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Show HN: Daily email summaries to keep up with your team

overseer.io

12 pointsnickkthequick15 comments

Somehow, and I know it may sound nitpicky, when you make a point about privacy and then require me to 'connect with google' to create an account, doesn't feel good. I'm not that big on privacy, but perhaps this might be an example of a webservice that should provide at least a way to create an account without connecting to any other service (google / facebook etc).

I'd expect a bit more visualization or explanation on what info the e-mail would provide me with.

From my standpoint, someone that works with people with their own schedule spread over different locations this looks useful.

Thanks for the feedback! Would you feel better if we had a (semi-functioning) demo app for you to play around with before signing up? Since we aggregate information from all your team applications, your email would be empty without connecting at least one account.

I am pretty used to everyone being on google apps, so (selfishly) this isn't a problem for me, although I do agree it probably makes sense to support more options since you're catering to businesses who will probably have specific needs.

However, commenting 'cause this seems awesome, but as per your comment I definitely need more info before I want to sign you up, give you access to all those information sources, and start getting e-mails from you. A demo is pretty complex; just as good to get me started might be (for people who want to dig deeper, not for everyone) an example for each service of the information you can currently summarize and pack into an e-mail. Hell, you could offer to send me a one-time example e-mail so I can actually receive one and see what it'll be like.

I think the flaw here is that I won't use Google to import data for the email. But would want to connect Basecamp for example. Now I first need to connect Google (for which I have no purpose other than accessing the service) and then connect Basecamp. Doesn't make much sense.

Yeah that's a good point. Although, we don't make it very clear, you can connect your Google account and then opt to only get changes from your Basecamp account. But yes, you would always need to sign in using your Google account. Thanks a lot for the feedback.

Perhaps create somekind of call to action that's more like this: 'Connect your Basecamp account', they end up by creating a normal account and then after that the first step is to connect their Basecamp account. This gives you a way to learn what webservice people would connect first. But hey, enough ideas. It's all about execution. Good luck!

Seeing a demo email would be incredibly useful. As it is, I don't understand what it will show me and wouldn't sign up without knowing that information.

I like the idea. One quick suggestion is to replace "Superpower". You're trying to use it as a verb, but it isn't (usually used as) one.

Thanks for checking us out! We're trying to stay away from trying fruitlessly to track individual productivity (it's exceedingly inaccurate, not to mention creepy) and focusing on overall team progress instead. We don't aim to replace daily standups, just supplement them. Let us know if you have any concerns or suggestions!

We're super excited to launch this and itching to get some feedback. Please let us know here or through email (founders@overseer.io) and we can set you up with a free account in exchange for helping us test everything out.

I have a similar project, https://teamtracker.io but it is more of a manual entry thing. Looks like this is automated, pulling info from various services? Neat!

Seems cool, this looks more impressive though - http://www.usepeak.com/. What are the main differences?

We've seen Peak, and it's encouraging that there are others in the automated productivity space. There are a few major differences between us and them, however:

Peak focuses on the individual. We focus on the team. There was an excellent article today (http://marcgg.com/blog/2013/11/12/peak-productivity/) discussing the issue with ranking team members based on their output, especially when information is far from complete. We're trying to boost productivity by demonstrating momentum, instead of by micromanaging individual players.

We are not a destination site; we're a passive email that does not interrupt anyone's workflow. Just check your email (on the phone, even) and you'll know what's going on with your team -- you don't have to keep a tab open and keep checking back to find out what's going on.

Finally, we're engineers, not a design firm. We move and ship very fast. We will respond to changes in user needs and behavior instantly, releasing/changing/removing features and applications as necessary.

Good answer :)

This looks more like a webservice that provides a feed. Looks like Slack: https://slack.com/

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