November 2023 Newsletter - Open referenced records with a click, hang out with us on Discord, and add column types more easily

What’s New

Hang out with us on Discord!

We’ve created an official Grist Discord server for those interested in a place to chat about Grist and Grist-related topics. As a fun kickoff, we’re going to see how many of this year’s Advent of Code puzzles we can solve with Grist. :calendar::jigsaw:

Click here to join. Hope to see you there!

Record cards

Don’t let the humble name fool you, this is a big one!

We all know how helpful references are. But sometimes you want to take a peek at the referenced record without changing your current view. Now you can! The “link” icon in reference and reference list columns is now an actual hyperlink, and it opens the referenced record in a pop-up.

record-card1

But this doesn’t just affect references! You can also view any row in a table as a card with a single click, letting you see its base record in full.

record-card2a

Record cards are default card views for every table. They can be configured on the Raw Data page.

Add column with type

Our quest to improve the experience of adding new columns continues. Now you can set the column type right in the “Add Column” menu. Behold!

add-column-type

Security update for self-hosters

We released a security fix earlier this month related to the suggested configuration of grist-core with traefik, as well as for grist-omnibus. See this Community update for more details.

The fix also affects those who do Grist authentication by forwarding a header for all endpoints (e.g. behind HTTP Basic Auth), as it makes a previously optional flag required. You may need to review your settings – see this issue for details.

Grist Console Q&A

CTO Paul was able to share some fascinating Grist-related nuggets in an excellent Console Q&A. Learn about the origins of the name “Grist”, how (and why) we build Grist, and how we may be able to communicate with extraterrestrials. :alien:

(That last one may not be directly related to Grist.)

Community Highlights

  • Self-hosters: Grist now natively supports authentication with OpenID Connect. See the complete documentation here. A huge thanks to @fflorent from ANCT for their work on this PR!
  • Looking for a simpler way to self-host Grist? Florent has also packaged Grist on YunoHost, a Debian-based OS designed to help democratize self-hosting. Check out Florent’s post in our forum for more information.
  • Andreas Klöckner (@inducer on GitHub) has shared not one, not two, but THREE Grist-related projects on the Community forum:
    • grist-availability: a tool to help with multi-person scheduling using the new calendar widget.
    • grist-mailmerge: a batch emailer driven by a Grist table and a Jinja template.
    • pygrist-mini: a tiny Grist API client for Python.
  • Translations started for Arabic, Czech, Chinese (Traditional), Dutch and Thai! We’re now at 20 languages either complete or in-progress, all thanks to community contributors. See here for more information on translating Grist.

Working on something cool with Grist? Let us know by posting in the Showcase forum!

Learning Grist

Webinar: Multimedia Views

In December, we’ll cover multimedia views so you can explore even more ways to display your data. Maps and Notepads and Video Players, oh my!

Thursday December 14 at 3:00pm US Eastern Time.

multimedia-views-webinar

SIGN UP FOR DECEMBER’S WEBINAR

Charts and Summary Tables

In November, we learned how to summarize and analyze data in charts and summary tables, with tips and tricks to get more out of summary tables.

WATCH NOVEMBER’S RECORDING

6 Likes

that “view as card” feature is really handy. it would be great if that was an option in the widgets panel as well. i currently have a page that has a table on the left and then a card on the right that shows almost every column, similar to how the “view card” shows you everything. ive changed the raw data card to have the same layout as well but it would be easier to just have the widget use the layout from the raw data card

that pop-out formula editor is great too. im not sure when that was added, but having to use shift+enter to add a new line was tripping me up so many times! great updates!

3 Likes