5 ms·

Ripley: Project management tool for G Suite

20 points by steph-newton 8y ago

edparso 8y ago
Hi HN! I’m Ed, one of the creators of Ripley. These days organizations on G Suite create thousands of documents every month. Team members have to keep track of all these documents, tasks and changes. It is too easy to let an email about a task or a key change in language slip through the cracks. That’s why we thought, wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to keep track of that yourself, the same way you can keep track of tasks and key information on Trello or Asana, but without having to constantly copy and paste between G Suite and your tool? After 1 year of hard work and 3 months of beta testing, we are ready to introduce Ripley: The #1 project management tool for G Suite. What Ripley does, is let you pull in files and folders into your team’s Ripley workspaces within Google Drive. Ripley will look for changes to the files or tasks assigned to team members and bring them into the workspace. Please let me know your thougts.
- steph-newton 8y ago
  Very cool, Ed! Was excited when I found Ripley. Can't wait to use it with my team of writers.
- chrismatheson 8y ago
  Just a small thing, and totally just my own thoughts here that very well may not align with others, but the “email sign up” type part of your site.... I felt the message “no thanks I’m an introvert” & “go away” came off as passive aggressive rather than fun & playful which I assume you were aiming for.
  - birdt 8y ago
    It made me chuckle..
  - 0db532a0 8y ago
    They should add another button to indicate sensitivity to such passive aggressive buttons. It should redirect to disney.com.
social_quotient 8y ago
Seems cool but this is the exact type of product from Google I would worry about getting sunset. Maybe it’s the first product announcement that I would actually not demo because of the constant droning about shuttered systems in use by millions of people. There might be an sla or lifecycle disclosure that is different from my perception but you know what they say about perception!? Concerns aside I like the idea of building this on top of the document management system/repository. I often feel like task mgmt and pm tools do a poor job of managing documents and files at scale. A good example of this is Basecamp. It’s a great tool for simple small projects but when it comes to multi stakeholder teams and long running projects the file mgmt side suffered. Good job on the product. I hope Google can fix the perception problem.
- devrand 8y ago
  This isn't made by Google.
- edparso 8y ago
  Hi social-quotient, I understand your feeling, I've been spending the last month moving back to Gmail after hearing Inbox will be sunset. This will not happen to Ripley. And thank you for identifying the problem between purely pm software and then purely storage software. Once you hit a real scale it can quickly become unmanageable. We originally developed Ripley to help us manage all the spec documents our clients were sending us and then changing regularly. At one or two it was manageable, yet to check each doc for changes or to rely on clients sending us messages or comments became unworkable very quickly. Ripley manages that by understanding the underlying doc is not just a URL. It's a google drive file with a rich API Ripley can interact with.
hliyan 8y ago
I know your app gives some assurances, but I really can't agree to these permissions: This will allow Ripley to: See, edit, create, and delete all of your Google Drive files See and download your contacts See, edit, share, and permanently delete all the calendars you can access using Google Calendar
- edparso 8y ago
  Yeah, I understand this is a lot to ask, unfortunately the way Google auth scopes work this is the minimum we can ask for. Ripley helps manage permissions on your docs so G Drive edit is needed. Ripley suggestions contacts you may want to add to your boards so contacts is needed. Ripley posts events to your calendar for tasks in Ripley so calendar edits is needed. I wish we had more granular ways to request only the exact permissions we needed.
xte 8y ago
I think that any tech business or any business in general should AVOID completely put their "nervous system" (IT) on someone else computer, especially someone else that have deep automated analysis capabilities and big financial power. I know that in actual IT status that's the simplest way for many, I know it may also pay off well in the short term and perhaps in the mid term also. But in the long run is a really awful idea. Personally I have my workflow around org-mode and Emacs, I build it in spare time a feature upon another and it's far superior, simple, lighter, effective etc than any other system I found precooked by some web/modern business-like software. When I ditch GMail for a personal mail, forget webmails entirely I discover a far superior world, when I ditch modern classic personal accounting software for ledger I again discover a far superior experience. It take time, of course, but it take time when you have it and what you learn pay of for life.
borkyborkbork 8y ago
I absolutely detest your website. That unrequested popup window asking "Are you interested in a free guided consultation about Ripley?" should go away when I click NO not give another popup. Pissed me the F%#%k off.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't post rage rants to HN, regardless of how annoying a popup was. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

