When publishing components, I’m finding the publish mechanism has some holes in it.
My design system uses several dozen pages, so if Figma says a component is changed I often have trouble finding it - simply showing the path in the publish dialog would be really helpful here [like in the attached example, Activity Tiles (page) / Complete Disabled (component)].
Figma shows components as modified, and often I can’t tell what’s changed about them - did someone add a line to the description (no problem), or change the constraints (potentially a problem)? Sometimes it’s possible to use version history on this, but too often it’s not.
I propose a few new capabilities:
“Go to component”: takes you to that component in the library - just like the “Go to main component in library” already does our design files.
“Show differences”: like developers have, the ability to see what’s different between the published version of a component and the current component in the library.
“Roll back changes”: the ability to say “I don’t care what’s been done to this component lately, take it back to what it was when I last published it.”
Publish changes to descriptions and documentation links without requiring a full push of the component. They can’t affect anyone’s existing designs, they shouldn’t require the same rigor when publishing.
I work in a large organization in a large design system that I inherited from other designers before me. Yes, some of these problems can be avoided with a meticulously maintained library and iron-fisted control over access - but also, it shouldn’t be this hard. I shouldn’t break out in a flop sweat every time I hit the Publish button. The rollback feature doesn’t have to be some complicated versioning nightmare - you already know what the last published version of a component is, it’s what every file is pulling in from the asset panel. Just roll back to that.
Thoughts on publishing:
Publishing descriptions separately from the component (my dumb image should say “publish description,” not “publish comments”):
It would be sooooo helpful to be able to do a few things with publishing;
In the publish window, allow search or grouping to refine the list, we have multiple designers working on various stages of components and need to constantly scan the list and select the ones to publish.
If its a library file, allow publishing from the Artwork itself… i.e. right click and publish this component etc
in an updated document it would be good to be able to quickly highlight the recently updated components so its easy to scan throught and see what has changed. i.e. just tint in magenta or something so that you can see it… Perhaps this could be a list of recent publishes and you could hilight all, or choose one or more updates from an author or dates…
Absolutly love figma!! best design tool for UX and love where the product is going!
In the publish window, allow search or grouping to refine the list
I like this a lot. In my own library things have gotten a little messy, and while it’s on me to control that it would be wonderful to group things by designer, or urgency, or by release where the components are related.
How about if Figma takes us to the component when click on these? as I literally have to track down that comonent from name which is not completely visible and the image is too small as well
Hey everyone - we’ve recently released an update to both Figma and FigJam, one being that you can now search components while publishing. We know there’s still room for progress, so we’ll continue to work on improvements
