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Forum Discussion
Amy
Community Manager
Community ManagerDropbox Paper features to make your day easier
Is there any way of quickly hiding / revealing sections of a DB Paper document?
My team uses Paper to do "live-but-asynchronous" meetings: we open a video chat and work on a single Paper doc simultaneously: we exchange on points directly within the document (instead of using comments, which aren't great when extended back-and-forth is required to clarify an issue; instead we use comments to notify each other that there is a new response to a given point). Each member uses a different highlighting colour so we can quickly see who's "speaking" and whether someone has responded to any given point. The only issue with this is that sometimes a discussion becomes long & breaks the readability / navigability of the document. In these cases we'd like to be able to collapse the extended discussion, and just show the conclusion (we want to keep a record of the discussion because they serve as the "minutes" of the meeting). I thought there was something like this available, but haven't been able to find it. Does anything in the current feature set allow for this? I've tried to provide an example of what a doc might look like, below (except using text colour instead of highlighting, because I don't see a highlighting option).
Example: points 1 & 2 are there for context, in point 3, there is much back and forth before they figure out what they are discussing and come to a conclusion, and it'd be great if it were possible to either a) collapse that part of the discussion or b) collapse the entire exchange (in which case we'd just add a summary line afterwards).
1. Do we want cookies at meetings?
Some suggested we have cookies at meetings, to give folks something to look forward to, what do y'all think?
Love it! Not sure how you make that work when we're all remote, though.
Yeah, that's what I was wondering, too.
It was my idea, but I didn't mean during the pandemic -- I meant when we were back in the office.
Ha - that certainly makes a lot more sense. If we have the disposable budget, I'm fine with that.
Ditto. Another reason I can't wait to get back to the office. My plants aren't the conversationalists they used to be...
2. Can we hire sharks?
Anna received three CV's from sharks. We have a strict non-discrimination policy, but this is the first time we've had a predator apply for a position, so it's kind of new ground, thoughts?
Yikes -- what are other companies doing? Do they install tanks? How do they get around?
Anything related to policy like this should go through legal & PR first, no point in us even speculating until they provide the general context.
Okay, thanks -- I wasn't sure, but that makes sense. blue is it okay with you if we check with them before jumping in, further?
Of course! Keep me posted, super curious to hear what they come back to us with.
3. If the weather gets nicer, will we be less motivated to sit inside and work?
Fact is, the weather is getting nicer and our productivity has taken a dive.
What's your goal, here? Did you just want to confirm that this is the case? Or is there some action you'd like us to take?
I'm not sure, I guess: I noticed the pattern and wasn't even sure if we could do anything, so thought it was important to discuss. It'd be great if we could take action, but I'm not sure what we could do. Any ideas?
Makes sense. I guess the options are to change the weather, change our response to the weather or change our location. Given global warming, we'd be killing two birds with one stone if we could change the weather.
I agree that'd be awesome, but I'm wondering if it's actually the core issue for our team, or if it might just turn into a major distraction for us, taking us off our main goal of having in-person meetings with cookies?
I don't know -- part of the effectiveness of the cookies is tied to how we're feeling, and the weather affects that, so maybe it's a legit option to consider?
Guys -- our budget is $26, we're not changing the weather.
You don't think it's even worth brainstorming, quickly?
No -- we have 6 days before our first major deadline. If we nail that, then maybe we can circle back and consider changing the weather, but I think it's best that we focus on the more viable options, right now.
What do you think that'd be?
Changing our location.
So long as we're not closing the door on solving global warming, forever, I'm fine with that. But can we add it to the agenda for the post-deadline meeting?
Done.
Okay, so then I guess the obvious solution would be to have everyone travel continuously in such a way that we remain as maximally out-of-sync with the region of the earth that receives the most sunlight?
You took the words right out of my mouth.Perfect!
Agreed!
P.S. I saw the /note functionality & thought that that might be what we were looking for, but it just seem to drop a table into the document. There's even a setting that controls whether the header can be seen or not, so I thought it might toggle visibility, but it doesn't do anything that I can tell, and chat support didn't even know what a note was (& I couldn't find any documentation on it).
If it's possible to collapse the rows of a table, that would be great temp solution, too... would appreciate any ideas!
- Amy
Hi RaxAdaam! I think the best thing for that is if you make the title/date of the meeting into a H1 heading, and then make each topic into a H2 heading in the doc, you can collapse those whole sections. So if you had something like this set up:
May 4th meeting notes: (This as a H1 title)
Cookie debate: (This as a H2 title)
Yes, always.
Yes, but in italics.
Sharks: (This as a H2 title)
Notes on sharks
Notes on sharks 2
In this instance you can collapse the entire meeting section by clicking the arrow on the left hand side of the H1 title, or each specific section by clicking the arrow next to the Cookies or Sharks H2 titles. You can then either add the final solution as a H2 as well, or edit it into to the heading of that section, so Cookie debate could become Cookie debate - yes, always. You can also link directly to each of those sections for quick access.
I've added a screenshot of those stages as well as well, so does that help at all?
Thank you for the suggestion (& taking the time to make the screenshot) -- this is definitely something we can try. It kind of messes with the rest of the structure of the document, which is a real downside, but the tradeoff might be worth it.
It always seems funny to me that digital products model themselves so closely on physical ones that they overlook obvious advantages that they have over the physical version (like being able to collapse space), but I guess it just takes time for folks to adapt to the new possibilities.
I'm also going to look into the internal-links option: I had already been considering a model in which we could have side-by-side docs -- one dedicated to debate / discussion, the other to decisions / results.
Again, thanks for your time and help.
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