
StandupMail: Keep your team up-to-date - nerdben
https://www.standupmail.com/#
======
deanclatworthy
I have to say I don't see the added value of your service. Unless I'm
mistaking something, the flow is that you email everyone once a day and they
have to reply with what they've done, and then everyone gets an update of what
everyone has done. This is manual work, and something that could be set up by
anyone using cron in minutes.

The thing is, almost all services that people use for tracking projects
nowadays have some way of interfacing with the information. So I have tools
that _know_ already what I've done. Why would I want to spend my valuable time
writing that up again?

~~~
dmak
This is a strangely familiar tone of Hacker News...

Remember Dropbox?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625306)
with these comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625818)

~~~
meowface
Eh, I'm not sure you can really compare the two.

I think when the naysaying is "this is not technically feasible or
efficient/too costly/has no revenue model", yet the theoretical idea is good
in a "perfect world", you have a real shot at proving them wrong.

When the naysaying is "even if this works exactly as expected, most people
would not get a lot of value out of it", assuming their reasoning is correct,
then the naysaying can be justified.

It looks like most of the original concerns over Dropbox from sensible and
experienced people fall in the first category, not the second.

I'm not a VC or startup/business person so I could be completely wrong, but
that's the view I've managed to piece together over time. I think pg's model
of "can you envision a small cult following of users who will _really_ love
this product/service?" is the best way to look at it. If you can get that
initial cult following, then all other problems can (likely) eventually be
overcome. If you can't get that, then you're sort of wasting your time.

------
rubbingalcohol
Shouldn't workers be home spending time with their families in the evening?
Why is this considered acceptable behavior from an employer?

Maybe there should be a "premium" option for an automated nightly conference
call, where employees can call in and confirm that they replied to the nightly
status email, and also share any cool stories about what it was like to be
away from the office for a few hours. It would be a great team building
exercise.

Another productivity booster is chemical castration. Families really eat up a
lot of time, which ends up costing the companies. Employees who voluntarily
get vasectomies could be given a 15% spot bonus.

~~~
nerdben
You're free to define when the team is expected to answer. It could be in the
morning... during the day. Alle-in-one emails but also one email per task
finished fitting into existing workflows.

However, the idea is to send a quick answer back, when your accomplishments
are still "fresh" in your mind - Shouldn't take you longer than 5min.

And yes, workers should spend time with their families. I'm doing that right
now, too :)

------
shabda
It is more or less same as idonethis, but a bit less priced.

If you like this, take a look at
[https://github.com/agiliq/worktogether](https://github.com/agiliq/worktogether).
We use and like idonethis, this app is just experimental at the moment.

~~~
nerdben
Besides pricing, the differences lie in the details, i.e. we allow for
different types of bullets sent in etc. We're also fully focused on providing
the best possible experience for teams.

~~~
woah
"We're also fully focused on providing the best possible experience for
teams."

Wouldn't anyone making any product ever say this?

~~~
meesterdude
it's right out of Faker::Company.bs

------
empressplay
Okay, first I take a little issue with the notion that we're transferring the
time spent during a morning stand-up meeting (during work time) to the evening
(supposedly non-work time). Is that a selling point? Do we really need to
erode our after-hours time even further? Seems the only winner here is the
company purchasing the 'service'.

Secondly, isn't this something most people with even basic scripting language
savvy could whack together on their own (company) server? Setting up a mailing
list with a daily digest (sent out first thing in the morning) and a daily
'reminder' e-mail in the evening isn't exactly hard. If I was so miserly that
I'd want to screw my employees out of ten minutes of their time, I'd certainly
be miserly enough to set this up myself, not pay 10+ euro a month for it.

------
rokhayakebe
This is great in many ways: 1) Your boss can skip coming to your desk and
interrupting you with "what have you been working on?," 2) Every time you
answer that question verbally you forget something important, 3) Using other
tools to report on your work makes everything complicated, 4) Email is easy,
5) You get to summarize your day, if not for report for your own good 6)
Forget the team, I now have an archive of everything I have done.

Added feature: Perhaps users can send emails throughout the day if they want
to, instead of waiting.

The scary part: Your company's information in the hands of a company you do
not know much about. It becomes very easy to be kept hostage, I guess unless
exporting your data and completely deleting it from their servers is an
option.

------
lgmspb
Is it different from: [https://idonethis.com](https://idonethis.com)?

------
ytjohn
I've seen this concept before and thought it might be useful in my
organization. The general opinion I got back was that people hate email, and
the daily digest would be pretty well ignored. Once I was reminded of this, I
fully agreed.

In fact, using tools like slack, asana, phabricator, and github enterprise
there's an overall goal to do less and less email and something like this
would be a step in the other direction.

What we're looking at setting up is a centralized dashboard to tie our tools
together and include status updates. The tool I'm looking at is
[anthracite]([https://github.com/Dieterbe/anthracite](https://github.com/Dieterbe/anthracite))
which bills itself as an event manager ("an event / change logging/managament
app").

On the surface, this looks like something you use to track when code is
changed or server changes are made. And that is a lot of it. But it's really a
way to display events and you can have pre-made filters of events (call them
event streams). You can integrate it with your chat system or email to post
status updates by hand, you could have task management systems like asana post
updates, etc.

Granted, I'm not entirely sure yet if anthracite is mature enough for what
we're looking for, but we definitely are angling for that approach.

------
Dru89
Right or wrong, many people that I've worked with view the 10-minute morning
stand-up meeting as a "starting function" for their day. This would completely
break that function of a stand-up.

