Preserving URLs when moving bullets as in Workflowy

As a heavy user of backlinks it would be great to see this improved. When the item moves all the backlinks are lost

3 Likes

thanks a lot, @Erica and @Shida. Dynalist is a phenomenal product built by a duo of phenoms, and it surpasses WorkFlowy in many ways.

Still, because of their new mirroring functionality (which Trello is also publicly going after) as well as their non-broken node links, I’ve again been giving WorkFlowy a hard look. And I regret doing so! I just want a tool that checks enough boxes that I am not inclined to drift after enough limitation frustration builds up. Dynalist has come closer to my dream than most notes products, and if you guys do mirroring right (as your penchant for clever UX has me thinking you would, better than WF’s implementation), then you can forget about my request to fix linking. (I can’t speak for anyone except myself, but I largely use linking as inconvenient compensation for the fact Dynalist offers no mirroring.) Make mirroring a premium feature – whatever! This is worth paying for, and may make it worth your while to revisit Dynalist for a couple weeks?

Either way, sincere kudos on the talents & hustle that has brought Dynalist this far thus far, guys –

2 Likes

A new update is out on web that fixes this issue. Moving nodes from drag & drop to another document as well as using the node mover shortcut should now update all links that are affected by the move.

Once the update is stable it will be released to desktop and mobile a bit later!

5 Likes

Ah alas, I think it’s been somewhat better – but the core issue still remains (at least on web as of the past couple days)

I copy an item’s link and get this [actual URL obscured / jumbled for privacy]

https://dynalist.io/d/0xxxxxxxR_XjnwfbhvabsiasdnoadosX_#z=IGF2zKZthDzRcVEYH6RNK1zH

I then move that item to a different doc

Clicking the link I had just copied (and pasted into a Trello task) brings me back to the doc the item was formerly in – not the node whose link I grabbed.

So I go find that node and copy the link again, and the link now looks like this (the middle parts have changed):

https://dynalist.io/d/AdifferentG_Kdifferent#z=IGF2zKZthDzRcVEYH6RNK1zH

Did the fix not cover all scenarios or did something again break? Thanks, @Shida!

It does not cover all scenarios - When you move the the node, we go through all your documents and update any links that point to nodes within the ones you’re moving, but if you had links externally we can’t account for that. This is fundamentally a challenging problem to solve because links contain the document ID to resolve to the correct document, and when moving links across documents, the link wouldn’t work anymore if the document ID isn’t updated.

1 Like

Just wanted to say this has made a huge difference to me now I can trust moving things between documents without things breaking.

1 Like

I have one particular file that has become a bit messy and would like to tidy it up. My initial thought is to export it as OPML to a Mindmapping app so I can properly organise it then import the tidied version back into Dynalist. But, reading the above, is it even possible that the links would still work once I have done all that?

The links won’t work because dynalist will interpret the pasted nodes as new nodes, giving them new ID’s and thus new URLs to be linked. Links only get auto-updated if moved via dynalist mechanisms.

2 Likes

Guess I knew that… Thanks for confirming

Darn, I was hoping this would have been resolved. I like to link to items from external apps (such as my todo app) and just realized that if I move the item to a different file the external app won’t be able to find it. Could there just be some sort of 301 redirect implemented to account for this? I wouldn’t say this issue would happen very often since I tend not to move things around too much, but it still leaves me unsettled…

I hate to be a weiner but …I like this “feature”. Reason being, there are limits on sharing with others while protecting content in Dynalist.
For instance, if you share something out, the parent is exposed.
What I have been doing as a workaround is…

  • break out a node to its own document
  • share it out while need be (makes a url link)
  • link to the node in the ‘protected from the public’ parent project so it can be seen there

Later…

  1. If we are “done”
  • move the node back to the parent
  • url link is now changed, so no longer shared/exposed to the public
  1. If I am moving on from one person/team to another (so therefore want to dissolve/invalidate the current url link) THEN
  • create a new document either out of the shared node OR
  • copy the shared node into another document as may be needed
  • then delete the currently shared node
    …now I have a NEW URL Link on that Shared Node, so no “old” public access is available
    …the only thing to be mindful of is to update the link in the parent project.

Its not the best workflow, but the workaround is important for some critical usage of Dynalist for sharing info and lack of control for unwittingly exposing everything.

Hope that made sense.

1 Like