What moved while you were away

The Timeline

The Timeline is a page of Orbital's own. Open it from ⌘K with the row Timeline, under Views. The top of the page is about now: what you plan to do today and what is coming up. Below a thin rule is the history, newest first.

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1. Today's Tasks Tasks you pinned to today, plus open ones pinned to an earlier day, plus the tasks on today's page.
2. Add more Opens a search of your open tasks. Pick one and it is pinned to today.
3. Free time How long until your next meeting. It counts down while you look.
4. Upcoming meetings Today's meetings that have not started yet, earliest first.
5. Join in Tana The Tana glyph after a meeting opens it in Tana, where you join the call.
6. Faces Who else is in the meeting, after its time.

A meeting whose title starts with Travel is marked with a route between two pins instead of the calendar, so time on the road stands apart from time with people.

Right-click a meeting, or select it, and Copy link in ⌘K copies that meeting's link (Copy link). The same works on any other entry: you get the link of the node it is about.

Today's Tasks

This list is your plan for the day. A task lands here in three ways: you pin it to today, it was pinned to an earlier day and is still open, or it is on today's page (the Today document, see Pins & dates). Tasks you finish today stay in the list, ticked, so you can see what you got done. With nothing left it says All done - Add more.

Add more

Click Add more under the list. A search of the open tasks assigned to you opens. Type to narrow it, press ↩, and the task is pinned to today. It shows in Today's Tasks straight away.

Free time and upcoming meetings

The line with the relaxed face says how long you have before the next meeting: "No meetings for 44 more minutes", or "1 hour and 20 more minutes". During a meeting it says how much room there is after it: "No meetings for 30 minutes after this one". It counts down by itself and disappears when meetings run back to back.

Under it, Upcoming meetings lists today's meetings that are still to come, each with its time and the faces of the other people in it. Click one to select it and again to open it, or click its icon. A meeting under way that is being recorded or transcribed gets a small blue marker with a ring pulsing out of it, so you can see at a glance that a call is on the record.

What happened, newest first

Under the rule, the Timeline tells the story of the last days. Each entry has a time on the left, a marker on the rail and one sentence: who did what to which node. Entries are grouped by day: Today, Yesterday, then the date.

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1. Time When it happened, on a 24-hour clock.
2. Blue dot New since you last opened the Timeline.
3. Added to your Inbox A run of new tasks from one source is one quiet line, with the tasks under it. The robot means an agent put them there.
4. Completed A green tick and a struck title for finished work.
5. Edited A pen, with Tana's summary of the change quoted under it.
6. Added by a person A dotted ring marks tasks a colleague gave you.
7. A meeting you were in Shown at its start, with its length and who else was there.
8. Day sections Today, Yesterday, then the date. Each folds like any group.

Click an entry to select it, and click it again, or press ↩, to open the node it is about. Its bullet opens it at once, and ⌘- or ⌥-click opens it in a new tab or a floating pane. Your own changes stay out: the Timeline is about what others did.

Where the history comes from

Two things feed the history: the nodes you watch (the ones with a bell, see Watching a task) and the tasks assigned to you in the last two weeks. Watch a node and its changes start showing here. Stop watching it and they stop.

Three more days

The page opens on today and the two days before. Scroll to the end and it reads three more days by itself; the Show three more days line at the bottom does the same when you click it, and says "Loading…" while it works.

Notifications

Notifications is Tana's own inbox of notices, shown as a page: someone assigned you a task, added you to a meeting, archived a type. Open it from ⌘K with Notifications; its hint says how many are unread, such as "2 unread".

Read and unread

An unread notification has a blue dot where the bullet would be. Click the dot to mark it read; click the grey one to make it unread again. Opening a row, with ↩, Space or a click on its words, marks it read and takes you to what it is about. When that is something Orbital has no page for, it opens in Tana.

In ⌘K, Mark as read and Mark as unread act on the rows you are on or have selected. Mark all as read clears them all; its hint gives the count, and it turns grey when nothing is unread.

Proposals

When Tana's AI suggests something in a chat or a meeting, such as a new document, a change or an action in another tool, it waits for someone to accept it. The Proposals page collects everything waiting on you. Open it from ⌘K with Proposals; the hint says how many are pending.

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1. Send to Slite An action in another system. Approving it runs it there; the button names the system, or says "Run".
2. Approve Accepts a proposed new document. It joins your Tana as it was proposed.
3. Reject Turns the proposal down. Works on every kind.
4. Approve in Tana A change or deletion Tana merges itself. Approve is grey here, with the reason on hover.
5. From others Proposals from meetings you were not in, or chats of a space or a colleague. Folded until you open it.

Approve or reject

Each row is the proposed document itself, with a grey line saying where it was proposed ("Proposed in Board prep") and when. Press Space to look inside it. The two buttons at the end of the row answer it: the row leaves in green for a yes and in red for a no. ⌘K has the same pair as Approve proposal and Reject proposal, for the row you are on or a selection.

If Tana refuses, the row comes back and a note says why.

Keys in this chapter

None of these pages has a key of its own out of the box. Each is a ⌘K row, so you can give it one: highlight the row and press ⇧⌘K.