Plugins
Otis
Otis
Otis is the assistant in the drawer on the right of every page. It reads docu.nexus as you, and every change it proposes is a card you accept or skip before anything is written.
Otis is paid (SKU otis). Its settings are under Admin -> Otis.
Writing a message
Enter sends your message and Shift+Enter starts a new line. On a touch screen, Enter starts a new line and the send button sends. Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on a Mac) sends on any device. The message box is the same editor as a channel’s, with the same formatting bar and keys (see Formatting a message).
Otis in channels
With Chat licensed as well, anyone can ask @Otis in a channel Otis has been let into, in a page’s chat or in an inline comment, and Otis posts its answer there for everyone. See Asking Otis.
Cards
A change Otis wants to make waits as a card with its own Accept and Skip. Nothing is written until you press one.
When one answer brings several changes, they are shown together as one block that says how many there are and which tools they use. Accept all runs them in the order they were proposed, each as its own change; Skip all runs none of them. Open the block to read each change and answer it on its own instead.
Some changes need what an earlier one makes, such as a page that goes under a page Otis has not created yet. Those wait for it, and say so. If the change they were waiting for is skipped, or runs and is refused, they cannot run either: they settle by themselves, marked Not run, with the reason on each. You are not asked to clear them one at a time.
Reporting a problem
Where this instance sends reports to the product’s maintainers (the app then has Send feedback), you can ask Otis to report a bug, pass on feedback or ask for a feature. Otis writes the type, the title and the description from what you told it and holds them as a report card. Nothing is sent until you press Send report.
What only you can add goes on the card, and never through Otis:
- Take a screenshot. Otis’s panel goes blank and your browser asks what to share, offering this tab first. A window or your whole screen is on offer too, and shows everything on it, so check the picture before you send it. If you close the browser’s dialog instead, nothing is attached and you can upload an image.
- Upload an image: a PNG, JPEG or WebP picture of up to 10 MB. On a phone or a tablet, or where the site is served over plain
http, the browser cannot capture the screen, so the card says why and offers the upload alone. - Retake or Remove the picture until it is the one you want.
- Let the team reply to me at your account’s email address. It is off until you tick it, and the address goes with the report only then. An account with no email address is told so, and the box is not offered.
- What will be sent lists the picture, your browser, your screen size and the page you are on.
While it sends, the card reads Sending…. It then folds to Accepted and keeps the reference number in view with a button that copies it; the report is also listed under Your recent reports in the Send feedback form, and Otis is told the reference when it carries on. If the reporting service turns the report down, the card says why in the service’s own words. To change what Otis wrote, skip the card and tell Otis what to change: Skip sends nothing and drops the picture, and so does reloading the page before you send.
A report card is never part of a block: Accept all and Skip all leave it for you to answer on its own, because they cannot see what you added to it.
Otis never sees the picture or your address. The report leaves this instance for the maintainers’ tracker. What stays here is the settled card and a row in the audit log, which describe the picture (its type and size) and never hold it.
Commands
A message that starts with a command is not sent to the model. Otis does the work itself and shows the result as one card.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/pull <link> | Brings the linked page into the page you have open. The content goes into the page’s draft, after the link to it (or at the end), under a line naming the source and the date. You publish it when you are ready. |
/refactor | On a page that is mostly a list of links, sorts the links into groups and writes a section for each group that sums up what its links say, with the links listed under it as Sources. The sections go at the end of the same page’s draft. |
/pull takes a link to a page on this instance, or a web page where the page you pull into is in a nexus with outside web pages switched on (below). A page you cannot read is not pulled. A page you can read but not edit cannot be pulled into. The card flags a private page pulled into one more people can read, and a page from another space.
Pictures already on this instance keep their address. Pictures from outside are copied into this instance when you insert, where outside web pages are switched on; a picture that cannot be copied becomes a link to where it is. A skipped card copies nothing.
/refactor first shows the groups as one card: grouped by the page’s own headings when the links sit under them, otherwise by Otis, or by site when Otis cannot. Accepting it reads the linked pages and writes each section as its own card, so you can insert the sections you want and skip the rest. A section Otis could not write up is a plain digest of the first lines of each source, and says so. Every link stays listed as a source, including those that were not read: at most three outside web pages are read per /refactor, and none where the page’s nexus has outside web pages switched off, since what they say would be written there.
Outside web pages
Under Admin -> Otis -> Nexuses, each nexus has an Outside web pages switch, off by default. While it is off, nothing read from a web page outside this instance is written into that nexus: not by /pull or /refactor, and not by a change Otis drafts in a conversation that has read a web page. Reading is not stopped: Otis can read a link you give it and tell you what it says, in any conversation, even one opened outside every nexus. The switch is asked of the nexus the change would land in, when Otis drafts it and again when you accept it. An agent token scoped to the nexus reads outside web pages only while the switch is on.
When Otis is stopped by the switch, the conversation shows it plainly: which nexus, and what to do. An instance administrator gets a button that opens this list with that nexus’s switch in view; anyone else is told to ask an instance administrator to switch on Outside web pages for that nexus. Once it is on, ask Otis again, or press Accept on the card again if it was the card that was stopped.
Copying a web page into your documentation is a rights question, and it is yours. docu.nexus fetches only the page you name, attributes it on the page, and never signs in anywhere to read it, but it cannot tell you whether you may reproduce it. Switch outside web pages on for a nexus only where you are content to answer that for the pages its members will pull.