New updates and improvements to Outline.
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Thanks to an open source contributor Limezy, we now have support for interactive tldraw embeds. These look really fantastic inside Outline and allow multiple people to draw together inside a document.
To get started head to tldraw.com, click on the cursors icon in the top left and select "Create a Multiplayer Project" – paste the url into an Outline doc.
This week brings three new integrations – just paste a share link in any document to get a rich, interactive, embed.
If you publicly share a document with nested document sharing enabled we'll now display a search input at the top of the sidebar to allow searching the contents of all of the nested documents.
This is particularly great when sharing documentation and other larger collections of docs.
We added some new slash commands to insert the current date, time, or both into a document you're editing – and importantly these commands also work in document titles and are locale-aware! These are the new handy shortcuts:
outline/date – Insert current date/time – Insert current time/datetime – Insert current date and time
Just like documents, collections can now be starred – once starred you can also re-order all of your stars with drag and drop to create your own custom sidebar. Star the things that are important to you and have them available for one-click access.
Tip: Did you know that adding an emoji in front of a document title will show it in the browser favicon and in the sidebar when starred?
Admin's now have a new option to disable creation of new collection by members, for more curated knowledge bases or larger teams this can help prevent documentation sprawling unchecked.
It's now possible to access all the settings screen directly from the command bar.
You can access the command bar anywhere in the app using Cmd + k, or
Cmd + Shift + k if you're in the document editor.
If you've not used the command bar yet, it's a fast way to access lots of functionality without taking your hands off the keyboard!
We're excited to finally add one of our most requested features – file attachments in documents. You can now upload arbitrary files and embed them directly into a doc for your teammates to download, file attachments work on publicly shared links too.
This months shipped improvements are lots of small details, alignments, bug fixes, and editor improvements. In the background we have been busy building long-awaited file attachments and search for publicly shared documents, both of which will be shipped in the next month.
This month pinned documents got some love – a visual refresh to help them stand out, the ability to reorder, and also you can now pin documents to the home screen for everyone in the team to see. This year we'll be focusing more on improving the options to customize and theme Outline and so this is a first step in that direction.
This release also includes new cmd+k functionality which you might recognize from other productivity apps. Type cmd+k anywhere in the app to quickly move around your knowledge base!
We'll be building all of the possible actions into this menu over the next few months, but try searching for docs, collections, or changing the theme to see how fun and easy it is to use!
The editor gained a new emoji picker this month, just type ":" and a search term to quickly find relevant emojis for your document!
It's now also possible to set a "default role" for new users that join your knowledge base. For example, new signups can now have viewer priviledges by default. You can find this setting under Settings -> Security.
mailto: links are supported in the editor againThe collaborative editing beta has been progressing well and we continue to let it new teams. The last few weeks have largely been spent fixing and improving this functionality for a broader launch, but some other things snuck in too…
This week we’re beginning to accept teams into the beta of collaborative editing, this feature will allow multiple team members to edit the same document at the same time, opening much wider range of use cases! It also lays the foundation for all sorts of new features such as commenting.
If your team would like to participate please reach out to [email protected].
You've been able to create a task list or a checkbox list in Outline for a while, but this week brings a nice improvement - we added task summaries so you can see how many tasks a doc contains and how many are completed without even opening it!
This is great for simple checklists such as new employee onboarding or a release checklist that you wouldn't neccesarily put in an issue tracker. You can also create repetitive task lists in templates.
The history sidebar was rebuilt to shows more than just edits, it now also includes archive, delete, publish, moves, and other events that happen during the document's lifetime.
You can find the new sidebar by clicking on the last edited timestamp or under "History" in the document menu.
Wow, another month has passed, here's a quick update on what's changed since June,
as is often the case as well as the big stuff we've been working on a lot of "little details"
that make the daily experience better but aren't always immediately visible.
We're now tracking all the previous titles that a document has had to improve search results and increase the liklihood of surfacing the right document, even if you can't quite remember what it's latest title is.
We brought back the ability to collapse sections of a document under headings – simply hover over any heading to see a new control to collapse the contents. Your preference is stored locally and is not seen by other team members that view the document.
You can now drag and drop documents from the sidebar directly into the archive or trash, similar to how you would move or reorder. There's a cute animation included to let you know what will happen too.
This week we've shipped lots of little improvements, one thing you might notice is that collections in Outline no longer have a long UUID in the address bar, instead you'll see a shortened id and a friendly
version of the collection name. Not only is this nicer to look at, but it also makes quickly returning to
collections via searching in the address bar much easier!
ctrl+alt+hRestore options would appear on a deleted document that was previously archived
Last week brings some great improvements to public document sharing. We recently simplified the sharing dialog to a popover and now added the ability to share an entire tree of nested documents too. This much-requested feature is great for sharing structured help docs or several related documents with a single link!
As an additional security measure the Share button will also display a globe icon if a document is shared publicly because one of it's parents has been shared.
We've rolled out a number of UI improvements in the past couple of weeks within documents. It's now possible to see who on your team has viewed a document, simply click on the "Viewed by X people" text beneath the title for a detailed flyover of everyone that has viewed and when.
The pile of faces at the top right of a document continues to show who has previously edited or is active right now. We'll be adding more detailed team-level insights soon!
We’re excited to finally add a new sign-in method, Microsoft! Whether you’re using MS Teams, Education, or Office 365, you can now use your organization’s Microsoft account to sign-in to Outline and build a knowledge base.
We’ll soon be working on adding Microsoft Teams integration to allow searching and accessing your Outline documents directly from chat too, just like Slack.