
Show HN: Pragli, a virtual office for remote teams - dsaffy
https://pragli.com
======
Waterluvian
Get rid of that damn chat button that appears. Then shakes. Then pops up a
fake conversation covering half my screen while I'm trying to read. Seriously,
I was interested and that thing just pissed me off.

It's like designers open the startup starter pack and think they have to use
all the pieces.

~~~
lemax
It's called Intercom

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sqrt17
You can get it from different vendors and the solicitation behaviour is just
detracting and horrible. It's understandable from the standpoint of the widget
maker if more interactions mean more money, and it's understandable from the
standpoint of the web site if they think it gets them more stickiness but what
it really does is have an idiot greeter kiddo interrupt their actual sales
funnel.

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sairamkunala
Congrats on the launch.

Given the current situation with Zoom, it may help increase trust on HN if you
can add information about if you use E2E encryption and delays and location of
servers and if its a centralized or de-centralized architecture etc.,

Looks like the feature set perfectly fits the usecase for remote teams, but
using something along side Slack like apps, people may feel the friction since
Slack itself consumes too much memory among other things. Going around
multiple apps itself is a pain. I see that you have them linked through Slack
apps.

As an alternative, I personally feel Discord to be a Slack's better version.
Discord is used by mainly by gamers around the globe to voice chat during
online games. Discord has Pragli + Slack combined - threaded conversations.

~~~
dsaffy
Re security: we do have e2e encryption; if you have a moment, take a look at
our security brief under our FAQ
[https://pragli.com/blog/faq/](https://pragli.com/blog/faq/) and let me know
what you feel we should add / how we should display it.

Re Discord: I'm a gamer so I understand why you like it. Where I feel Discord
is lacking in the workplace is that it only shows if you're playing a game,
and it doesn't build any more sense of availability beyond that. It doesn't
have the same auto-status / Spotify / manual status that we built into Pragli.
It does for games (shows if I'm playing some game) but not for work.

~~~
gfodor
If you are using WebRTC with a centralized SFU, you do _not_ have e2e
encryption. If agora is a centralized server for WebRTC multiplexing, please
correct your documentation. You are not able to do e2e encryption in the
browser using a centralized SFU: it literally does not exist (yet.)

~~~
carlosdp
It looks like Agora is the one claiming E2E, which I agree with you, is almost
certainly wrong.

[https://www.agora.io/en/videocall-2/](https://www.agora.io/en/videocall-2/)

~~~
gfodor
The whole "lets define end-to-end to be whatever we want" thing is getting
real old.

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dsaffy
Hi HN! After selling our first company, my co-founder Vivek and I started
working remotely at the acquirer. We discovered we were much more productive
than we'd expected, but we struggled with two main issues: communication and
loneliness.

Communication friction came primarily from the endless back and forth in Slack
/ text communication. On the other hand, scheduling a Zoom meeting felt very
heavyweight.

Loneliness came more slowly, but speaking to people less often definitely
affected my happiness and productivity.

As a result, we built Pragli, a virtual office for remote teams.

In Pragli, you customize your appearance with an avatar and then can hop into
audio rooms with one click. Video and screen share are optional.

When you're focusing or other unavailable, you can manually set a status, or
automatically set a status via our Spotify and calendar integrations.

FWIW, TechCrunch describes Pragli as "BitMoji for the enterprise."
[https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/14/pragli-remote-office-
appli...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/14/pragli-remote-office-application/)

You do have to sign up with Google, Microsoft, or Github OAuth, but there are
no additional hurdles beyond that, you are dropped right into a team. You also
have the option to skip downloading the desktop app and play with it in the
web.

I'm here to answer any questions. Let me know what you think!

~~~
firatcan
Looks nice, but could you explain what's the difference between other remote
team workspace than your avatar.

BTW, I never used virtual workspace software. I might not have the problem
that you're solving as your potential users

~~~
dsaffy
Sure thing! A couple keys differences: 1) Avatars - as you mentioned 2)
Walkie-talkie - most virtual offices have a call analogy, where you call
someone to speak. In Pragli, you don't call - you just jump straight into a
conversation, but the other side is muted (to protect their privacy). Here's
my blog post on this: [https://pragli.com/blog/building-a-walkie-talkie-for-
remote-...](https://pragli.com/blog/building-a-walkie-talkie-for-remote-work/)
3) Some solutions have a very literal office (with a floor plan, etc) - we
have a more virtual analogy 4) From what we hear, we have higher quality
audio, video, screen share than others (I encourage you to evaluate for
yourself)

~~~
oefnak
Are you saying people can just start talking to me when I'm writing code? or
do you mean text messages?

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aargh_aargh
I'm not easily annoyed but those avatars moving horizontally seem really
distracting and irritating. What does the moving indicate?

~~~
dsaffy
By default, the avatar grays out eventually if you don't interact with your
computer, but otherwise is static. You can optionally instruct Pragli to use
local facial recognition to move when you move and smile when you smile. Some
users really like it and it looks more lively in demos, but FWIW the strong
majority of our users are on keyboard/mouse. Here's a blog post I did a while
ago about the facial recognition mode: [https://pragli.com/blog/live-avatars-
with-faceapi-js/](https://pragli.com/blog/live-avatars-with-faceapi-js/)

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nodomain
Nice idea. But I always wonder where it started that pricing is a thing to be
hidden. What does your service cost and why can’t you be open and transparent
about this? Not finding the pricing info turned me away instantly.

~~~
dsaffy
Pragli is totally free until at least June 1 to be helpful during COVID-19 -
we haven't determined our pricing model past then, but it will probably
resemble Zoom or Slack (a free tier + a paid tier that's priced per user per
month).

~~~
nodomain
Cool. Then please write that prominently on your website :)

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stedaniels
This looks great, I'd love to get my colleagues on board. Where does the
future lie? What's the pricing?

Cheers

~~~
dsaffy
Awesome! Let me know how it goes.

Pragli is totally free until at least June 1. At some point, we will implement
a free-forever tier + paid tier. We aren't sure what the pricing for the paid
tier will be, but it will probably look like Slack / Zoom ($ per user per
month).

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lemax
It would be nice if this didn't function like a virtual panopticon. Being able
to manually set your status, just in case you haven't typed a character on
your computer in the last 5 minutes, would be a nice feature to bring back
from the dark ages.

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dsaffy
You can manually set a status :)

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sfkdjf9j3j
Facebook is using this?

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Boulth
Yeah I always wonder how do they get the logo there. Is Pragli asking Facebook
for permission to put their logo there?

~~~
dsaffy
Author here - we put up the logos for companies where members of the company
use Pragli. We note in our terms of service that we reserve the right to do
this, but we are happy to remove any logos of companies who request not to be
used as such.

~~~
freepor
Interesting approach. Usually logo use is negotiated at purchase time. I'd be
interested to see whether you suffer any consequences for playing fast and
loose with logos. Might be a profitable way to break the rules like Uber,
Facebook, etc.

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tcoff91
Looks kind of similar to Sococo:
[https://www.sococo.com/](https://www.sococo.com/)

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Jaruzel
It looks cool. But does remind me a little of Microsoft Comic Chat. :)

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rammy1234
kind of yahoo chatrooms ? but for teams ?

