Floaters Docs → Use Cases

Using grouped notes to complete a task

Quite often when working, tasks or problems will come up where we need a scratchpad. But then it grows from there: need to craft a response to the team, a response to the customer, notes for related tasks, etc. Floaters helps you solve this by linking together related windows as you work.

I. Task Received

Say we get an email from a coworker with the basic gist:

Hi,

The user sample@sample.com can’t access parts of their data. Can you check if there’s a permissions issue or another cause? Let me know if you need details.

Thanks, Billy Bob

II. Start scratchpad note

So we'll quickly create a blank floater using the global keyboard shortcut ⌘⌥` and jot down their email address, sample@sample.com. But we'll also need to find the user's internal ID number for referencing in the database while working on the issue. And from there, as always, it grows.

Scratchpad

III. Add tasks, notes, files, etc to scratch pad

We might start to recognize a few issues in the process that need to be addressed, and add them as tasks within the original floater.

Tasks in Scratchpad

IV. Draft response to coworker in new floater linked to scratchpad

But then as we start digging, we realize we need to draft a response to the original email explaining what we've found. Sure, you could do this directly in your mail app. But it's much quicker and more convenient to pull up Floaters with a keystroke and have all of the other scratch notes in view, without having to go back to the mail app.

So we'll press ⌘N from our scratchpad, and choose a side to link the new note:

Draft linked response

V. Draft response to customer in new linked floater

And eventually, the user themselves might need some instructions on how to proceed. So we can continue from there. All of these notes are very closely related. Working on them together in a unified app saves time and reduces the amount of needlessly switching between apps to resolve the issue.