Attachment Links Keep Breaking

Ramst3r
Ramst3r
Community Member
edited May 2018 in Families

As far as I can tell, the woeful user experience of attachments breaking when transferring items to other vaults within our family has not improved under 1Password7. Am I correct?

This issue has been around since 2016 so I would have expected this to be resolved by now, and certainly within 1Password7. So, as far as I can tell 1Password7 is nothing more than an UI upgrade with some prettier colors?

One of many forum references ... https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/76939/documents-item-reference-functionality-is-an-absolute-dumpster-fire.


1Password Version: 1Password7 Families
_Extension Version:
Not Provided
OS Version: Not Provided
Sync Type: Not Provided
Referrer: forum-search:Attachments

Comments

  • Corey_C
    Corey_C
    Community Member

    Hi there @Ramst3r

    Yes, you are correct. Linked items do break the link when switching from one vault to another. The issue here is largely that when you move items, you are actually creating brand new items rather than moving the existing ones. The unfortunate side effect of that is that links are broken. Fixing that would likely be part of changing how links work entirely. One of our developers commented on why things are the way they are in that aspect. It's got more to do with linking documents vs attachments, but it still make be of interest for you to read. https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/comment/436371/#Comment_436371

    As for 1Password 7, it is far more than a UI upgrade. While the new design is certainly part of it, 1Password 7 is a brand new app built from the ground up. There are plenty of new features such as the duplicates detector, the brand new and rebuilt Watchtower with Troy Hunt's Pwned Passwords service built right in, rich text support in secure notes, nested tags, drag and drop and more.

    At the same time, a good chunk of 1Password 7's major upgrades are under the hood. For example, 1Password for Mac now stores your Touch ID encryption key in the Secure Enclave. 1Password also now runs as a single process, rather than the main app and 1Password mini being two separate processes as they were before, eliminating any connection issues and providing a far more secure connection between the two parts of the app.

  • I think you make some really fair point @Ramst3r. Part of our job is to explan the current status and to offer suggestions regarding working wthin the constraints of “now.” So that is part of why you’re getting the kind of response you’re getting. But please don’t think that is all that comes of it. We aren’t always great at properly communicating it, but even when we say things like “this is how it works right now” we are evaluating how we can do things better and taking that sort of feedback into consideration. Is there room for improvement here? Absolutely. And we’ll continue to iterate. :)

    Thanks.

    Ben

  • RoyS
    RoyS
    Community Member

    I agree with Ramst3r.

    How can Agile Bits promote family use when one can't move an item between vaults without breaking attachment links?

    This is a major design flaw and it should be a priority to fix it.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @RoyS: This isn't a "design flaw" or a bug that needs to be fixed. Most people don't want all of their family members to have access to all of their data. The links break because items are being created in a different vault with completely different encryption keys, which is how you're able to keep things securely separated. If we can find a way to make it more convenient in the future without compromising security we will, but security has to come first.

  • One thing that we’re looking at is implementing attachements in 1Password memberships in addition to Documents, and that may be a potential solution to this problem. Attachments are more intrinsically linked to their “parent” item than Documents, which are only referenced from other items.

    Unfortunately I don’t think anything is going to change in this regard in the imediate future, but it is a problem that we’re well aware of (must of us a big Documents users ourselves), and so it is something we’re thinking about. Still in the brainstorming phase at this point and trying to determine the best path forward.

    I don’t think brenty was trying to show contempt, only to explain some of the challenges with implementing a feature like this. Not everyone will assume that by moving an item with links on it all of the links will move as well. In some cases that would certainly not be the desired behavior.

    Ben

  • RoyS
    RoyS
    Community Member

    @Ben

    Seems perfectly reasonable to expect that moving an item which links to a document in the same vault would move the item and the document to the destination vault and update the link. Broken links surprise and confuse users.

    Have you done any usability testing in this area?

    I would not like to see two flavours of documents (attachments and stand-alone). It is inelegant and confusing.

    An short term improvement would be better documentation about the limitations of of shared vaults. Marketing might not like that, but customers would.

    Roy

  • @RoyS,

    Seems perfectly reasonable to expect that moving an item which links to a document in the same vault would move the item and the document to the destination vault and update the link. Broken links surprise and confuse users.

    I understand your perspective, but this is certainly not the universally agreed upon expectation. For example, I link all of my credit cards to the Login items associated with them. I often need to share credit card details with a family member or colleague, but I absolutely do NOT want to share the Login item with them.

    I would not like to see two flavours of documents (attachments and stand-alone). It is inelegant and confusing.

    Thanks for the feedback.

    Ben

  • RoyS
    RoyS
    Community Member

    I don't think you understand my perspective. Your example assumes a 1:1 relationship between data objects. They don't have to travel together. There are richer ways to build data relationships. They don't have to be bidirectional. They don't all have to be the same for all objects.

    1password has been great at cryptography. That's why I was an early adopter.

    Now it is time to add usability and database skills to your repertoire.

    Roy

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    I don't think Ben was assuming anything, Roy. :) And yep, the reason it works the way it does now is because of cryptography: items have to be created and encrypted in the new vault, which has it's own discrete database and keys for security.

    We do understand your perspective, but I hope you'll appreciate that while the way it works now is not perfect for all use cases, your "it works this way sometimes, and different others" solution would also be bad for usability for many people. When a user asks "Will my linked items be linked in both directions?" or "Will my linked items move/copy together?", an answer of "It depends; it's not the same for all objects" would be, to put it mildly, unhelpful.

    We agree completely that there's room for improvement. And there are a number of things we can do to help usability. The trick is doing so without adding unnecessary complexity or introducing additional confusion for the user. We're not going to make changes in this area unless we can find a good solution and present it in a way that is less confusing than it is now. ;)

  • RoyS
    RoyS
    Community Member

    We agree completely that there's room for improvement. And there are a number of things we can do to help usability. The trick is doing so without adding unnecessary complexity or introducing additional confusion for the user. We're not going to make changes in this area unless we can find a good solution and present it in a way that is less confusing than it is now.

    I look forward to a good solution that is less confusing. Best wishes for success.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    Thanks so much for the encouragement, and your passion for this! :chuffed:

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @Ramst3r: I'm in general agreement with your assessment. I'll just say that we're more motivated to work on other things that are either more pressing or have received more interest from 1Password members. I have no doubt that we'll get to this too, but I'm actually glad that this isn't at the top of our list now because there are a lot of factors to consider (along with semantics) before we make significant changes in this area across half a dozen apps. We'd rather wait until we have a good spec that can be implemented across the board rather than have to redo things yet again in the future. :)

This discussion has been closed.