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Collaborate and discuss with others

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TL;DR​

Heptabase provides a workflow that blends real-time discussions and visual collaboration, enabling teams to discuss complex topics and focus ideas in uncertain and rapidly changing environments. Each whiteboard functions as a "topic channel," where team members can create chats and drag important messages onto the whiteboard, forming a shared understanding. New team members can quickly grasp the team's latest understanding through these whiteboards, without needing to sift through extensive chat history.

Additionally, Heptabase uses an "Inbox" to help team members track messages that require replies or follow-up. When someone mentions or replies to your messages, the system sends these messages to your Inbox, allowing you to manage follow-ups and ensuring important communications aren't missed.

Introduction​

Heptabase is not only a tool for individual learning and research on complex topics; it's also a communication tool that helps groups discuss complex topics and focus ideas in uncertain, rapidly changing situations.

Traditional messaging apps (such as Messenger, Slack, Discord) excel at real-time communication. However, when collaborators increase and discussion topics become more complex, critical information often gets buried by new messages. It's easy to forget key conclusions from earlier discussions, leading to varied understandings among team members. New collaborators often need considerable time to catch up on the context.

Heptabase addresses this scenario by integrating "message discussions," "note cards," and "whiteboard collaboration" into a cohesive workflow. The core of this workflow isn't just "discussing on a whiteboard," but rather ensuring important messages continually get organized onto whiteboards and cards.

Whiteboards and Cards as Team Knowledge Bases​

In Heptabase, both whiteboards and cards support collaboration. When starting a team project, you can create a parent whiteboard for it, and then add sub-whiteboards for different project aspects. For example, our team has a shared whiteboard called Home, containing four sub-whiteboards: Product & Engineering, User, Operation, and Team.

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After setting up the whiteboard structure, you can click the "Share" button at the top-right corner of a whiteboard, enter the emails of your collaborators, and invite them to collaborate. They don't need to be paying subscribers to Heptabase or provide any credit card information.

Heptabase supports four collaboration permissions for whiteboards, which also apply to cards on the whiteboard:

  1. Can View: Can only view the current whiteboard and all its sub-whiteboards.

  2. Can Chat: Can view, plus see and participate in chats on the current whiteboard and all sub-whiteboards.

  3. Can Edit: Can chat, plus edit content on the current whiteboard and all sub-whiteboards.

  4. Full Access: Can edit, plus invite others to collaborate on the current whiteboard and all sub-whiteboards.

The following introduction assumes you and your collaborators have "Can Edit" permissions or higher.

Whiteboards as Discussion Channels​

In Heptabase, whiteboards aren't just knowledge-organizing tools—they also serve as "topic channels" for discussing different aspects of a topic. When our team collaborates in Heptabase, we always start with the Chat App from the right sidebar, where you can quickly see all chats and notifications. For instance, under Product & Engineering, we create a sub-whiteboard for each major feature, facilitating focused discussions about specific designs and implementations.

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Compared to traditional communication software, Heptabase’s chat function has two unique features:

  1. The experience of editing messages is nearly identical to editing cards. You can add different content types (lists, tables, code blocks, math formulas, headings) and mention any cards you have access to, providing rich context during discussions and even inviting collaborators to edit the mentioned cards directly.

  2. If an important message emerges during a chat (such as a critical conclusion or key knowledge), you can double-click the whiteboard name from the Chat App to open the whiteboard, displaying the chat in the right sidebar, and dragging important messages onto the whiteboard. You can also use whiteboard tools for organizing these messages visually, or copy their links into note cards.

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The "drag messages onto the whiteboard" feature is particularly useful when discussions become deep and extensive, helping establish shared understanding from existing messages. New collaborators don't need to go through every past message individually; they can first read the organized information on the whiteboard and refer back to the chats if necessary.

Since content on whiteboards represents the team's shared current understanding, it bridges the gap between discussions and formal documentation. Previously, many teams used Slack or Discord for discussions, but not every important conclusion got documented due to time constraints. With Heptabase, regularly dragging important messages onto the whiteboard reduces the friction of documentation, allowing you to create note cards or formal documents later as information accumulates.

Managing Immediate Tasks with Inbox​

In many messaging apps, if someone @mentions you and you don't immediately reply, you might forget. Similarly, when you @mention others, tracking their responses often requires extra effort.

Heptabase’s Inbox addresses these issues. If collaborators reply to your messages, start new chats based on your messages, or mention you via @, these messages appear in your Inbox under the "Now" section, like emails.

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For example, if your Inbox's "Now" section is empty and someone @mentions you, the message appears there, increasing the count to one. You then have two options:

  1. If you have time, click the message to open the relevant chat, read it, and reply if necessary. Once done, click "Mark as done" (shortcut: Cmd + Enter) to clear it from Now and move it to the "Completed" section.

  2. If you're busy, click "Remind me" to schedule a future date, moving the message to the "Later" section, where it will reappear in Now on the specified date.

Thus, Now functions as your daily to-do list. You simply complete or postpone items until your Now count returns to zero.

Additionally, you can manually add messages to your Inbox. If you find a message important and want to follow up later, use "Remind me" to schedule a reminder.

When you @mention someone in a message, that message enters both their Inbox and yours. Through this message in your Inbox, you can easily check who has read, replied to, or marked it as done. This automation frees you from manually tracking the status of messages.

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This summarizes how Heptabase’s Inbox integrates with the chat feature. If you frequently forget to reply to messages, it clearly highlights your pending replies and helps prioritize them. For project managers engaging with multiple collaborators, it ensures you quickly see unanswered questions and easily manage follow-ups.