July 26, 2021We've added custom right-click context menus to the app which let you quickly take actions on certain items. To start, they're available on the Views page (to edit, favorite, and delete), and in the headers of tables (to set the primary attribute, and apply a sort). This also freed up left-click on table headers, which we're now using to quickly apply a sort on a column.
We plan to use context menus more heavily across the app as we keep building, to simplify the UI and make taking actions faster.
We've added text searching to SQL views to allow you to easily filter for records containing some text. We've had this functionality in Basic views for a while, but wanted to bring it over to SQL view too. This is the first step in bringing full feature-parity across both Basic and SQL views. We plan to add UI-based filtering and sorting to SQL views as well.
You can trigger a search on a SQL view by pressing Ctrl/Command+F. Note that we previously used Ctrl/Command+F for find and replace on the query—this has now switched to Ctrl/Command+Shift+F.
July 19, 2021What's better than dark mode? An even darker dark mode!
We've updated our color scheme across the app to use darker darks, and a higher-contrast primary color on both themes. Overall, we've simplified our color palette which should increase consistency across the app.
We have lots of ideas on how to expand our theme system in the future to improve customizability, accessibility, and fun. Keep your eyes out for future changelogs by following us on Twitter (@Basedash).
July 12, 2021This week we revamped the way you create, edit, and share views. We now have a full-page experience that allows you to configure and preview your view in real-time, across multiple layouts (table, list, and chart). This brings all view configuration options to one place, allowing you to craft your perfect view.
Newly created views are saved to Drafts which are only visible to admins. You can publish your view to the rest of your team in one click. This makes is easy to work on a view on your own time, then publish it when you're ready to share with your teammates.
Collaborators can still navigate views by searching and sorting, but only admins can edit the view to change core settings like filters and joins. Admins can access view settings by clicking the "..." menu in the header of a view, then clicking "Edit view".
We think this new format for creating and managing views simplifies the process for admins, and allows us to add more customization in the future without cluttering the view interface. We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback in the BaseDash Slack community.
We also updated the layout switcher on views to use a newly designed segmented controller. This better-exposes your layout options for working with your data, and lets you switch your layout in one click.
June 28, 2021This week we shipped a date picker that makes it easy to update date values by picking a date on a calendar. You can also type a value directly into the input field in a simple, human-readable format. It works for both simple dates, and date-time combos, in both table layout and list layout.
June 21, 2021Today we're launching a new list layout for views, our second ever layout type after tables. You can now easily view records in a simple list, and edit values in a comprehensive form. This new view layout is available on all new and existing views through a toggle in the header—you can use this to easily switch the layout on a view-by-view basis depending on your needs for each view.
We believe that tables are great high-density interfaces for comparing and managing data in bulk, but they can be intimidating—especially for non-technical users—because they lack informational hierarchy. Our new list layout offers a more streamlined interface, surfacing the most important data in the list itself, with access to the rest of the record's data in a familiar, easily-editable form. The form panel also gives us more space to show data inline which is especially useful for data types like rich text and JSON.
List views, like existing table views, are highly customizable. You can choose which secondary attributes to display in the list, as well as which attributes are visible and editable in the form. Some settings like filters and sorts are shared between layout types, so you don't have to define them multiple times.
List layout is available to all users starting today. It's still under active development while we iron out some bugs and improve the experience, like adding mobile support and improving customizability. If you run into any issues, please let us know in the BaseDash Community Slack channel.
June 14, 2021We updated the way auto-generated user avatars look, and how they're rendered when used as real-time presence indicators on a view. Upon signup, each user is now assigned a color from a collection of hand-picked colors. This will appear as the accent color in your avatar, as the border in the top-bar, and as the border of your currently-selected cell to other users. Your color is persistent, allowing your teammates to easily recognize you by your color.
We also launched an updated site for our new blog! We'll be posting content about how we're designing, building, and growing the product. It's exclusively high-quality content written by the core team at BaseDash. We already have a couple posts up:
You can check out the full blog at https://blog.basedash.com.
June 7, 2021We've been doing a lot of experimentation around navigation in the app. The latest change we're trying out is a "Related" section in the sidebar that intelligently shows views that are related to the page you're currently on. If you're on a view or raw table, this includes any views with the same base table. If you're on a query, it includes other queries based on the same data source. This should speed up navigation in the app, especially when exploring data.
We'd love to hear your thoughts as we build in public. Join our Slack community to chat with other power-users, as well as our designers and engineers—we're constantly updating BaseDash based on user feedback.
May 31, 2021We reworked our permission system from the ground up to simplify the process of adding teammates, and to increase flexibility out of the box.
Our old permission system relied on defining read/write permissions upfront at the table level. This allowed for fine-grained permissioning, but required a huge time commitment to set up, and was hard to keep up-to-date as needs (and schemas) changes.
Our new system works off the existing power of views. We now have 3 roles:
These new roles are specifically tuned towards the ability to craft views with limited access through filters and hidden attributes, ensuring that your teammates have access to the data they need, and nothing more. Collaborators still have the ability to search within views, and we're planning ways for them to organize data in new ways.
On top of these three roles, we also have the concept of Owners. Each workspace has at least one owner who, on top of their role permissions, gains access to billing and top-level settings like renaming the workspace. Right now, the creator of the workspace is designated owner, but we plan to let you transfer ownership and add new owners in the future.
Finally, the new Read-only role is free, so you can add as many teammates/investors/users as you'd like without affecting your billing.
May 24, 2021One of our core goals at BaseDash is to democratize data access within companies so that anyone can work with the data they need to, in the way that works best for them. We've noticed an increase in the number of people using BaseDash on mobile, so we decided to make some improvements to the experience on smaller screens.
We've always had basic support for mobile, but it's slowly gotten out-of-date with all the new changes we've introduced in the past months. This week, we implemented some changes that bring the experience closer to that on desktop, with design improvements that make it easier to keep feature parity as the product changes over time. We now have a persistent header across all pages—including on desktop—which includes a menu button to open the sidebar on smaller screen sizes. We also hide some information on smaller screens to maintain high information density.
May 17, 2021We've added the ability to designate a "primary attribute" on each table, which freezes the column to the left side of the table. The primary attribute defaults to the primary key of the table (i.e. the ID), but you can set it to any attribute by clicking the column header and selecting "Set as primary attribute".
In addition, the primary attribute will appear as the value in foreign key relationships. This means that you can easily read and set relationship values without having to know the record's ID. It's very useful for setting a user's primary attribute as their email or name.
We also added new search feature in queries that allows you to easily scan your SQL queries. It supports find-and-replace, regex, case-sensitivity, whole-word search, and search-in-selection. You can trigger it by pressing Ctrl/Command + F in a query.
