Setting up a collection

A collection is a group of pages. Use it like a folder to keep pages together, or like a database, with properties, views and filters. For more advanced uses, extend it with custom code, as a plugin, to add your own views, buttons and integrations.

A simple list of docs, projects with a status and an owner, a visual board with renovation ideas, meeting notes with a date, customers with a stage and contact details: each is a collection. Every entry stays a full page where you write, add tasks and drop files.

Views are different ways of looking at the same pages. For example, you can show a collection as a table and as a board, or make several boards, such as one by Status and another by Quarter. More about the available view types below.

Click the + next to Collections in the sidebar, give the new collection a name and an icon, and you have a collection with a list of pages. Add properties and views as you need them. The Roadmap example walks through the whole setup, click by click.

One or more collections

You can create as many or as few collections as you like. Your first workspace starts with a Journal and a Notes collection, and new pages go into Notes. Add more collections over time, or add new views to an existing one.

Default collection

A workspace has a default collection. New pages you create with ⌃NAlt+N go there, and ⌘KCtrl+K offers it first. Admins choose it with Set Default Collection. To move a page to another collection later, use Move…; see Pages.

Collection Settings

Collection Settings…, in the collection’s menu or the command palette, has all of a collection’s settings:

• Properties: the fields every page in this collection has. See Properties.
• Views: how the pages are shown. Add a view with Add View, pick its type, and choose its columns, sort order, grouping and filter. See Views.
• Pages: how the sidebar lists the collection’s pages under Display in Sidebar, as a list, as sub-pages, by date, or grouped or nested by a property, which property sorts them, and whether they appear in the command palette. See The sidebar.
• Related: a query shown at the top of every page in the collection, such as all tasks that link to the page. See Live queries.
• Edit Code: the collection’s configuration as JSON, plus optional JavaScript for formulas and custom views. See Collection plugins.

Changes apply to everyone in the workspace, so rename a property rather than deleting and recreating it: the values stay attached.

Trash a collection

Move to Trash on a collection trashes it with its pages. Restore Collection from Trash in its settings brings it back.