
Topicbox – FastMail’s new product for teams - robert-boehnke
https://blog.fastmail.com/2017/09/12/announcing-topicbox-our-new-product-for-teams/
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cpr
Would there be any way to turn this into a Zendesk-like solution, using
threads for each support inquiry, and assignments of some sort?

We're happy Fastmail email users, and can _almost_ live with email for
support, and barely use any Zendesk features other than assignments, internal
notes, and various views. But those three simple ZD features we do use are
critical.

~~~
brongondwana
I pinged the product lead (and told her to get a hacker news account of her
own!)

Answer: we've definitely talked about how it would be great as a lightweight
client management system for a freelancer or consulting firm. We're definitely
looking ahead to possible integrations, too!

\---

From myself - we talk a lot about "teams" with Topicbox, but it's really any
group of poeple who share a common interest or responsibility. One market
we've identified is homeowners' associations or "body corporates" as they're
often called here in Australia. They have membership turnover as people buy
and sell, and they have long running projects with a need to keep history.
Finally, they consist of people who use different mail services, because
unlike a business where everyone is on the same solution, a set of homeowners
share nothing other than the locality in which they live. So a heterogeneous
system like Topicbox with archivable topics and searchable history is ideal.

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mxuribe
I'm always a big fan of org. wikis...but the challenge is some users slack off
on creating/posting content...but this topicbox seems like users can simply
draft/send an email, and bam its content for a sort of "wiki". This is a great
idea, even if only for the low curve of easily "creating" organizational
content! Kudos to fastmail!

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systems
i find topicbox to sound more like a supercharged mailing-list

personally i think mailing-list is the most important communication tool for
team work, and i think more organization need to use them

sadly the only mailing-list software for windows/exchange i found was
commercial, expensive and will be a hard sell ...

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ams6110
Well I was going to say I don't really see how this is much different from
e.g. Google Groups. Groups messages go into an archive that is
searchable/readable by new members. But just having a message archive isn't
really that helpful unless it can be organized further, and that's where it
breaks down -- the job of organizing the group archive has all the same
problems of keeping the team wiki up to date: its easy to get behind, and the
content grows stale or hard to use.

~~~
e12e
Unless there are any alternative interfaces I'm unaware of, Google group's
biggest problem isn't its feature set, but its godawful interface... It feels
like someone that never heard of usenet took a look at early version of phpbb
and proclaimed: we can do worse!

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ams6110
LOL yes I do agree, Google Group has an astonishingly bad UI especially
considering it's from a company with the resouces of Google.

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EGreg
Aren't many businesses going to be leery of sending their group emails to yet
another external domain to be archived? Where are the turnkey open source
email servers after 40 years? It seems no one solved SPAM in a way that's
compatible with sending out your own, but for receiving and internal stuff
like this?

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wyc
I can't wait to see products like these spawn brand new professions like Email
Summarizers to get the gist out of long threads, Department Librarians to
organize and catalog discussions and events, and Communications Coordinators
to train teams on more effective patterns of e-communication.

PMs unwittingly take all these roles today, but these tools will surely unlock
further specialization.

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mkempe
Many moons ago I worked at a consultancy that was struggling with knowledge
sharing across continents and hundreds of projects. I suggested three paths: a
company-wide search engine that would return results across all project files
(Google used to sell such a solution, in a box); a part-time librarian role in
each project team to make sure project documents were correctly named, the
latest version was stored on the central file server, and they knew how to
reach out to other project librarians; and finally a one-day after-action
review workshop for every single project team as part of project closure. Plus
a few additional activities for project teams and suggestions for long-term
project staffing systems.

Some of it was done, very satisfyingly; some of it we didn't get around to
trying. Then the dotcom meltdown happened.

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azinman2
This just a mailing list, right? What am I missing?

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Kadin
I think it has a nice UI, and presumably it's also a hosted solution.

But fundamentally it seems to have many of the same features that Mailman et
al have had for decades.

Good on them if they can make mailinglist archives great again, though. I
think they're an underappreciated resource, and maybe a slick interface and
some rebranding is just what they need.

~~~
azinman2
The naming and the copy about team communication made me think it’s more than
it is. Not suggesting it has low utility, although I wish it did more than add
search to a hosted mailing list... google groups has search (in an old
interface). Seems like there’s a lot of opportunity to fix emails weaknesses
here if the product is truly focused on topics and teams.

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ngrilly
Could this be considered an alternative to Discourse?

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_RPM
FastMail really needs a UX team and graphic designer.

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nanoniano
What they have to launch is a cheaper service. Their prices are laughable,
although I can understand that, given they have no competition.

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brongondwana
We're not interested in a race to the bottom. We provide a high quality
service and we charge enough to provide that service. We're clear about our
values:

[https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/13/fastmails-
values/](https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/13/fastmails-values/)

and we unashamedly charge enough money to keep building a good service and
providing a good service.

~~~
nanoniano
I disagree. You charge a very high price for a service because you know you
have no competition, like Apple does. You have your right to do so. But that's
the way it is.

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brongondwana
As others have already noted (and I should stop reading this and go to bed,
it's after midnight here and I have to work in the morning!) we have plenty of
competition, and it's either plastered with ads or similarly priced, because
that's what it costs to run a service while giving your staff a decent living
and continuing to improve your service over time.

As I said here: [https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/01/fastmail-
advent-2016/](https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/01/fastmail-advent-2016/)

... one of the most common questions was "aren't you worried about giving away
all your secrets?" Actually, we really are not. Running an email service is
hard work, and providing the speed, reliability and stream of new features
would not be easy to replicate. So we're happy to share our stories...

We contribute a lot to open source, and we're doing a lot in the standards
space now to make sure email remains open. Topicbox is built on top of a draft
of the JMAP protocol which is currently being worked on at the IETF, and will
be updated to follow the standard. We have staff going to CalConnect to work
on calendaring standards in a couple of weeks because we're investing in
advancing the field as well. That also costs money, and we're self funded, so
we can't afford to sell email accounts at a loss.

It also means we have no secret customer. Our paying customers are our actual
customers, not the product we're using to pump up the valuation or collect
data from. It's a simple business proposition, money for service. I'm proud to
charge money for what we do.

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josteink
> It also means we have no secret customer. Our paying customers are our
> actual customers, not the product we're using to pump up the valuation or
> collect data from.

As an actual, paying customer I just want to express just how much I
appreciate that someone is actually doing this.

The internet has lots of creepy companies spying on your every move. Actually
paying for a service and knowing that there's nobody looking over your
shoulder feels really good. I wish there were more companies like that.

