Library sync clarity and feedback

I’m having a look at shared libraries and made a couple of observations:

  • It’s not made clear in the docs that if you have a workspace library you need to save a version in order to have the updates sync to any files that use the library.
  • For individual changes to a library, the two step update library > component workflow is tedious, however you can have library changes download automatically, though this setting is only available from the global settings rather than the document settings - it should be in both ideally and they should operate independently, so I can just auto sync the libraries in use in a specific document.

Some more thoughts on version saving in the workspace:

  • creating a version in order to have it sync is fine, however the little “You can save a version” popover when pressing cmd+S should probably contextually tell you it’s needed in order to update the library. At least the first time.
  • The version description feels like a very natural place to describe the changes to the library, kind of like a commit message. It’d be great if these update messages were visible in some way in the app. Either near the entry in the library list or in the component update window itself.
  • If auto sync is on, some kind of feedback in the app when a new update has been received would be useful. Perhaps in the notification area, letting the user know that X new things are now available, or something to that effect. Otherwise new components are delivered silently.

An even further out bit of feedback on component syncing - I assume you’ve already thought about this, but having a little more detail in the before and after would be useful. A summary of the changes between the versions in addition to the visual, especially in the case of text styles. It’d be good to know if a font weight has changed, or if the line spacing is different etc.

Hey @Ash thanks for taking the time to look into this. You’ve made valid points, and I agree that we can improve in this area. We’re currently busy with other things, but I can see a case for this in future updates. When the time comes, we’ll revisit this post.

And for everyone else, please vote—it helps!

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On our end the biggest issue we have with library syncing is the time it takes for updates to spread to other documents using it, usually between 30 and 60 minutes. I know we can star versions to force updates (I think?) but we don’t want to use starred versions either because the document is a constant work in progress.

A post was split to a new topic: Library Sync Issues

Hi everyone! :wave:

We believe the ideas here shared are very valid so we want to make sure they get the attention they deserve!

To address the issue @Ash reported, I’ve moved the latest reply to this new Issues Topic. Feel free to join the conversation and share any related reports.