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Make it easier to add books to reading challenges
Shipped
Mar 4, 2021
As of now, one has to go to the specific book they want to add to a challenge. instead, it would be much easier for a challenge we have already joined to be able to add directly a book to the prompt we want. otherwise it is very tiring. also, it would be good to be able to add a book on multiple challenges in an easier way than having to select each challenge individually.
Comments
Not sure if this has already been mentioned in a similar thread, but I would love a way for the "Add book to reading challenge" button to also allow you to add it to challenges that are set up as "each prompt is a specific book." I mostly use that style of challenge and right now you can only quick add them to the challenges that are set up as prompts, so I have to go back in and edit the challenge to add a new book.
murve Right, this is given you're the host. This was more for a participant's perspective, so I reckon, if there isn't one already (if there isn't, I've definitely heard this feedback), a new post should be made for this functionality when you're the host of a "Book" reading challenge.
Progress update:
Nadia not sure if this is intended, but after I search for a book, if I then right click and try to open it in a new tab, I get an error page: https://app.thestorygraph.com/add-prompt-attempt?book_id=2e9c6480-1ad3-4bfd-80a1-435ce5ce57df&reading_challenge_prompt_id=48771c8e-4e3e-4b4d-b6de-b1f98e4dd123
Also seeing some weird search results when I search for "burn" for example.
(sorry for all the bugs, I'm just excitedly trying the new features out 😆)
onthesamepage The links are not meant to be opened in a new tab! It's a "click to add to prompt" thing. I'll have to see what I can do about people tabbing like you are. The search algorithm itself is exactly the same as the main search one and from a quick test myself, it looks like only the 'b' in your search term was registered. Might have been a random network thing!
And nothing to apologise for at all with reporting bugs! We need that. It makes the product better!
onthesamepage Okay, I've made it so that when you tab over it opens the book page now! :-D
Nadia you are amazing! 😍
A question for y'all!
Please see attached image.
When selecting a book from here, I imagined anywhere on a given book's row would just automatically add the selected book to the prompt for you (and it'd appear above the search bar alongside any other books you've added).
Now I'm wondering whether you'd expect/need a way to get to the book page from that dropdown? Or if you're using that dropdown, it's likely you won't need to visit the book page before selecting to add the book to the prompt, i.e. you know the book you're looking for, you just want to add it promptly!
Let me know. Thank you!
Nadia For me, I wasn't expecting a way to get to the book page from the drop down. If I'm searching for a book to add I already know it's details :)
Nadia - I also wasn't expecting to get to the book page from here. Once it's added, I would be able to click on it to view just like we do today?
Nadia same as others have said, I wouldn't need a link
Nadia, I agree with what everyone else is saying. These changes are going to be a game changer for adding to prompts. As long as I can click through, this works great.
christina_reads_books Yes, exactly! And then immediately remove it if you change your mind. 😆
Nadia Agreed with everyone else!
Nadia same as everyone else!!
Nadia definitely want to +1 to everyone above, plus an option to open the book page from this dropdown adds a complication with potential change of context (if I was adding books to a prompt and suddenly get taken to the book page, e.g. in the app it will have to open a completely new page since there are no tabs?). So I'd say those items in the dropdown should be non-clickable!
Nadia +1 to what's already been said. Additionally, would the dropdown menu only show the books read that year (rather than the full catalogue of all books)?
jothelibrarian No, it'll be the full catalogue, which is what the request has been. It's a feature to add any book, whether in advance (the most common use case) or retrospectively, and not all challenges are year-long ones. Several have no dates at all.
Nadia Wonderful, thanks for clarifying. And thank you so much for implementing this feature!
Progress update:
Nadia omggggg those new filters and search box are incredible!!!! Had to go run and check it out when I got the email update about this, that's going to save me SO much time!!! 🙌
jaina8851 Oh yay! I'm SO delighted that you think so! Thank you for the feedback. 😊
jaina8851 same!!!!!!
jaina8851 love the checkboxes as well! Will similar filtering options be available from the challenge page?
Dare I say that this is finally back in progress and I hope to finish it once and for all this time? 😅
Today I've made it clearer from the book page's action menu when you've already added a book to a reading challenge (on top of the Activity Pane added several months ago), added prompt numbers to the prompt list on the 'Add to reading challenge' page, and added a search bar where you can filter prompts down by description or number!
Progress update:
Can I add another bit of feedback to this? Is there a way for books to automatically be linked for everyone on a challenge where there are specific books vs a prompt? Like a Reese’s book club list for example, and when you join it already has all the books you’ve read marked as complete because they’re already linked vs needing to go into each prompt and add the book.
kmrose That's what this post is for: https://roadmap.thestorygraph.com/features/posts/reading-challenges-with-book-specific-prompts :-D
Nadia Amazing! Thank you!
My app has crashed several times while I have been organizing and adding books to the first reading challenge I have created, on both my iPad and my iPhone.
theremightbecupcakes Please can you screen record next time you're organising the challenge and then send that in to support@thestorygraph.com next time this happens so we can take a look?
Would it be possible to include the “Add to reading challenge” button on each book in a tag list?
