[Feature Request] Improve clarity in item duplication process

Hi @loilo, 👋

Thanks so much for your feedback and sharing your use case in such detail! To clarify, duplicating an item will also duplicate any links created within that item, is that what you experienced? I do see some potential here for broken item links, if original copies of items that other items are linked to are moved to another vault, so I appreciate your surfacing this and I'll report it internally.

If you're open to sharing, I'd also be interested to know if you use the duplicate option for any other purposes. Similarly, would you benefit from being able to create custom templates or edit existing ones? For example, being able to choose which fields would be available when creating a new Bank Account item.

I've passed your feedback along to our Product team either way but we're always open to having more context. Let me know what you think. 😊

ref: PB-32683807

Hey @andrew.l_1P, thanks for taking care. 🙂

To clarify, duplicating an item will also duplicate any links created within that item

Yes, links from the original item to other items will be duplicated, but the problem in my case were incoming links from other items.

(That said, I've always found it slightly confusing that links are not bidirectional, but I think is a matter of perspective. My mental model always leaned more towards links being an entity independent from any items, like an edge between to items in a flow chart. But the way they're actually modeled in 1Password is more like an item property of type "link" pointing to another item.)

I do see some potential here for broken item links, if original copies of items that other items are linked to are moved to another vault

Broken links when moving items to different vaults have happened to me before, but this is not what I was referring to here.

I think I can clarify what happened with an example:

Let's say, I had a bank account item Account A. I also had a credit card item Card A, which had a link to Account A.
Now I wanted to a create bank account item Account B. Because the fields + labels I needed on it were similar to my existing bank account item, instead of creating a new item, I duplicated Account A. Now I had two identical items named Account A.

What I had intended to do now was to edit Account A (the duplicate), rename it to Account B and fill it with the new bank account's properties. However, since I cannot differentiate between the two items, I accidentally edited Account A (the original) and renamed it to Account B.

Now my credit card Card A suddenly linked to Account B (which was previously Account A), and the newly existing Account A (which was just created through duplication) had no incoming links.

This behavior is technically correct as I really did edit the item which Card A linked to, but the circumstance that led to me editing the wrong item is the indistinguishability of an item and its duplicate. I know this is a little confusing to express, but did the example help with the point I tried to make? 😬

Similarly, would you benefit from being able to create custom templates or edit existing ones?

Not in the very situation I described, I guess. Most of those "duplicate instead of create" processes are rather ad hoc, one-off decisions when I feel that I could save some seconds by duplicating a similar item instead of creating a new one.

That said, templates would be a feature I'd appreciate in general, because there are other, more formalized item structures I'd currently use duplication for (think multiple API credentials for the same API provider). This would be a nice-to-have feature, but IMO would not obviate the need for an improved duplication UX.

Hi @loilo,

Thanks so much for these details and sharing an example, I can absolutely see how someone might edit an item with existing links unknowingly. While the links aren't technically breaking, this does in essence still make them incorrect. I'll update the feedback I shared to reflect this. 🙂

I also appreciate you sharing your thoughts re: templates and how they may be a part of this discussion. I can't say for certain when or if such a feature will come to 1Password but understanding scenarios like this is a big help in that process.

Thanks for helping us make 1Password the best it can be and let me know if you have any questions!