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> Front is like Slack for your email, except instead of creating another distracting, noisy, always-on tool, Front allows users to spin up ephemeral chats withi

by ryan29 6y ago

> Front is like Slack for your email, except instead of creating another distracting, noisy, always-on tool, Front allows users to spin up ephemeral chats within email threads themselves. That's the exact opposite of what I'd want. Most small businesses have the same email problem that I always feel like I do. Too many requests come in via email and it's hard to track, discuss, resolve, and (at a later date) reference all that info. This is what I wanted on MS365: - Forward an email to a special address. Ex: ryan29@todo.example.com (the TODO address for ryan29@example.com). - Use Power Automate to create a Teams channel for the email. - Use Power Automate to post some cards to the channel; one to (optionally) create a Planner Task, one to resolve the topic. - Notify @ryan29 about the new topic. - I deal with the topic. If it's long lived or complex, I create a Task. If I need input, I @mention others that can help. If it's simple 5-15 minute thing, I do the work and click the link to resolve the topic. - When the topic is closed (by link or by closing the related task), the Teams channel is archived and the original email thread gets a reply saying it's done with a link to the Teams channel. That way all conversation about the task is consolidated into Teams, long lived tasks are tracked via Planner, email stays relatively clean from internal communication, and I don't waste a bunch of time dealing with some 3rd party's idea of optimal workflows or value adds. The issues I had were that Teams, Planner, etc. have limits on the number of channels / tasks and Power Automate / Teams lacked some functionality that would make it really streamlined. However, I was close enough after a few hours of playing around that I can't believe something like "adding Slack chat to email threads" is a $1 billion problem.

0x426577617265 6y ago
I provide oversight and technical reviews for a 10 person team. I also have a boss above me who needs information from me. E-mail was getting incredibly inefficient for me when everyone starting working from home earlier this year. I lost oversight and missed tasks. I was getting 25-50 emails a day that required some type of response or action from me. I switched my team over Teams and asked them to create a card in the planner tasks if they needed something from me - instead of emailing me. That was much easier for me to keep track of everything. E-mail is good for communicating a thought, I don't find it good for tracking tasks - particularly tasks that have a deadline.
ashtonkem 6y ago
There is a very very narrow area where the ability to create ephemeral chats around email threads is useful: agencies and consultancies. The ability to discuss a client email, workshop a response, and delegate response authority to someone else is a huge game changer for the client services industry. Buuuuuut, there aren't enough agencies out there to justify a $1.3B price tag.
- oblio 6y ago
  Are you sure about that? With a global audience?
sriku 6y ago
> Forward an email to a special address. Ex: ryan29@todo.example.com (the TODO address for ryan29@example.com). This should be possible with ryan29+todo@example.com though .. in conjunction with filtering. I use this for bookmarking and some basic categorisation.
- ryan29 6y ago
  Yes, there are many ways email could be used to assign tasks. The way I said, the way you said, by dragging it into a folder. It doesn't really matter how it works in detail as long as the general concept is there; people want to assign work to me via email and they don't want anything more difficult / time consuming than forwarding an email.
throwaway201103 6y ago
I'm an old guy now but this just sounds like a standard ticket system. What's the big deal?
- ryan29 6y ago
  Maybe ticketing systems have gotten better, but I've never used one where I didn't feel like I was "spending time" dealing with the ticket system. As of right now, I end up with discussions spread across email, SMS, phone, and an issue tracking system (Redmine). I think the main reason that happens is that I get delegated work and it often starts via email; "Please deal with this.", "Can we do this?", etc.. Based on my experience, that type of delegation is common for owner operated small businesses. Most of those small business owners don't want to create a ticket, assign it, set a due date, and track it when they're used to something as efficient as forwarding an email and expecting the recipient to understand the implied "do this" that comes along with it. Plus, a forwarded email saying "Can we do this?" doesn't make sense as a ticket when sometimes the answer is going to be a 15 second "No." Other times it might be "Yes, but..." after 30 minutes of research and additional conversation. That warrants some type of tracking or ticket because you're going to need that info if it turns into a billable job. So as the delegate, I want to be able to decide an existing thread of communication warrants conversion to a trackable conversation or issue. In addition to that, I want to be able to take future out-of-band communication and move it in-band by associating it with an existing conversation, ticket, topic, or whatever you want to call it. For example, if a customer emails someone with extra info or questions, it would be useful to forward the whole thread into an existing Teams Channel. I mostly deal with small businesses and very often it's the owner interacting with a customer and delegating to employees via whatever means is appropriate. It usually doesn't make sense for the business owner to manage a ticket tracking system because that's extra work they don't want to / can't waste time on. It makes way more sense for the delegate to manage tasks / communication instead of the delegator IMO. I've looked at Trello, Asana, Basecamp, etc. and I'm always left with the feeling "now you're going to have 2 jobs." They're designed for 100% buy-in, someone has to be the person that manages that stuff, and any out-of-band communication is a pain to bring in-band so you spend your time copying conversations into the system.
raxxorrax 6y ago
Eww, Power Automate or Flow to me is the worst of office modern software. I don't want to click together workflows on a slow website. I don't think any problem will ever be solved by this. Is there a secret to this? Does an app exist, are there logs in cases of errors? What am I missing about this? Creating sensible workflows is actually work and there is no import/export to other tenants as far as I know. I recommend it to people that want to have a negative experience with "the cloud". Didn't take a look, but what theoretically could be nice is somehow lacking. Maybe it got better, wasn't interested for some time now. It can be nice for very simple things and I would love to have a good workflow engine. > That way all conversation about the task is consolidated into Teams You can get any ticket system from around 2005 and it will be much, much better. At least you can actually access the data. Haven't looked into the Teams API, but I somehow don't want to honestly. It reminds me of Frontpage...

