This week we launched a redesigned organizational system for docs.

There are now four ways you can navigate around your docs:

• Recent Docs, which is a quick view of the docs you most recently opened.

• All Docs, which consolidates the "Unfiled Docs" and "Folders" pages into a single space that show you all the folders and docs that you have access to.

• Groups, which allows you to find docs by who they're shared with.

• Search, accessible by via the Header Bar on any screen or the Command Line.

On the "All Docs" page, you can sort docs by any column header, like name or last modified. You can also share, move, create, copy, and delete folders or docs.

Our beta users have been using "All Docs" just like Finder on MacOS—but instead, it's in the cloud, with best-in-class sharing and permissions for collaboration.

Along with our lightning-fast search and ability to create curated handbooks, these new navigation features are part of our mission to keep you and your docs seamlessly organized in Almanac—so you can find the right doc quickly and get back to work.

Other improvements and fixes

• Tables are now easier to select and delete

• We've polished the controls and formatting options on images

Our goal at Almanac is to provide more structured, transparent, and integrated ways for teams to collaborate without needing a Zoom meeting or Slack message.

For important, high-risk docs where mistakes can be vey costly, our latest enhancements to the "Approval Request" workflow add more guardrails, clearer options, and enhanced context so that you can keep track of every edit and eliminate opportunities for error.

The Approval workflow now only has one "approver" so that there's a clear, single decision maker in your process. In the flow, the approver can either make changes and "approve" the doc, or "send back" the doc to you for more revisions.

All edits in an Approval Request now happen on a branch—a temporary, linked version of the main doc—so that it's clear what was changed over the base.

While the Approval Request is open, the main doc is locked in read-only mode, and the workflow concludes when the approver agrees to all the edits made and merges their branch into the main doc.

In Approval Request, you can compare the changes on the branch to the main doc, and use the activity feed to see exactly who edited what, where, and when—great for compliance and legal redlining.

Finally, we added in graphics to explain the process at every step, so all stakeholders understand where the approval is, who is "holding the ball," and what happens next.

And lastly, we added a fun confetti animation once a doc has been approved 🎉

Other improvements and fixes

• Mentions can now be created in headings, and have a faster load times

• All Docs can now be sorted by Name or Last Modified

• Adding in new lines to a numbered list automatically updates to the correct order

• Selecting a group of text or a list to indent works just like Microsoft Word

Getting informal feedback is an important way to make sure your work is aligned with your team.

But sharing a link to a doc in an email or Slack thread can often result in scattered comments, unclear edits, and missed deadlines.

With our 'Ask for Feedback' workflow, you can keep work moving forward by organizing and tracking feedback right in your doc. Here's how it works:

Share access to Handbook docs

As you create a handbook in Almanac, you need to make sure that everyone has some level of access to every doc. But going into each and every doc to change the sharing permissions was a pain, so we've made it incredibly easy to change the sharing permissions for all the docs in your handbook in one place.

Other improvements

• We've made optimizations to the viewport to automatically hide the table of contents in the doc editor at smaller widths.

• Images can now be dragged and dropped directly into the editor (or copy and pasted).

• Comments can now have the option to be turned into a task.

• Comments can be pinned in the comment tab as "Important Comments" to increase their visibility.

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We've putting some polishing touches on our 'Share with Read Receipts' workflow and are excited to share it with the world.

Read Receipts is a way of sharing a doc that asks the recipients to acknowledge that they've seen and read the doc. Using the "Share with Read Receipts" workflow provides transparency and analytics to you around who's viewed and completed the task.

Here's how it works:

Embed images from Unsplash and GIFs from Giphy

You can now easily add royalty-free images to your docs from Unsplash as well as popular gifs from Giphy using the element menu.

Sundry Quality of Life Improvements

• Workspaces can have multiple handbooks for different teams, offices, or projects

• Lists (bullets or numbers) can be indented infinite times

• When clicking on a comment from an email notifications, you scroll directly to the comment on the doc

• Resolving comments is 300% faster

• Your Almanac Inbox is organized by default to docs with outstanding tasks

• Clicking on a mention in a doc gives you the option to View, Edit, or Unlink

This week we shipped an improved Inbox for every Almanac workspace. The refreshed Inbox helps you always know the status of what you have to do and what you've asked others to do—without having to meet or ping someone for an update.

You can now view:

• Approval Requests, Feedback Requests, and Read Receipts assigned to you or that you've assigned to others

• Tasks assigned to you or that you've assigned to others

• Comments you've been @mentioned in and comments you've @mentioned others in

You can also take actions directly from the Inbox:

• Mark a task as complete

• Delete a comment

• Send a reminder

• Cancel a request

Toggle Blocks

We've also added a new element to the doc editor: toggle blocks. Toggle blocks let you put information underneath a 🔻Toggle Block that can be collapsed for consolidated viewing.

This is great for times when you want to provide more context or information without distracting from the overall flow of the doc. Give your readers a choice to dive deeper or stay high-level!

Toggle Blocks can nest any type of element inside of them: text, headings, images, etc.

Command Line

Nearly every action you can take in Almanac is now available at your fingertips with our new Command Line. Use ⌘+K (Mac), Ctrl+K (Windows), or click the ⚡️ icon in the top right corner of any page to launch it and start typing to search for commands.

You can also use the Command Line to discover keyboard shortcuts that make you work even faster.

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We've introduced the ability to create a handbook for your Almanac workspace.

Handbooks can feature critical docs like company policies, new employee onboarding, vision and values, meeting agendas and notes, product specs, and marketing copy.

With a handbook, your distributed team has one-click access to all the information they need—so you can eliminate the Slack messages or Zooms asking "where's that doc again?!"

In Almanac, creating and using a handbook is super awesome:

• Populate the Handbook Index and have the navigation panel auto-update

• Easily find handbook docs in a tab in the left navigation panel

• @Mention docs in the Index to easily include in the Handbook and navigation panel

• Build out your Handbook Index with full doc editing capabilities including images, gifs, tables, and more.

Open-sourcing Almanac's Team handbook

If you're curious about how your handbook would look in Almanac, just take a look at ours:

We have decided to publish our own internal team handbook here for everyone to see.

The Almanac team handbook is our company's operating system: a central doc repository of the principles, structures, and systems we use to run the company.

As part of Almanac's virtues around ownership, results, and feedback, we encourage suggestions from employees on any of these pages to make sure they represent our latest processes, policies, and foremost thinking.

With the ability to suggest changes on any doc in the handbook, our documentation becomes crowd-sourced and no longer just one person's responsibility to ensure accuracy.