Finish Implementing the External Journal Feature

To be honest, I would be happy with leaving it read-only, so long as the character sheets could be displayed.

My players want to print the sheets more than anything else.

Editing would be nice but viewing character sheets would be a huge improvement. Printing would be a nice feature too. I'd put editing at third priority in this list.

The ability to view (and use) the character sheets in an extra tab/window (or alternatively using it on a mobile device, see suggestion thread here ) is definitely a must have for my group and myself. Support incoming!

currently as a GM being able to edit handouts outside on the website, versus inside the app, would be great.(intact came to the suggestion thread in hopes of suggesting this. Making them edited should be rather easy since they can use the same technology that i'm currently making this post with.)

Matthew T. said: currently as a GM being able to edit handouts outside on the website, versus inside the app, would be great.(intact came to the suggestion thread in hopes of suggesting this. Making them edited should be rather easy since they can use the same technology that i'm currently making this post with.) +1, the ablilty to edit (and create) outside of the in-game app would be fantasitic. As a DM, the editing part would be my main point of interest by far.

I logged onto the forum for the first time ever just to see if editing the external journal was on the todo list. I tend to take a lot of notes between sessions as well as when I'm running games, and it'd be cool to be able to do it from the website. Thanks!

I just got a vote back and I am putting it behind this: for oh so many reasons.

Voting for this as it would allow me to add notes or ideas when I am at work and it would be inappropriate for me to load into the game to do it.

Have been ramping up my game and even became a plus account because this app is so awesome.  If there is one thing as a GM i'd love, it to be able to edit the extended journal out of the app.  For me AND my players.  When not in sessions, my players could level up, add items, edit journals and note we don't always take the time to edit in the session.  This would probably lessen the burden on the servers as it would be page by page and not have the maps and all running in the background. A vote from me on this one!

I thought external journal access included editing. I was also dismayed that it didn't keep things in the folders or hide archived handouts.

Yes please! This would be an amazing thing to be able to create, view and edit sheets outside of the game. Would be even more awesome if we could do this for handouts as well.

Yep ! It would be great if we can share character sheets via the external journal ! As a streamer, it will be helpful for my viewers to have a view on it ^^

I agree, it would be great to be able to edit characters and handouts from the external journal. Organizing handouts and characters like in the journal tab in game would also be very useful ^^

I use the external journal on my second monitor during sessions so I can have multiple journal pages open at full screen without cluttering up my VT space. However, every journal page just has the name of the campaign as the HTML "Title" for the page, so they all say the same thing in the list of tabs. This makes it take much longer than it should to find the right journal page i need to reference. If the value of the "Name" of the Journal entry were used as the HTML Title, i could find the journal page i'm looking for much faster and keep my sessions moving with a lot fewer pauses and fewer delays in answering questions from my players. (i'm quite new to Roll20, so if there is a option to make this work already and I've missed it, please let me know. I've looked but can't find any.)

I need this ASAP. I take over 4 hours to transfer character sheets to the games.

I completely agree with all of this. Roll20 is so fun and amazing tool, in my opinion one of the few things it lacks is the ability to build and maintain a campaign around it. I believe external folders would go a long way to making Roll20 even more valuable to me. I would even pay more for some sort of GM Pro Level that would allow me to use external files and possibly integrate it with other programs, such as One Note. 

Just as a question for all the people using the external journal for management while GMing, is there any reason you don't use pop-out windows instead? They seem like a perfect solution for information management. On a side note, specifically when it comes to resource mangement, exporting and importing between different games, I made a suggestion over here about an idea to help make importing/exporting characters to and from the character vault a little easier, by taking advantage of the drag and drop nature of the in game, to allow quick and easy access not only to characters in the character vault while running a game, but also to make moving characters to and from the vault a simple click and drag rather than the 10+click nightmare it is currently.

Viktor - the pop-out I consider a work-around for what i'm really looking for. I tend to want to have lots of reference pages open so i don't spend a lot of time looking for something. Using the pop-out creates a new window for each document, and in windows 10 (the limitation is there, not roll20, i'll acknowledge that) i can't change that order once their open. That frustrates me. If i could open them as tabs and change the orders AND (per my addition above) could see the title of the document as the tab name, i feel i could be much more efficient at navigating journal content while DM'ing. 

My concerns with the External Journal are other things. I want to display my game set-up to the "public", people who haven't joined my game yet, so as to show them Handouts that are open for player access for story background and rules variant information. However, in the External Journal view the Folder structure disappears and the Handouts are automatically sorted alphabetically, destroying the original organization.  Also, if I put useful tables as images, the public can't Zoom them like the in-game players could. I would like to have the Zoom implemented particularly, but I suppose the Zoom or full-screen display on a regular Web-site view for an off-site person can't be guaranteed to work like it does deep within a Roll20 game for players.

This falls under some bigger campaign management goals we have, but there's no timelines.

Giving this a +1, in particular with the external journal being sorted the same way it is in game. One long alphabetized list just doesn't cut it.

+1 from me.

+1 from me

+1 from me Also please put the folder structure into the external journal

+1 from me. I don't need to journal to show the built-in character sheets or allow editing with any kind of urgency, but it really couldn't take long to implement  at minimum a page title match the open journal entry instead of the campaign name. And while it wouldn't be as simple to implement the folders or tag structure... at least one of those should get done soon.

As long as this feature includes something like this , I upvote it!

+1 to folder and tag structure for external journals. It's a mess RN.

