How to Use Layout Tabs in Notion - Easily Show Related Database Items

Video transcript

When you have related databases in Notion, oftentimes you want to see those relations on the pages easily. So far, we often use linked database views to achieve this, and now with the new tabbed layouts in Notion, this is a much more native and fast experience to set up. On database templates, we can have multiple tabs to visualize related data, and Notion creates those views and dynamic filters for us easily. That's what we are exploring in this video—let's get into it.

Oftentimes you want to see related data in the page in Notion, and in this example, let's say this is a travel planner where locations are related to accommodations, flights, and activities. So if we open the locations database and we create a new location, this is what by default it looks like: we have the database, we can expand the page, add the property values as needed, and then if I go to customize layout, that's where on the right-hand side I can select a tabbed layout.

I can also set inline comments if I want them to be minimal or default page discussions that are the comments at the top of the page, and then the property icons that could be hidden or shown. I can also set full width as the default for pages in this database—that's a very new setting that is very welcome as far as I can tell from the Notion community.

And if I select tab layout, you can see that there are tabs created and the first tab is "Content," which in here I'm renaming "Properties," but later on I will go back to "Content" because I think it's clearer as a name for this section. Then, by clicking on the plus button, I can add additional tabs by showing related databases. For example, we know that locations is related to accommodations, and so if I select that, this automatically creates a linked database view within that tab of accommodations.

I can customize the views I need as per usual, and then I can hide properties, reorder them like so, and if you go to filter, you can see that this is automatically filtered by the current page. That's a dynamic filter that will update automatically when applied to any page in the location database in this case. And then there are all the other settings as per usual in any database view.

And now I can show the count, and I can add additional tabs to show all the flights for this location. So same exact thing—that's a database view. I'm going to set Center Peak as the Page open layout and then check that the filter is properly set. You can see this is done automatically by Notion to facilitate this process here.

And then I can also show activities from the related database of activities within this location, that is Tokyo, Japan in this example. I will hide location because that's the location page, so I know what we're talking about here.

Okay, it looks good. You can see that I'm going to pin the trip status so that it stays at the very top of the properties, and then in here I'm going to also show the notes property so that I can easily enter notes directly from the page. And these are the different tabs that I have just created.

And the Properties tab I'm going to rename to Content because when I have this tab open, also the page content is displayed. So I think "Content" is a better naming than "Properties," which are actually at the top of the page as you can see there.

So now when I open this page, I can see the tabs and the template that is set as the default here. Then I'm going to open it, and you can see that in this page I have all the tabs. I can write notes right here—that's the property—and then I have all the page body where I can enter whatever text and any other Block in Notion as I like, and this is exactly like it was before.

Same exact thing, for example, here I'm attempting to create a heading with the two hashtag symbols and then space that creates a heading. I can create bullet lists like so, and I can also open this slash command menu to see all the other options that I have. For example, a linked database view that's still available and that was the default option before this update to visualize related data in a database page.

Then here if I open the accommodation tab, I can either enter a new page just like that or I can link existing pages in that database. Then here I'm entering some sample data for this accommodation as you can see there: price per unit, and everything works as expected and as it would in any database view.

And then I go to flights. Same thing, I can link existing flights or create new pages also from the new button at the top right corner, not just from inline on the table view there. And same thing for activities.

Keep in mind that I created table views in each tab, but as you saw earlier, I can define the layout or the view that I want. So it could be a board, it could be a calendar, a gallery, charts, or whatever else we want. Then if I click on the three dots, you can see here the side panel.

And this concludes the overview of the new tabbed layouts in Notion. If you have questions, let me know down below in the comments, and you will find relevant links in the description of the video. See you soon!