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Allow to search Files by Project
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Description

It would be nice if I could get a list of files that are somehow associated to a project. This would include files that are included on wiki pages a project has access to, Maniphest tasks it is associated with, etc.

This feature was requested by our users, which come from Redmine, where there is a "documents" application listing all files with comments. In Phabricator they mimic this by uploading files via wiki pages, but sometimes they want to quickly find a file that was uploaded to (i.e. embedded in) any of a project's wiki pages.

Event Timeline

devurandom raised the priority of this task from to Needs Triage.
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devurandom renamed this task from Allow to search Files by project to Allow to search Files by Project.Aug 11 2015, 1:51 PM

"Anything associated to a Project" would be a poor experience, in most cases. I think deliberate file storage for Projects is what you're specifically wanting?

More on the usecases:

  • We often have meetings on the phone where someone writes a log/summary and sends the file via email. It would be great to be able to additionally store these logs in Phabricator.
  • Many of our projects start with an application for some funding, then receive an approval from the ministry, and then regularly send reports there. We would like to store them easily accessible in Phabricator.

We did that in Redmine before: We created a "document" with a short description and attached the file(s) (usually PDF or ODT) there.

I personally think that embedding (links to) the files into wiki pages is great. But on the Files backend this creates a jumbled dump of files, which makes it difficult to find a file that you know must be on some wiki page of #project.

  • I could imagine tagging files to order them - that would allow to easily find them later.
  • Tagging wiki pages would also be great - e.g. to create a bidirectional link between a project and its wiki pages.
  • If a file that was uploaded by dropping it onto a wiki page (as in: drag & drop) would automatically be tagged with the tags of that wiki page, that would solve our problem.

Wiki page tags would be passed on to pages further down the path. Moving a page to another location would retain the tags and apply any new ones from further up the hierarchy.

epriestley moved this task from Backlog to v3 on the Files board.
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I don't plan to support this. I think "files attached to any object tagged with this project" is not likely to be a useful view in most situations, and haven't seen other requests for this. We inched into this territory with a "files" module in Conpherence some time ago and it was felt pretty much useless in practice.

If you want to keep track of particular project files, you can already attach them directly to the project by embedding them in the project description, or organize your wiki in a more standard way so you can easily find relevant information in it, or use tasks as containers.

A future version of Files is likely to have directories and directory structures, which will provide more tools.