+1, specifically for the ability to create and edit characters outside of a game. Sometimes I just want to make a character and then be able to select/export that character for a game later, and it's baffling to me that this isn't an option here.

David A. said: +1 from me Also please put the folder structure into the external journal Yes, +1, +1000 to this

Jay R.  said: +1 to folder and tag structure for external journals. It's a mess RN. +1. Total mess indeed.

+1. Create, edit, folder structure, all of it.

Feature of this: Needs to have In-Line editing of "Bio Tab" on Characters, and Handouts text. For those who have the game's permission to edit that item, of course.

+1 definitely 

+1

+1

+1

+1

I was just suggesting this as a much wanted feature, when someone directed me here. 

I really think this is a great add to Roll20.  I currently have my Character sheets in a Vault to make it easy to export them to a PFS game.  If the Character goes up a level or needs to change inventory or spells between games I need to export the sheet to a PCTest site, shift to PCTest, make the changes, sign out of PCTest, sign into the Vault, import the new Character sheet from PCTest.   It would make me VERY happy to be able to go to the Vault, edit the Character sheet, and be able to export it to the new game.  This would be true especially when I am in a Con and only have 30 to 60 minutes between games.  Please  Finish Implementing the EXTERNAL JOURNAL feature up as soon as you can. GregDC

+1 - I make extensive use of Journal entries, for myself and for the players, and having material visible, organized, and editable externally would be a tremendous add.

admiralnlson said: Jay R.  said: +1 to folder and tag structure for external journals. It's a mess RN. +1. Total mess indeed. THIS.  PLEASE.  I would LOVE to have some more headings in the External Journal. Currently the two headings, "Characters" and "Handouts" are not nearly enough. I'd love to be able to arrange my PCs, NPCs, and Monsters under different headings, instead of them all being "Characters".  I'd also love to have Maps, Items, and Lists be under separate headings instead of all being lumped under "Handouts".  

+1 as a DM, this would be fantastic.

Matthew T. said: currently as a GM being able to edit handouts outside on the website, versus inside the app, would be great.(intact came to the suggestion thread in hopes of suggesting this. Making them edited should be rather easy since they can use the same technology that i'm currently making this post with.) +1 I'm GM too, so adding new entries or updating old ones is paramount

there's been a rumor that Roll20 might be working on some version of this. At Roll20CON 2021 the staff announced that "The charactermancer is coming OUT" and alluded to mixing it with the existing Character Vault feature.  I hope this means that Character Creation & Editing will be editable in a webpage outside the tabletop  (for all Character Sheets, and including the Bio tab, and Handouts also, as-per Riley Dutton's OP)  . It really wasn't entirely clear, and since they said Charactermancer it left me confused whether feature would be targeted to 5E D&D, or site-wide system agnostic as the OG's intended. Anyone know or able to announce/confirm the future of External Journal at this time?

+1 I do hope that I am not beating a dead beholder, but I really need this feather for my upcoming games, but I see that this has only been "talked about" but never a priority for Roll20.   Please take this as one more blow of the hammer for this!!  External character editing or internal editing in the Vault, make no difference to me.

This would be an excellent feature!  I don't care about being able to edit character sheets outside of game, but being able to view them would be a great update!  Definite +1!!

Drifter96, you might want to check out the Roll20 Mobile Companion App . It will let you open your character sheet on your phone or tablet, outside the VTT.  Any rolls you make will go to the VTT's chat and  in most cases, you'll need to use the VTT to edit the character.

Does it work with any game system besides D&D 5E? Carlos S. said: Drifter96, you might want to check out the Roll20 Mobile Companion App . It will let you open your character sheet on your phone or tablet, outside the VTT.  Any rolls you make will go to the VTT's chat and  in most cases, you'll need to use the VTT to edit the character.

I've somehow managed to be using Roll20 for over four years without discovering there was an external Journal, but having found it, I'm underwhelmed. As the OP (who now works for Roll20) noted 9 years ago it's "unfinished", but could be useful as a way to view handouts on a separate screen (or device) without logging into the game twice.  It could also be a quick way to check on an entry.  However, as it is now, I can't see it as useful since it lacks any reference to the structure (folder hierarchy and entry sequence) of the in-game journal entries. And yes, there are other ways to accomplish many of the same things (logging in on a second device), so it's clearly not the first priority, but given the complete shake-out that is going on between Jumpgate, and new Character Sheets capability, this feels like something that ought to be fixed.  So I'm adding my +1 to this. My suggestions: (all under the heading of "finish it"): Add folders and display in the same order as in-game (that includes intermixing characters and non-character handouts, since the former are often used to provide info-text on NPCs or monsters the players are familiar with) Allow the same editing of folders and order as used in-game (this is secondary since it's a maintennace activity, but editing a handout can be used during play; I have my players keep a list of found treasure, for example). Add the ability to create and edit handouts (same as in-game) Support the same display capabilities as in-game (I see formatted text works, but I use the markdown script to place a background image on some handouts, and that's lacking) Display, at least for the game owners, the permissions applicable to the handout on the line listing the handout (you've got more screen, make use of it; I dislike having to edit something just to figure out if it is player visible, or who I granted edit rights for it to) And please, please, keep the one-line-per-entry list format, at least as an option.  I have literrally dozens of handouts in my campaigns, which run for years and accumulate a lot of history. The present in-game journal view, whle not perfect, is much better than a "tiles" approach that is suited to showing a dozen of so items.