I'm also not too fond of anything that would cause people to work later in the
evening. The one problem I see this potentially fixing is the feeling of
forgetting everything you did over the weekend.

~~~
nerdben
StandupMail shouldn't replace your standup. But think of situations when
you're working with distributed teams. Many teams are working in this mode...
not just development teams. Think of marketing, sales etc.

------
astletron
We're a generation of coders raised by email. I'm wondering if another email
is really the answer we need.

~~~
nerdben
It's 1 more aggregating many others you don't need then anymore. And, it's not
only for coders :)

------
hw
I'm not exactly sure what problem standupmail is trying to solve, or if it's
artificially creating one. Sending out automatic reminders for status updates
and a daily digest doesn't justify the pricing IMO, as it's something that can
be done easily via automatic email reminders / calendar events.

StandupMail seems to want to replace daily standups for teams, which I don't
think is a good idea.

First of all, standup meetings are essential to start the day. It's the team's
huddle before heading out into the field. It's to provide updates on
yesterday's play, but also to discuss briefly any topics of importance, making
sure everyone's on the same page for the present day. Replacing that with a
one-directional email update would hinder all that.

>INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY

I would argue that taking the time to write an email, read each other's update
etc actually reduces productivity overall. It's much easier to go to a 5-10
minute standup and hear everyone's update as well as verbally provide your own
update. In fact, if I need more clarification from someone's update, I'd have
to interrupt that person after I've read the email, or write out more emails.

> Avoid time-consuming status meetings and interrupting the team from
> accomplishing their tasks.

Standups and status meetings are supposed to be brief. They usually happen at
the end of day or beginning of the day where it provides a lot more value (as
a wrap up or an anchor to the start of the day) than interruption (if any). If
your status meetings are taking a long time, you're doing it wrong.

> NO MICROMANAGEMENT

If a regular standup = micromanagement, then how is an email reminder for
standup updates not micromanaging? Keeping the team on the same page about
what needs to be done is easier with a verbal standup. IMO whether there is or
isn't any micromanagement in regular standups, it wont change with email
updates. It's more of a team dynamic than a process/tool issue.

~~~
nerdben
Problem to solve: keeping a team of people working on the same project up-to-
date in a simple way - overcoming barriers like availability and distribution
of team members.

You might be right with your arguments if you see StandupMail as a tool
replacing your Scrum standup. However, it's intended to be a tool for every
team out there working on the same topic - most teams don't even know what a
"SCRUM Standup" is (ask your sales team for example).

------
danmaz74
You seriously need to show an example workflow without having to sign up. If
you don't have money for a video, just create a page with a few screenshots
and short explanations.

------
standup__
Interesting, I just built a service sort of like this yesterday and was going
to 'beta' test it with my team starting monday. I don't like the "evening" and
"morning" emails, as I work on a distributed team and "evening" and "morning"
are very subjective.

Distributed and remote employees I think is one of the biggest challenges
facing the work place at the moment, with no good solutions available yet.

btw, your ssl cert is broken when visiting non-www.

~~~
tbrock
I built a system like this one that we coined "daily update" and supporting
the concept of a non uniform morning was just a matter of using timezones.
Each employee had a timezone setting that was automatically detected but could
be overridden and our morning email was sent to them at their 9am. Now,
obviously what time you start your day is subjective but it seemed to work for
those that enjoyed it by being the earliest value.

------
jkaljundi
What we have found from running Weekdone
([https://weekdone.com/](https://weekdone.com/)) which has options for both
daily and weekly update reports I would say around 5-10% of customers opt for
the daily option. For most, weekly updates via e-mail are enough - just like
many rune their stand-ups weekly and not daily. Of course, we do have a real-
time newsfeed which many use on mobile and web for the updates.

~~~
nerdben
You can do weekly reports with StandupMail as well. You're free to schedule
reminders/digests however you want under "settings".

------
mverwijs
We use teamsnippets.com. I've a love/hate relationship with them. As a part-
time employee and a full-time father, the last thing I want to do in the
evening is switch context _again_ and type up what I did during the working
hours.

On the other hand: I do like reading what my colleagues did during the day....

------
nikhilvishnu
We are using standup mail everyday to update our tasks. Unlike standup mail we
do it manually every morning.

Idea is good but I am not convinced with the pricing. I can do it manually
anyway by just cc ing the entire team.

I suggest to give it for free upto 5 or 10 users then charge for the members
above that.

------
Xorlev
It's a nice to have, but it's not priced with respect to value.

I'd also be hesitant to route somewhat confidential emails through a one-man
band development shop who may or may not be snooping them out of interest.

------
mlitwiniuk
Actually we've taken this to the next level with
[https://teamlens.io/](https://teamlens.io/) \- and as email may be good way
of reporting your progress, it's a bit obsolete + it requires actual
"answering" to it, so it (it my opinion) adds extra complecity to the whole
process (it's hard to give status "in real time" or whenever you want it
during the day). We'll be launching next week or so (hopefully).

------
asymmetric
I get a blank page with JavaScript disabled. Is this how the web is supposed
to be in the future?

~~~
shapov
And I can't drive places without fuel in my car. What's your point? You made a
conscious decision to cripple your browsing experience, what did you expect?

~~~
asymmetric
My point is: is there absolutely no content that can be displayed without
JavaScript being enabled? I'm sure there is.

It's a matter of principles (I shouldn't be compelled to enable JS on a
website only to view its static content - or _any_ content at all), it's a
matter of accessibility (people with impaired vision who use text-to-speech
software will have a harder time with this page)and it's a metter of
compatibility (not all devices/browsers run JS)

------
simzen85
How can I contact support ? Don't see any info regarding this on the website ?
Thanks.

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jaksmit
how's this different to iDoneThis?

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mdariani
sounds good. i will give it a try!

