NEW EXTENSION - Reference finder for Onshape: instantly find tasks, communication, and documentation

alnis

With this extension, you can easily and automatically find all of the Trello cards, Slack messages, Confluence pages, Jira tickets, and Google Drive files that mention an Onshape document!

FAQ

What is a mention/reference? A link to an Onshape document like https://cad.onshape.com/documents/6eb1d47ad2b5b4b375c60fae/w/ea628258f7d101b3908e2cdb/e/46f26314ed97b202b6e45902
How does it work? It searches for the Onshape document ID using the external service's search API and reports back the results with some nice formatting. That's it!
I'd like it to connect with XYZ. How do I request that? More platforms will be added in the future. Info about submitting requests for more platforms is available on the website: https://referencefinder.net/
Sounds neat. How do I get it? Get it for free on the Onshape App Store: https://appstore.onshape.com/apps/Utilities/WXAYLRR4VZ6D37JNW77RZE6JQ4UOJZ46PBMQ7BQ=/description
How do I set it up and use it? Check out the tutorial:
https://youtu.be/iKx93WH0buA

Problems

**THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL ONSHAPE FEATURE, SO PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT ONSHAPE SUPPORT FOR HELP**
==> Instead, you can email me at contact@referencefinder.net with any questions, feedback, feature ideas, etc. 

Known issues:

• Confluence and Jira require you to put the document ID by itself like 6eb1d47ad2b5b4b375c60fae. Their search APIs don't find subsections of URLs.
• Google Drive needs links to be pasted right in the text. Having a link like this won't work.
• Slack needs an admin to add the app to your Slack workspace before regular members can add it.
• Trello sometimes takes a few minutes for results to be indexed. If you don't see a reference showing up, wait 5 minutes before emailing me.

Demo

MichaelPascoe

This is pretty sweet! Thanks for sharing.

alnis

Thanks for the kind words Michael! Hope it turns out to be helpful. Let me know if there are any services you would like to see it connect with.

MichaelPascoe

Will do.

Here is a question: For slack, can it search for specific text? I could see this being extremely useful, cross platform search.

alnis

Currently, it blocks searching for anything other than an Onshape ID (24 characters 0-9, a-f). This was added for security reasons so that if someone gets access to your computer with the extension open, they can't start searching for things like "password" and get results from all of the systems really quickly.

However, I can definitely see the use case for a search system like that! I will check to see if the TOS of Trello/Slack/Confluence/Jira/Drive allow you to search for arbitrary things through the API and will look into how this could be enabled while maximizing security & privacy. With a system that has access to multiple platforms like this, security is paramount!

MichaelPascoe

Good to know!