7 ms·

Show HN: Share company announcements in your coworkers' new tab

71 points by anacleto 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
andciufo 8y ago
Sounds like a smart way to replace emails with no replies and avoid useless overhead in having your employees using/learning a new product.
tyingq 8y ago
It mentions "they have to signup with their work email", so there's some notion of the page data being private. I'm curious how well protected it really is. Also, is the first email from domain X to sign up the default admin for that domain? How do you resolve disputes?
- antoangelino 8y ago
  Hi, Antonio from Sametab. You need to signup w/ Google or validate your working email before being able to read the announcements. This security rule is enforced into the database (it's Firebase Firestore). > I'm curious how well protected it really is. Feel free to ask questions! > Also, is the first email from domain X to sign up the default admin for that domain? The first one becomes the admin. We already implemented a RBAC system for managing users' permissions. You'll be able assign admin permissions from the webapp soon. > How do you resolve disputes? Drop us an email and we will re-assign the permissions!
  - eat_veggies 8y ago
    Are you able to defend against this type of thing?: https://medium.com/intigriti/how-i-hacked-hundreds-of-companies-through-their-helpdesk-b7680ddc2d4c https://medium.com/intigriti/how-i-hacked-hundreds-of-compan...
    - antoangelino 8y ago
      Interesting article, thanks for the link! If a company uses its main domain in the same way gitlab does, SSO is the only way to avoid security flaws. We do not support SSO now, but implementing it is feasible. Feel free to send us an email if you have a company IdP and you want to use Sametab.
anacleto 8y ago
Last week we had some fun building a lightweight (mostly to see how chrome extensions work) tool to let companies send company announcements in all their coworkers' new tab. If this sounds a little odd, here's how it works: 1. Install the Chrome extension [0], open a new tab and you'll see sample content. Hit the signup button and create a new account. 2. Now that you have an account, configure your company's page and invite your coworkers (they have to signup with their work email). 3. You're ready to create and publish announcements from the admin area. Everyone in your company will see them when opening a new tab. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sametab/glmeidaaambjhneppgaalmcjmcjpedeb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sametab/glmeidaaam...
edent 8y ago
Homepage. You've re-invented the homepage. I've worked in companies where the default homepage was the announcements feed on the Intranet. Didn't make people actually read them though!
- pimlottc 8y ago
  Basically, yeah. The hard part is not getting information in front of people, it’s keeping it brief and well-managed enough so that people read it.
  - readhn 8y ago
    the problem is that people dont want to read these announcements. they mostly dont care. over 50% of working professionals are not satisfied with their jobs. why should they care about reading stupid company "announcements"?
    - isostatic 8y ago
      The problem with most company home pages is they're designed by people who think MSN or Yahoo's design is good.
- kevinjoling 8y ago
  A homepage which you will see every time you open a new tab, instead of once a day. I think it's pretty useful and will make the chance of people actually reading them a lot higher, right?
  - vthallam 8y ago
    wait homepage is something you see on every new tab, isn't it?
    - chrisseaton 8y ago
      Depends on your browser. Safari for example never shows you the 'homepage' unless you specifically navigate to it.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
amoitnga 8y ago
or slack channel, or email.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  Yea I prefer email for these things, so I can filter it appropriately (e.g. only show when I am interested) and refer to past announcements. You cannot do either of those, especially the second, easily with a browser tab thing or homepage.
stevekemp 8y ago
Cute idea, though I did spot a minor spelling mistake "openening" should probably be "opening".
- anacleto 8y ago
  Fixed, thank you.
readhn 8y ago
A lot of people ignore their work announcements because "they dont really care" about their jobs/companies (except for the paycheck to cover health/mortgage).. Why should an employee be fully engaged at work when she/he is just a "disposable" part of a machine and can be let go at any time (and should be ok with it because this is how it always was done)? Ummm they really think company wide emails (that are often pushed to personal cell phones) are not enough? Now lets see it in the browser tab as well? Really? Whats next? Automatically engraved announcements on coworkers foreheads? The problem is NOT that people "dont have an opportunity to see the announcements" - the problem is that people are not really interested in their jobs. Make job interesting to an employee and truly care about an employee (prove it by action) then people will be more engaged at work! "Of the country’s approximately 100 million full-time employees, 51 percent aren’t engaged at work -- meaning they feel no real connection to their jobs, and thus they tend to do the bare minimum...Another 16 percent are “actively disengaged” ... feel their needs aren’t being met at work etc." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-so-many-americans-hate-their-jobs/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-so-many-americans-hate-thei...
- C4stor 8y ago
  Even if 10% of employees like their jobs, that's still a market of 10 million people. If somehow this extension could reach them all and bring 1 cent a month per user to it's creator, that's still 1M$ a year for what's probably a week-end project. Not too bad. And if it end up reaching 1% of this market that's still 10k$ a year. So, hey, good job doing this !
nathan_f77 8y ago
That's a great idea! Some feedback: It would be great if this could be used as a widget on top of an existing new tab page. I really like https://tabliss.io https://tabliss.io, which shows the time, weather, and a nice photo from unsplash. If I was working somewhere that used this for company announcements, I would prefer to continue using tabliss, and show company announcements as a small widget on the bottom right. But yeah, I like using the new tab page as a dashboard for this kind of thing. Email and slack notifications are too disruptive, and this is more like a notice board where you can casually glance at it when you have some time. EDIT: Tabliss supports custom CSS and JS, so I could add this myself. Or could even contribute an official widget, because it's open source: https://github.com/joelshepherd/tabliss https://github.com/joelshepherd/tabliss EDIT 2: This is unrelated, but I just saw that Tabliss added a "literature clock" widget. That's really cool! Here's my new tab: https://imgur.com/gallery/99hL1Ei https://imgur.com/gallery/99hL1Ei
nichochar 8y ago
There is an extra danger with this (we built this at my previous company, and then deleted it), where users end up not seeing the messages anymore, but when they go to internet cafes / planes / public areas they leak very critical information (typically quarterly goals and how we're doing). Leads to really bad media leaks.
tomjen3 8y ago
I can maybe see some companies having actual use for them, and the discipline to only include emergency/super important info. I can't see that being more than 10% of the companies, and the rest will just post really useless garbage.

