashboard 🎉🎉
I feel you on those dates and times! For dates, you can type with abbreviated month names, which does speed things up. E.g. "Jan 23 24" will work. Dragging dates around in Notion Calendar is probably the best way to add times and end dates/times. Hoping they'll improve the in-app datetime picker soon!
Tomas, About the webhook part, for now you could create a webhook trigger table and with the button create a new page in that table. In the trigger table you add a automation that would call a webhook. You can't do anything with the result but it is a start.
If I'm understanding correctly, that still requires API polling by an outside application. And in that case, we don't even need to create new rows; you can create a button that even just changes a prop on an existing page. Your app can poll the DB for recently updated pages that meet a criteria and operate on them.
If you can poll quickly enough, this works decently well. But I'd still love to have a near-instant "click button, thing happens", which we can't do with API polling.
The word button now looks weird 🤨
Database updated, task completion button & completion date formula added! Useful video, once again...thank you!
This made UX so much better on my templates
its like having the automations feature, without paying for it (almost)
dynamic date + reminder would be great
Are you just teasing us with this next due date formula, or is it available anywhere? Always top level content I look forward to watching.
You can find it in this example template! thomasfrank.notion.site/Advanced-Recurring-Task-Dates-2023-484ab7302d8e43e29d2ca722b287c5e5?pvs=4
It's a feature that's built into all our task templates, including Ultimate Tasks (free) and Ultimate Brain (paid, includes everything from Ultimate Tasks, incorporated into a full productivity system).
We also provide a Pipedream script to automate them. We've done as much as possible to make recurring tasks fully work in Notion - but still, I'd like to see them fully implemented in the product itself!
@@ThomasFrankExplains Sweet thanks! I'll check it out. Yes, all the things you've mentioned as far as recurring tasks would be awesome!
a great idea and a request is to have different buttons for a single row that i can choose from, for example, we can have a completed button, an in progress button and other possibilities to choose from. that would be huge
I think you can do that now by creating multiple Button properties in your database :)
@@ThomasFrankExplains that is true, but it's visually better and removes cluster from databases to have all the buttons in one square
So the button to make auto in database, and automation to make auto to other things, right?
It seems a bit more flexible than that. Now we have three types of in-app automations:
- Button blocks: Buttons outside of databases that can create pages, add blocks to the current page, or automate things in databases (but you have to target page(s) through filters).
- Database automations: These automatically run when your trigger condition is met anywhere in the database or view where you've set them up. This feature is also only on paid plans.
- Database buttons: Very similar to button blocks, but they show on every page of the database, and have the added benefit of being able to affect properties of the page you click them on.
Ok, Thank you 😊
@@ThomasFrankExplains
Next update for ultimate task template?