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Fundamental Elements

Card​

Concept and Use Case​

  • A card is your note, as well as a container for knowledge and ideas. All cards are stored in the Card Library App. In addition to native Note Cards, Journal Cards, and Highlight Cards, Heptabase also supports importing specific file types into the card library, including: PDF Cards, Video Cards, Audio Cards, Image Cards, and so on.

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Basic Operations​

  • You can type / in the card editor to add any types of blocks you want: headings, lists, to-dos, toggles, tables, images, audio, videos, files, PDFs, code snippets, math equations, and dates.

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  • You can type @ in the card editor to mention other cards, and you can see all the block-level backlinks in the info section of the card. These interconnected cards together form a knowledge network that belongs to you.

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Whiteboard​

Concept and Use Case​

  • A whiteboard is your space for thinking. Consider it as an unlimited desktop for placing cards to help you learn and research the topics you care about. All whiteboards are stored in the Map app. You can right-click on the map to create whiteboards for researching different topics. Additionally, you can right-click on the whiteboard to create sub-whiteboards for researching sub-topics under the main topic.

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  • Whiteboards do not own cards. All cards belong to the Card Library. When you are researching a topic on the whiteboard, you can import related cards from the Card Library and place them on the whiteboard. You can also create new cards on the whiteboard, and these cards will be directly stored in the Card Library.

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  • The same card can be placed on multiple whiteboards at the same time. This is similar to how our brain works - the same concept or knowledge can appear under different topics. You can see in the card's Info section which whiteboards the card appears on. If you click on a whiteboard name, it will automatically open the whiteboard and focus on the location of the card, allowing you to easily recall the thinking context of the card.

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Basic Operations​

  • You can right-click in the blank space of the whiteboard to create different types of objects to help you think. These include: creating cards to record ideas and knowledge; creating text to capture fleeting thoughts; creating mind maps to quickly brainstorm and clarify your thinking; creating journals to plan for the next week; creating sections to group whiteboard objects; and creating sub-whiteboards to organize knowledge of sub-topics.

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  • You can right-click on whiteboard objects to select the advanced operations you want to perform on them. These include changing color, activating mindmap mode, exporting files, viewing edit history, adding tags, moving to other whiteboards, opening as new tabs, etc.

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  • If you want to change the position and color of multiple whiteboard objects at once, or perform advanced batch operations on them, you can click the blank space of the whiteboard and drag a selection box to select multiple objects all at once.

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Tag​

Concept and Use Case​

If you're a beginner, you don't have to use tags. If you want to know when you should use tags instead of whiteboards, check out this tutorial video.

  • Tags are a classification system that groups similar cards and assigns properties to them. For example, let's say you have a meeting every week. You can create a tag #meetings and add it to all the cards containing meeting notes. Additionally, you can add properties such as "date" and "conclusion" for all cards under the #meetings tag.

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  • When should I use tags and when should I use whiteboards to organize cards?

    The answer is simple: tags can be used to describe an is-a-relationship (e.g., Card A is a #meeting, Card B is a #blog-article, Card C is a #user-research, Card D is a #scientist), while whiteboards are used to describe topics (e.g., Whiteboard X is "History of Science," Whiteboard Y is "Company Growth Strategy," Whiteboard Z is "Nuclear Engineering Research").

    When you want to organize a set of highly homogeneous cards, you can start by using tags. When you want to learn a topic deeply, you can create a whiteboard and then drag the cards related to that topic onto the whiteboard to connect and think.

    For example, you can create tags such as #scientists (Newton, Einstein), #physics-theories (thermodynamics, relativity, quantum mechanics), #science-events (Solvay Conference, first solar eclipse observation), and visualize the relationships between the cards with these tags on the whiteboard of "history of science," helping you better understand and remember the topics you are learning and researching.

Basic Operations​

  • All tags are stored in the Tag App. You can access the Tag App from the left sidebar to view all your tags. Click on the "New Tag" button to add a new tag. When adding a new tag, you can choose either the table or kanban view as the default view for cards under that tag.

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  • In addition to adding new tags, you can also click the "New Group" button to create groups for organizing your tags. For example, you can put the tags #meetings and #work-reports into the "Work" group, and the tags #blog-articles and #tax-returns into the "Life" group.

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  • If you want to add a tag to an existing card, simply use the shortcut Cmd/Ctrl + T.

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Additional Reading​