Roam is pretty similar to tree based online tools like Workflowy or Dynalist -- but it is specifically designed to help you connect thoughts together and group together related bits of information-- without copy/pasting or trying to remember where you put things all the time.
Here are the key things about Roam that make it different from Workflowy
When you have an idea or concept that you think you are going to be talking about on in many locations throughout your tree (or suspect you've already referenced a bunch), you can create a page by hitting the / command and using "Link" -- or you can just wrap the text in double brackets
Links are "Bi-directional" meaning that anytime you link to something, that thing collects all the locations it has been linked to -- so you can move back and forth between ideas fluidly -- you can "Roam around!" -- see also Bidirectional Links
Links can also act as filters (on the page, or when looking through mentions)
I can later on filter all my meeting notes to see who I spoke with about something like Time Management -- or when I look at the page for Will or Tiago I can easily refer back to notes from the last time we hung out, or see what topics we have spoken about
Don't worry about naming things correctly -- if you change the name of a page it will change the title of all the links to that page -- if you realize two concepts are actually the same, you can change one of them to have the same title as the other and you'll have the option to "merge" the two pages together.
Same applies to tags -- if you type # you will get an autocomplete for all of your pages that are only one word
Tags and links function the same way -- they just look a little different, but they both create new pages and collect all references to the page
The Mentions component will search your database for any place where you used the words in the title of the page, to help you spot links you haven't formally created yet.
To see how this can be really useful for research watch this video
The really killer feature is referencing and embedding other "Blocks" or "Bullets"from elsewhere in your notes. Again, you can use the / command to find this (or just write out two parenthesis and start typing to get the autocomplete up)
Changing things in one place will change them in all their references
When a block has been referenced or embedded in multiple places you'll see a counter on the left side of it, which shows you that it is referenced or embedded in other places -- clicking that button will open up the sidebar and show you the other locations of the block
If you're curious how or why you might use this check out 2428
You can alias those blocks too if you want the reference, but not to show the full text of the referenced item
{{alias: 1248 X}} is superior to {{alias: 1249 Y}}
This is useful for referencing big paragraphs or creating footnotes-- but still having a link structure to help you wander (or Roam!) through your thoughts
The other big difference with Roam is we encourage you to keep all your random notes in the Daily Notes section -- here we create a new page for you each day automatically
The daily notes link in the left sidebar will bring you to the log of all the day pages -- so you can scroll through and get a sense of how your time has been spent
You can reference other days using the date feature (also available from the / command) -- like other things, it's markdown, but when you leave that textarea it'll give you a calendar component for picking a date and putting that in the right format to get stored in the daily log
For example try clicking this {{date}}
You may find the TODO feature useful, it is also visible from the / command -- this will give you a checkbox for marking things done -- but under the hood it just uses the same Tags / Links functionality as the rest of Roam -- it just changes the tag from TODO to DONE and back when you toggle the checkbox
If you Shift-Click on a tag or title you can open that page in the right-sidebar
You can also left-click on a bullet point to open that in the sidebar as well.
The sidebar can be helpful for looking at multiple things at once, rather than jumping between documents -- so you can more easily follow tangents an "roam" around in your ideas, without losing your place.
Final final note -- if you click on the title of a day in your daily notes, it'll just bring you to that page -- when you're focused on a page then you'll be able to see the Filter option at the top right of the page, which will filter the page to either hide things you don't want -- or only show paths which contain a tag/link you do want.
Feel free to email me (cwhitesullivan at gmail dot com) or dm me on twitter (@conaw) anytime and I'll do my best to answer any of your questions