[IMPLEMENTED] Table of Contents in MeisterNote

Dessy Prasad

Having the ability to add an automated table of contents section to notebooks would be a great addition in MeisterNote! Right now, I have a makeshift table of contents built out that I have to manually update when adding a new section or note. This often will get missed though. It would be amazing to see this be automated and linked to the corresponding note it references.

Peter McCarthy

This please!

We also create our own tables of contents. They are a pain to create and a pain to update.

Andrew Lapidus

Thanks @Dessy and @PeterM! We've heard from several users who've been creating their own tables of contents, and we completely agree - it's a "less than ideal" process (to put it mildly).

We're already gathering insights on how best to automate ToCs for MeisterNote. It'd be great to know if you're creating tables of contents on a workspace level (i.e. a link for each note/subnote) or within a note itself?

I also want to point out that there is a (not very visible) table of contents created automatically for all the headers within a note. It can be accessed by clicking the (i) button on the right side of the note editor:

In this automatic table of contents, smaller headers are subsumed into larger ones. In the above example, "Action Items" is an h1, while subheadings 1-3 are h2's.

Dessy Prasad

@Andrew Lapidus - Thanks for pointing that out. I tried this out but don't think it shows contents the way we are laying it out. Here's an example. I have the Departments page as the main table of contents.

Clicking on a department leads to the main section that has yet another table of contents of the available notes for that department. The section table of contents is the area of concern as when I add or delete notes, I have to manually adjust that section.

Peter McCarthy

We use our manually generated ToC similar to how you do @Dessy. The difference is we only show a ToC for Notes that have sub notes. For us the listing in the left is already a listing of all the Notes in the workspace.

The info button is fine for seeing sections within a Note, but not for seeing what sub notes are part of the overall Note.

I would prefer the top Note with an automatically generated ToC - and an option if you wanted that ToC to just list the sub notes or also the sub notes within each sub note.

Hope that makes sense!

Andrew Lapidus

Thanks so much @Dessy and @Peter! It's super helpful to see these precise examples 🙌

I just spoke with our MeisterNote Product Lead and discussed your use cases with her, along with some other examples she has seen.

Currently, the team is planning on tackling this issue in two phases:

1. First, the team will give "workspaces" the ability to receive written content, just like a regular note. (This will effectively turn workspaces into "top-level" notes - part of a broader effort to improve navigation.)
2. Then, the team will begin designing an automated ToC which can be implemented on any workspace or note - allowing users to create a quick ToC or "navigation note" on any hierarchical level. I think this should help both for @Dessy 's ToC which includes the entire workspace, as well as @PeterM's note/sub-note structure.

The first change should happen quite soon - I'll keep you all updated as I get more information. Thanks again for your input, and please send more our way! 😀

Best,

-Andrew

Dessy Prasad

@Andrew Lapidus Wow that would be awesome! For #2, or would be nice for us to also be able to format the design afterwards.

JoiedeVivre

https://community.meister.co/discussion/comment/115#Comment_115

Agreed - I wrote this before in another post - MeisterNote looks soo much better than the competition but this and sharing are absolutely essential!

Andrew Lapidus

Hi all! Quick update here: Table of Contents will be released within the next 2 weeks (earliest possible: end of this week)!

Best,

Andrew

Peter McCarthy

Really looking forward to this!!

Peter McCarthy

Hmmm… in your changeling you list:

July 5, 2023

Structure Your Notes.

We introduced two brand new block types that make structuring notes and pages much easier. As the name suggests, the List of Pages lists all sub-pages and helps users to easily navigate through them. The Table of Contents improves note structuring by listing all H1 and H2 headings within a note or page. With just one click users will be able to jump to the right section.

… but I don't think it actually works yet. Am I missing something?

Andrew Lapidus

https://community.meister.co/discussion/comment/5731#Comment_5731

Hi Peter the deploy just went live! Sorry for the miscommunication in release notes… Both a Note Directory and Table of Contents can now be added as content blocks. More information can be found on this post:

https://community.meister.co/discussion/1691/feature-release-table-of-contents-and-note-directories-in-meisternote

Happy Friday!

-Andrew

Peter McCarthy

No problem - thanks!!

Dessy Prasad

Hi @Andrew Lapidus - One update I'd recommend is adding the other headings into the Table of Contents. Right now, only Heading 1 and Heading 2 come into it. But we mainly use Heading 2 and sometimes Heading 3. I noticed Heading 3, 4, and 5 do not show up in the Table of Contents section.

Peter McCarthy

Just a note to say how much I like Table of Contents and List of Pages. I can navigate around much faster and and everything is more organized. Thanks!

Chris Cunliffe

Hi @Andrew Lapidus , The ToC and List of pages is a great addition to MeisterNote and I am already using them extensively. I do support @Dessy Prasad 's comment above though that it would be great to have the other Headings included in the ToC.

This would provide greater feature identification and improve navigation to smaller sections of larger notes.

Regards

Chris