Using the left sidebar

The left sidebar is a navigation tool that allows you to select your most commonly-used nodes as entry points to your Discourse Graph.

The default left sidebar that ships with the Roam Research app can be used to surface items in a shared graph to everyone’s attention or to promulgate a group workflow.

The Discourse Graph extension allows users of a shared graph to supplement these global shortcuts with personal shortcuts visible only to that user, including pages, blocks, SmartBlock buttons, and live queries.

Installing the left sidebar

1. Open the Discourse Graph plugin settings and go to Global Settings.
2. Select Home and check Left Sidebar.

Note that this is a global setting and activating it will enable it for all users in the graph. If it is already checked ☑️, someone in your graph has already enabled the plugin.

Enabling the left sidebar

Additions to the basic Roam sidebar

The standard left sidebar that ships with the Roam app has a space for shortcuts. However, these cannot be personalized for individual users of a shared graph.

The standard Roam left sidebar

The Discourse Graph left sidebar allows users to set both Global and Personal shortcuts for team and individual use. Choose shortcuts for your team under Global Settings → Left Sidebar, and choose personal shortcuts visible only to you under Personal Settings → Left Sidebar.

Setting left sidebar shortcuts visible to everyone in a shared graph

Creating left sidebar shortcuts visible only to yourself

Opening the left sidebar settings

Click the Settings to the right of the FAVORITES heading. A small menu will appear with two options:

1. Global Section — edit shortcuts visible to everyone in the graph.
2. Personal Section — edit shortcuts visible only to you.

Adding Global shortcuts

Adding Personal shortcuts

Refreshing the plugin

Sidebar features

The global section

Add pages (or blocks, commands, and queries — see below) under Global Settings → Left Sidebar → Children. Anything here is visible to all users of the graph, so add with care.

Folding is now personal. Click the chevron next to GLOBAL to collapse it — this only affects your view, not other users’. This lets you tuck away team shortcuts you don’t use often without hiding them for everyone.

Hiding unused shortcuts

Personal sections

1. Open Personal Settings → Left Sidebar (or the Settings icon → Personal Section). Use the “Add section …” box to add items.

2. Click the ➕ (Add children) icon on that item to convert it into a named section that groups several child pages under one collapsible heading. Sections with children get a chevron to expand/collapse. You can add children to a section with the “Add child page…” box and remove them with the trash icon.

This is an example of a personalized left sidebar: FAVORITES with a GLOBAL section for all users of the shared graph — here an Updates Dashboard and a focal project — and beneath it are a few personal sections, e.g., one of them called “MEETINGS”. Users can create multiple named personal shortcut sections.

Query sections

You can pin a query to have its live results show up as shortcuts in the sidebar.

In Personal Settings → Left Sidebar, paste a block reference ((block-uid)) pointing to a block that contains a {{query block}} into the “Add section …” box. That query will be added to your left sidebar, and the query results will be rendered as children of the query.

adding a query block to the left sidebar

You can use the Settings menu (highlighted in yellow above) to add an Alias (display title) for the query section, limit the number of results to display, and truncate the number of characters to display for each character result.

Viewing query results in the sidebar

You can use the three-dot menu to re-run the query or navigate to the query block in your graph

Adding blocks, SmartBlocks, & commands

Blocks, SmartBlocks, and Commands can be added to your sidebar as child blocks of sidebar shortcuts.

Blocks

Add a block reference ((block-uid)) as the child of a shortcut; clicking it opens that block.

Here we’ve added a shortcut called “Left Sidebar Tips”. The block is then added as a child of that shortcut

Clicking on the left sidebar block shortcut navigates to that block

SmartBlock buttons

SmartBlock buttons added to the left sidebar will render and run directly in the sidebar.

Here we added a link to the Create Journal Club Session button as a child of a personal “Journal Club” shortcut

Clicking on the Create Journal Club Session SmartBlock button will open the Journal Club modal

Commands

Use the ⚙️ / cog popover in the Global or Personal settings menu to add a built-in command, which will appear in the sidebar as a button.

Here we are adding the create node command, which opens the discourse node creation flow

Clicking on the button (dimmed in the sidebar) opens the node creation modal

Using the section settings

Click the Settings icon next to any item to set an Alias — a custom label shown in place of the page/block title (the real title appears in grey beside it in Settings).

The Settings icon

You can also use the Settings menu to rename the section, select the number of characters to display for each item (max 75), and select the maximum number of children to display.

Additional Settings

Rearranging shortcuts

You can now use drag-and-drop actions to reorder sections, child pages, and Global items by dragging them — both in the sidebar itself and in the settings panels.

Rearrange your shortcuts using drag-and-drop