I tag heavily to categorise my books. I’m currently attempting to add several of my ‘tbr-april’ tagged books to a reading challenge, but rather than just click on the tag to get a filtered list, I additionally have to go look at the book itself.
[edit] ahhh, now I notice “add to reading challenge” is not present on lists of books in a series either. So it’s wider than just tagged lists, and thus may be intentional.
tuftymctavish Hehe — yes, it's not available in any list view yet because we don't yet have the flow to not take you out of the list!
I love the Activity box on the book page that tells us what challenges we've added the book to. Will the challenges listed there become clickable? I keep trying to! Watching these reading challenge changes happen really gives an appreciation for how complicated the architecture is!
amber_brookins Hehe! Thank you! I started to make them clickable but stopped because I wasn't sure what behaviour people would expect — there were a few options I saw. Where would you expect to go after clicking the challenge name?
Nadia Not the OP but I also have been really excited about those new boxes (esp since it shows challenges that have been archived!!! 🎉). I would expect it to take me to the main challenge page but scrolled down to the prompt where I added it. So like, if I click on the challenge in the (hopefully) first screenshot, I would expect it to take me to something like the (hopefully) second screenshot, where it's not just the top-of-screen for the challenge but instead is scrolled down to the relevant place.
ETA: of course the screenshots are out of order haha, but hopefully you understand what I mean!
jaina8851 I purposefully made sure everyone who has voted on this post got an email when I replied to the OP so that I could have more feedback on it before a change was made, so thank you very much. :-D
Nadia Agreed w/ jaina8851 , I would just expect to go to the challenge's main page and have to select the prompt from there
Nadia I second what Jaina8851 said! The challenge page, but scrolled down to the relevant prompt
Can a filter be added to the TBR “not added to your reading challenges”? I use reading challenges primarily to blow through my TBR, so knowing what hasn’t been added would be super helpful.
trejondunkley Thank you for this suggestion! Not sure if this will come as part of this work (or at all) but I'll keep it in mind!
trejondunkley I do the same thing!
Back on hold whilst I work on the redesign and 2022 Wrap-Up. Will be a priority once agin in the New Year!
Sorry everyone!
I noticed when I was working on my reading challenge lists for next year you guys made it so that any edition of a book counts toward a prompt it's added to and jus wanted to say thanks. That is so unbelievably helpful!
drusjella Awww yay! Glad you spotted that. That was the very first thing I did as part of this work. :-D
Sorry everybody! I've had to pause work on this longer than I'd like due to prioritising the general redesign, the stats, the 2022 wrap-up and January Pages 2023. I'll be back on this as soon as I can!
Can you show descriptions of prompts on the challenge page instead of having to click into the specific prompt page?
trejondunkley They are on the challenge page! (Unless you meant while adding books to prompts, for which I reckon that'll be rather cluttered.)
Nadia Could you maybe include the numbering then? It's difficult scrolling through some of these challenge lists at times because they're very long and as it is now it just lists the name when you're adding a book to a challenge, not the number of the prompt. I reckon it would be easier to find the right prompt if I can look for the number instead of trying to guess how many prompts I've scrolled past.
So excited for this! I use reading challenges for everything!
It sounds like y'all are in the process of rolling out changes gradually, but I just want to note that it's a lot harder now to add a book to a challenge from the book page, because the link is buried within other links. If I recall correctly, there used to be a more prominent section for this that drew your eye on the bottom left under the review sidebar.
rlgreen91 We are! The problem is that the flow was difficult for people as you kept on being redirected back to the book page and having to start again.
We needed a way to direct people to a landing page that they could stay on until they were done with their changes. Initially finding the link, especially the first time, will be harder. But, we hope people will get used to the change(s). There's pretty much always an adjustment period when things are moved around, even when things are objectively better for most people (e.g. the recent shifting of the To-Read Pile above Recommendations on the homepage. People, including myself, still mis-click).
That being said, changes are still in-progress and we are listening to your feedback as we implement them. Also, the design of the book page is in itself something that will be improved upon — there are other things that people struggle to find, but the main focus of this first step was getting to the new landing page, and not redesigning the page, so adding a link to the already-existing link was an easy option — and we recognise that at the moment it's not easy to see if a book has already been added to challenges.
I might be in the minority... But I don't like the new way you add books to a challenge. It’s harder to tell from the book page if a book has been added to any of my challenges.
rebeccap We'll be adding a way to make it clear from the book page if a book has already been added to challenges (by you), and which ones.
Nadia Okay awesome! I almost didn’t comment but every time I went to use that feature it would take me a minute to find the challenges button.
rebeccap Please always comment! I wasn't going to add this change in this body of work but we've heard this feedback from enough people for me to adapt it sooner rather than later. :-D
rebeccap We've now made it easy once again to see which challenges you've added a book to from the book page!
This will be happening in stages and will encompass:
So excited for this one! Would be a great help for me, since I use the Reading challenges for a lot of organisation
There are some other features (mainly search-related ones) that we need to do before this one!
I second that too!
To add to this suggestion would also be great to be able to see a list of all prompts from challenges you have joined so you can easily find a prompt to add to (I don’t always remember what challenge it is in so have to check each one to place the book)