20 points by steph-newton 8y ago

Hi HN! I’m Ed, one of the creators of Ripley. These days organizations on G Suite create thousands of documents every month. Team members have to keep track of all these documents, tasks and changes. It is too easy to let an email about a task or a key change in language slip through the cracks. That’s why we thought, wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to keep track of that yourself, the same way you can keep track of tasks and key information on Trello or Asana, but without having to constantly copy and paste between G Suite and your tool? After 1 year of hard work and 3 months of beta testing, we are ready to introduce Ripley: The #1 project management tool for G Suite. What Ripley does, is let you pull in files and folders into your team’s Ripley workspaces within Google Drive. Ripley will look for changes to the files or tasks assigned to team members and bring them into the workspace. Please let me know your thougts.

steph-newton 8y ago
Very cool, Ed! Was excited when I found Ripley. Can't wait to use it with my team of writers.
chrismatheson 8y ago
Just a small thing, and totally just my own thoughts here that very well may not align with others, but the “email sign up” type part of your site.... I felt the message “no thanks I’m an introvert” & “go away” came off as passive aggressive rather than fun & playful which I assume you were aiming for.
- birdt 8y ago
  It made me chuckle..
- 0db532a0 8y ago
  They should add another button to indicate sensitivity to such passive aggressive buttons. It should redirect to disney.com.

social_quotient 8y ago

Seems cool but this is the exact type of product from Google I would worry about getting sunset. Maybe it’s the first product announcement that I would actually not demo because of the constant droning about shuttered systems in use by millions of people. There might be an sla or lifecycle disclosure that is different from my perception but you know what they say about perception!? Concerns aside I like the idea of building this on top of the document management system/repository. I often feel like task mgmt and pm tools do a poor job of managing documents and files at scale. A good example of this is Basecamp. It’s a great tool for simple small projects but when it comes to multi stakeholder teams and long running projects the file mgmt side suffered. Good job on the product. I hope Google can fix the perception problem.

devrand 8y ago
This isn't made by Google.
edparso 8y ago
Hi social-quotient, I understand your feeling, I've been spending the last month moving back to Gmail after hearing Inbox will be sunset. This will not happen to Ripley. And thank you for identifying the problem between purely pm software and then purely storage software. Once you hit a real scale it can quickly become unmanageable. We originally developed Ripley to help us manage all the spec documents our clients were sending us and then changing regularly. At one or two it was manageable, yet to check each doc for changes or to rely on clients sending us messages or comments became unworkable very quickly. Ripley manages that by understanding the underlying doc is not just a URL. It's a google drive file with a rich API Ripley can interact with.

hliyan 8y ago

I know your app gives some assurances, but I really can't agree to these permissions: This will allow Ripley to: See, edit, create, and delete all of your Google Drive files See and download your contacts See, edit, share, and permanently delete all the calendars you can access using Google Calendar

edparso 8y ago
Yeah, I understand this is a lot to ask, unfortunately the way Google auth scopes work this is the minimum we can ask for. Ripley helps manage permissions on your docs so G Drive edit is needed. Ripley suggestions contacts you may want to add to your boards so contacts is needed. Ripley posts events to your calendar for tasks in Ripley so calendar edits is needed. I wish we had more granular ways to request only the exact permissions we needed.

xte 8y ago

I think that any tech business or any business in general should AVOID completely put their "nervous system" (IT) on someone else computer, especially someone else that have deep automated analysis capabilities and big financial power. I know that in actual IT status that's the simplest way for many, I know it may also pay off well in the short term and perhaps in the mid term also. But in the long run is a really awful idea. Personally I have my workflow around org-mode and Emacs, I build it in spare time a feature upon another and it's far superior, simple, lighter, effective etc than any other system I found precooked by some web/modern business-like software. When I ditch GMail for a personal mail, forget webmails entirely I discover a far superior world, when I ditch modern classic personal accounting software for ledger I again discover a far superior experience. It take time, of course, but it take time when you have it and what you learn pay of for life.

borkyborkbork 8y ago

I absolutely detest your website. That unrequested popup window asking "Are you interested in a free guided consultation about Ripley?" should go away when I click NO not give another popup. Pissed me the F%#%k off.

dang 8y ago
Please don't post rage rants to HN, regardless of how annoying a popup was. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html