crowdhailer

Looks very nice, always think it should be commended working in an offline first manner. We don't all have reliable internet

This is very cool, I've been looking for a simple Kanban board. Particularly I don't want comments in the kanban application. What I want is too keep conversations as threads in another service, and from that service reference tasks on a task board as well as other things like issues on github etc.

I love the style as well.

We've been building https://plummail.co to tackle the problems with CC and BCC. As well as other problems with remote communication.

Slack was a disaster for us when we last tried using it. Several people muted it for hours at a time, the only way to get someones attention was to call. By which point it was probably important enough to warrant a call.

Our theory is that for people to be able to focus on work for reasonable periods of time you need good async communication. And for that need good sync communication for where it's appropriate. We've been using whereby.com for video calls, much better than zoom. This is where we all checkin and Sam/Pat find out what the need to keep an eye on, and then they can start a thread on plum mail for the content they need to keep track of over time. One of the favourite features we have build from a manager side of things is the following. A manager can join a conversation, but then set the notification level to be only notified when a conversation is resolved, i.e. they find out the conclusion and can see the history if they want, but the aren't distracted by the discussion towards the conclusion

We can definitely do this.

We aren't trying to create messages at the frequency of chat. Features like pinning and others aim to encourage more productive, and also less frequent messaging.

That is an interesting idea, and not one we have yet thought about. I would be interested to talk more about it with you.

You are correct that email addresses are identifiers in our system, and that emails themselves are not the core mechanism within the app.

However this approach allows us to have features that would not be possible in just emails, but still have fallback interactions via emails to users not yet on the platform.

We have a different focus than most chat services.

Zulip and others can only be used within one team, we want to build a system that can be used for all conversations, hence the fallback emails sent to people not yet on plum mail.

We also are trying to choose features that encourage less frequent, more productive conversations, not be just another chat interface

Cool product, thanks for sharing. It looks like it's focused on inter team communication. plum mail is somewhere you can talk to anyone who's email you already have.

> Will I be able to see who has notifications on or off?

As of now you will not, but we have been asked this question by other users and are looking for feedback on the right way forward.

> Relatedly, if someone has notifications off, is there way a way to notify them anyway?

We want to introduce @mentions so that in larger group conversations you can highlight messages for a particular participant, this would notify that user even if they were not receiving notifications for every message.

> If someone who is not on plummail signs up, will the conversations they were previously included in be in their inbox?

Yes

> You should put an invite link on the bottom of the fallback emails

All fallback emails allow a user, new or otherwise, to immediately access that conversation on plum mail.

> so when/how would you be notified that the message failed? Would there be a way to fix the email and resend?

If we get a bounce back from an email address you will be able to see that in the conversation.

> When someone is added to the conversation I assume they get the full history?

Correct, if they are added to a conversation with history, they will be able to access the conversation from the fallback message this will give access to all previous messages.

> How do you get my inbound email? Do I forward it from gmail to you? Do you act as my MX recipient?

For now we don't handle inbound emails sent directly to your inbox. plum mail is the place for your group conversations that benefit from our unique features. We don't see much value in forwarding other transactional emails into plum mail. But we might look into it in the future.

We are a cloud service but we are certainly tackling many of the problems you've listed there. I think the reference to groups/rooms sounds similar to what we want to achieve in multi person conversations.

We offer more features than would be possible with an email group. plum mail hosts the conversation and certain features like pinning require a user to interact with the conversation within plum mail.

Thanks for those points, we're trying hard to succinctly explain what we do.

We start by saying it's not email because it's easy to think plum mail is yet another email client, which it isn't.

plum mail hosts the conversations so it can manage the state of pinning, conclusions etc.

email addresses are just a user identifier it will email people if they are not on plum mail, so we don't require someone to be on plum mail for you to start talking to them.

Not setting up another walled garden is really important to us. Otherwise we just end up with the situation of another competing platform, as is well explained in this xkcd comic. https://xkcd.com/927/

We hope people will like being able to keep using their email address but get more features they are used to in other more modern platforms.

We do not require any access to your inbox, messages sent directly to your email do not pass through our service.

Messages within Plum Mail, are stored on our servers. Central coordination is what enables us to offer features like concluding a conversation and pins that show the same state to all participants.

It is a fair concern, one that always needs to be considered when using a cloud service, it is certainly possible to have the convenience of Plum Mail for some conversations and keep financial/medical sent directly to your email for peace of mind.

I quit my job, last year to work full time on my side project. I think it was a great idea. I'm not yet profitable, or even close. Hopefully I will make it to profitable soon, but even if I don't I think it will be a great portfolio piece for my next job interviews.

I switched to a dumb phone last year. Nokia 105. I kept my smart phone but without a sim card in, so I could only use it on WiFi and kept it in a bag rather than in my pocket.

I really liked what happened. I still could message people or use the apps I liked but because my smart phone wasn't just to hand I only checked it say 10 times a week.

You might also be interested in Raxx.Kit, A project generator that gets your project started as quick as if you were using phoenix https://github.com/crowdhailer/raxx_kit