71 points by anacleto 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Sounds like a smart way to replace emails with no replies and avoid useless overhead in having your employees using/learning a new product.

tyingq 8y ago

It mentions "they have to signup with their work email", so there's some notion of the page data being private. I'm curious how well protected it really is. Also, is the first email from domain X to sign up the default admin for that domain? How do you resolve disputes?

antoangelino 8y ago
Hi, Antonio from Sametab. You need to signup w/ Google or validate your working email before being able to read the announcements. This security rule is enforced into the database (it's Firebase Firestore). > I'm curious how well protected it really is. Feel free to ask questions! > Also, is the first email from domain X to sign up the default admin for that domain? The first one becomes the admin. We already implemented a RBAC system for managing users' permissions. You'll be able assign admin permissions from the webapp soon. > How do you resolve disputes? Drop us an email and we will re-assign the permissions!
- eat_veggies 8y ago
  Are you able to defend against this type of thing?: https://medium.com/intigriti/how-i-hacked-hundreds-of-companies-through-their-helpdesk-b7680ddc2d4c https://medium.com/intigriti/how-i-hacked-hundreds-of-compan...
  - antoangelino 8y ago
    Interesting article, thanks for the link! If a company uses its main domain in the same way gitlab does, SSO is the only way to avoid security flaws. We do not support SSO now, but implementing it is feasible. Feel free to send us an email if you have a company IdP and you want to use Sametab.

anacleto 8y ago

Last week we had some fun building a lightweight (mostly to see how chrome extensions work) tool to let companies send company announcements in all their coworkers' new tab. If this sounds a little odd, here's how it works: 1. Install the Chrome extension [0], open a new tab and you'll see sample content. Hit the signup button and create a new account. 2. Now that you have an account, configure your company's page and invite your coworkers (they have to signup with their work email). 3. You're ready to create and publish announcements from the admin area. Everyone in your company will see them when opening a new tab. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sametab/glmeidaaambjhneppgaalmcjmcjpedeb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sametab/glmeidaaam...