by ryan29 6y ago

0x426577617265 6y ago

I provide oversight and technical reviews for a 10 person team. I also have a boss above me who needs information from me. E-mail was getting incredibly inefficient for me when everyone starting working from home earlier this year. I lost oversight and missed tasks. I was getting 25-50 emails a day that required some type of response or action from me. I switched my team over Teams and asked them to create a card in the planner tasks if they needed something from me - instead of emailing me. That was much easier for me to keep track of everything. E-mail is good for communicating a thought, I don't find it good for tracking tasks - particularly tasks that have a deadline.

ashtonkem 6y ago

There is a very very narrow area where the ability to create ephemeral chats around email threads is useful: agencies and consultancies. The ability to discuss a client email, workshop a response, and delegate response authority to someone else is a huge game changer for the client services industry. Buuuuuut, there aren't enough agencies out there to justify a $1.3B price tag.

oblio 6y ago
Are you sure about that? With a global audience?

sriku 6y ago

> Forward an email to a special address. Ex: ryan29@todo.example.com (the TODO address for ryan29@example.com). This should be possible with ryan29+todo@example.com though .. in conjunction with filtering. I use this for bookmarking and some basic categorisation.

ryan29 6y ago
Yes, there are many ways email could be used to assign tasks. The way I said, the way you said, by dragging it into a folder. It doesn't really matter how it works in detail as long as the general concept is there; people want to assign work to me via email and they don't want anything more difficult / time consuming than forwarding an email.

throwaway201103 6y ago

I'm an old guy now but this just sounds like a standard ticket system. What's the big deal?

ryan29 6y ago
Maybe ticketing systems have gotten better, but I've never used one where I didn't feel like I was "spending time" dealing with the ticket system. As of right now, I end up with discussions spread across email, SMS, phone, and an issue tracking system (Redmine). I think the main reason that happens is that I get delegated work and it often starts via email; "Please deal with this.", "Can we do this?", etc.. Based on my experience, that type of delegation is common for owner operated small businesses. Most of those small business owners don't want to create a ticket, assign it, set a due date, and track it when they're used to something as efficient as forwarding an email and expecting the recipient to understand the implied "do this" that comes along with it. Plus, a forwarded email saying "Can we do this?" doesn't make sense as a ticket when sometimes the answer is going to be a 15 second "No." Other times it might be "Yes, but..." after 30 minutes of research and additional conversation. That warrants some type of tracking or ticket because you're going to need that info if it turns into a billable job. So as the delegate, I want to be able to decide an existing thread of communication warrants conversion to a trackable conversation or issue. In addition to that, I want to be able to take future out-of-band communication and move it in-band by associating it with an existing conversation, ticket, topic, or whatever you want to call it. For example, if a customer emails someone with extra info or questions, it would be useful to forward the whole thread into an existing Teams Channel. I mostly deal with small businesses and very often it's the owner interacting with a customer and delegating to employees via whatever means is appropriate. It usually doesn't make sense for the business owner to manage a ticket tracking system because that's extra work they don't want to / can't waste time on. It makes way more sense for the delegate to manage tasks / communication instead of the delegator IMO. I've looked at Trello, Asana, Basecamp, etc. and I'm always left with the feeling "now you're going to have 2 jobs." They're designed for 100% buy-in, someone has to be the person that manages that stuff, and any out-of-band communication is a pain to bring in-band so you spend your time copying conversations into the system.

raxxorrax 6y ago

Eww, Power Automate or Flow to me is the worst of office modern software. I don't want to click together workflows on a slow website. I don't think any problem will ever be solved by this. Is there a secret to this? Does an app exist, are there logs in cases of errors? What am I missing about this? Creating sensible workflows is actually work and there is no import/export to other tenants as far as I know. I recommend it to people that want to have a negative experience with "the cloud". Didn't take a look, but what theoretically could be nice is somehow lacking. Maybe it got better, wasn't interested for some time now. It can be nice for very simple things and I would love to have a good workflow engine. > That way all conversation about the task is consolidated into Teams You can get any ticket system from around 2005 and it will be much, much better. At least you can actually access the data. Haven't looked into the Teams API, but I somehow don't want to honestly. It reminds me of Frontpage...