edent 8y ago

Homepage. You've re-invented the homepage. I've worked in companies where the default homepage was the announcements feed on the Intranet. Didn't make people actually read them though!

pimlottc 8y ago
Basically, yeah. The hard part is not getting information in front of people, it’s keeping it brief and well-managed enough so that people read it.
- readhn 8y ago
  the problem is that people dont want to read these announcements. they mostly dont care. over 50% of working professionals are not satisfied with their jobs. why should they care about reading stupid company "announcements"?
  - isostatic 8y ago
    The problem with most company home pages is they're designed by people who think MSN or Yahoo's design is good.
kevinjoling 8y ago
A homepage which you will see every time you open a new tab, instead of once a day. I think it's pretty useful and will make the chance of people actually reading them a lot higher, right?
- vthallam 8y ago
  wait homepage is something you see on every new tab, isn't it?
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    Depends on your browser. Safari for example never shows you the 'homepage' unless you specifically navigate to it.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

amoitnga 8y ago

or slack channel, or email.

craftyguy 8y ago
Yea I prefer email for these things, so I can filter it appropriately (e.g. only show when I am interested) and refer to past announcements. You cannot do either of those, especially the second, easily with a browser tab thing or homepage.

stevekemp 8y ago

Cute idea, though I did spot a minor spelling mistake "openening" should probably be "opening".

anacleto 8y ago
Fixed, thank you.

readhn 8y ago

A lot of people ignore their work announcements because "they dont really care" about their jobs/companies (except for the paycheck to cover health/mortgage).. Why should an employee be fully engaged at work when she/he is just a "disposable" part of a machine and can be let go at any time (and should be ok with it because this is how it always was done)? Ummm they really think company wide emails (that are often pushed to personal cell phones) are not enough? Now lets see it in the browser tab as well? Really? Whats next? Automatically engraved announcements on coworkers foreheads? The problem is NOT that people "dont have an opportunity to see the announcements" - the problem is that people are not really interested in their jobs. Make job interesting to an employee and truly care about an employee (prove it by action) then people will be more engaged at work! "Of the country’s approximately 100 million full-time employees, 51 percent aren’t engaged at work -- meaning they feel no real connection to their jobs, and thus they tend to do the bare minimum...Another 16 percent are “actively disengaged” ... feel their needs aren’t being met at work etc." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-so-many-americans-hate-their-jobs/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-so-many-americans-hate-thei...

C4stor 8y ago
Even if 10% of employees like their jobs, that's still a market of 10 million people. If somehow this extension could reach them all and bring 1 cent a month per user to it's creator, that's still 1M$ a year for what's probably a week-end project. Not too bad. And if it end up reaching 1% of this market that's still 10k$ a year. So, hey, good job doing this !

nathan_f77 8y ago

That's a great idea! Some feedback: It would be great if this could be used as a widget on top of an existing new tab page. I really like https://tabliss.io https://tabliss.io, which shows the time, weather, and a nice photo from unsplash. If I was working somewhere that used this for company announcements, I would prefer to continue using tabliss, and show company announcements as a small widget on the bottom right. But yeah, I like using the new tab page as a dashboard for this kind of thing. Email and slack notifications are too disruptive, and this is more like a notice board where you can casually glance at it when you have some time. EDIT: Tabliss supports custom CSS and JS, so I could add this myself. Or could even contribute an official widget, because it's open source: https://github.com/joelshepherd/tabliss https://github.com/joelshepherd/tabliss EDIT 2: This is unrelated, but I just saw that Tabliss added a "literature clock" widget. That's really cool! Here's my new tab: https://imgur.com/gallery/99hL1Ei https://imgur.com/gallery/99hL1Ei

nichochar 8y ago

There is an extra danger with this (we built this at my previous company, and then deleted it), where users end up not seeing the messages anymore, but when they go to internet cafes / planes / public areas they leak very critical information (typically quarterly goals and how we're doing). Leads to really bad media leaks.

tomjen3 8y ago

I can maybe see some companies having actual use for them, and the discipline to only include emergency/super important info. I can't see that being more than 10% of the companies, and the rest will just post really useless garbage.