
Show HN: Zenkit – Productivity app of List, Kanban, Spreadsheet and Calendar - becewumuy
https://zenkit.com/
======
jeremy_wiebe
Looks pretty interesting. The "typing" at the top of the page causes some
movement of the page further down which makes reading the lower content
annoying as it "bounces" up and down. Looks like it's due to the "typed"
content wrapping to a third line for some of the phrases that are typed on
mobile devices.

~~~
skororke
Hi! Siobhan from Zenkit here. We're fixing that now, thank you so much for
pointing that out :)

~~~
irishcule
Hah "Siobhan".....are ye Irish?

Just some things I noticed quickly. Some kind of progress or status bar could
be added when doing an import. I've imported a CSV I exported from Jira and it
just seems to be continuously importing with no idea on the status of it (how
long is left, is it even still importing or has something gone wrong?)

Also when using the select box for the "Field Type" in the field properties
pop up, the list is going below my screen and I cannot see the bottom items in
that list.

~~~
sororke
Half ;) Sorry for the delayed response! Good idea with the status bar. If you
refreshed the page the collection should be imported. We're working on fixing
that.

Are you still having trouble with the fields?

~~~
irishcule
Yes. You can see it here: [http://imgur.com/a/1soW3](http://imgur.com/a/1soW3)

If you just make the browser window small it will happen.

~~~
sororke
Oh! Thanks so much, I've sent it over to the developers. Would you mind
sending your registration email address to info@zenkit.com (& mention your HN
username)? It may be an account-related issue. Thanks again!

------
area51
This is so close to what I was looking for!

Feature Request: Sub-tasks The first interface I use to create tasks is always
an outliner, that way I can quickly breakdown everything that needs to be done
and add details about their implementation. This is close to mindmaps as shown
in your demo, but a text based outliner is faster to type, edit, rearrange in.
Having Subtasks would allow an approximation of this.

Also, please start charging for it.

~~~
mwelker
Thank you. Right now we have checklists ;) Full-featured "subtasks" is a very
interesting matter and we are working an a default support for that.
Currently, you might "implement" this by adding a references called
"subtasks". You also could create an aggregation to sum up costs/time
estimates of these subtasks.

~~~
cavemanklaus
Yes would also love subtasks, start with a skeleton then add the detailed meat
of the work like how the interface works with
[https://workflowy.com](https://workflowy.com)

------
client4
Also, I have some feature requests. I should mention I'm already a fan of the
product and will be trying it out for the next few weeks, and I'm also sure
you're already developing some of these.

* Mega List View: Collections are great! But sometimes I like to see all the things and feel overwhelmed. I can do this in search for tags (search "in progress") but a combined collection list would be cool.

* Data Export: Sometimes I want to export my list, like if I'm traveling without internet for a week but would like to still work on things. A .CSV, .MD, or something text based would be nice.

* Webhooks: I'd like to post to a slack channel when a task is done

* Assignment of tasks (not collections): I have a collection with a lot of tasks, but want to assign a specific task to an employee without them seeing all the collection tasks. Perhaps an 'assigned to me' board? Or maybe I can link a task to a different collection?

~~~
pbender
Love the "all the things" suggestion, we'll definitely look into that.
Webhooks & exports are on the way. User assignments/permissions are definitely
going to be improved. Great idea :)

------
SirAiedail
Hey! Lucas, another Zenkit team member here! We're trying to answer your
questions as quickly as possible!

Price: we'll use a freemium model, starting in Q1 2017. Pricing will be
similar to other tools in the market.

Trello/imports from other apps: we have one click imports for Trello and
Wunderlist, & working on more. We're also in beta with Zapier. You can see our
Trello comparison here: zenkit.com/trello

Unstable/Problems registering: sorry to hear there are issues here! HN was
pretty unexpected :) we'd be happy to fix this on a case by case basis. Please
send us a short note to hello@zenkit.com with your username / registration
email.

API/webhooks: we're working on publishing our API and we hooks. We'll make
them public as soon as we release our iOS app at the end of this year.

Localization : support for more languages coming in Q1-2 2017!

Tutorials/onboarding: we're releasing videos in the next week or two. Again,
HN was unexpected :D

Feature requests : thank you so much for your requests! We're taking note and
will definitely keep everyone updated with new features. (we've already got a
lot of great stuff in the pipeline!)

Feel free to get in touch via email if you want to chat!

~~~
ijidak
Why freemium? In my opinion, a 14 day trial, and then $5 per month pricing is
good enough. Sometimes I don't understand why so much software is given away
for free.

I'll happily use it for free, of course, but it seems like value is being
given away without a compelling reason.

Most business people get that our vendors have to pay to keep the lights on.
Because this product enhances productivity, I doubt many business people would
decide not to use this product, simply because it's paid. If so, they're
probably not going to be in business long anyway.

~~~
vitro
Why not?

Once you get used to it and have all your people people of your recently
created team using it as well, once you grow over the free threshold, you will
most likely pay. In the long run I see freemium as better option.

14 day free trial usually drives me away from really trying the application, I
may not have enough time to really see if this tool fits my team's need and I
don't want to pay for something I don't use that much yet, no matter how small
the amount.

------
jkozera
Wow, great! And here I've found this exactly ~1 day after wasting time trying
to implement something similar for my study planning purposes. :) [Shameless
plug:
[https://jkozera.github.io/oudashboard/](https://jkozera.github.io/oudashboard/)
\- you can load the calendar from
[https://jkozera.github.io/oudashboard/sample.ics](https://jkozera.github.io/oudashboard/sample.ics)
instead of fetching one from the OU, no sign up is required]

Given the above, I would love to integrate these calendars with some Zenkit
API instead. I see a 'Generate new API key' option in settings, but cannot
find any API docs anywhere. Is API access going to be free? Please at least
allow it for students. :)

~~~
mwelker
Hi there ;)

You are right. We have not published our API yet. We use this API to connect
to Zapier. I would be happy give you early access. Please email me.

-Martin

BTW: If you needed one day for implementing something like this: We are
hiring! ;)

------
mbrain
It looks good but text rewriting thing should be stopped when video is
playing, I couldn't watch the video because its distracting :)

~~~
skororke
Fair point :D we'll look into it asap

------
jsd1982
The home page title being rewritten constantly causes annoying reflow on
mobile browsers, making it very difficult to read things below.

~~~
skororke
Hi! We're fixing that now, thank you so much for pointing that out :)

------
MitjaBezensek
It would be great to have a more detailed calendar view (ie, the ability to
assign tasks to a certain hour, not only setting the due date) and maybe a
sync option with google calendar.

Also, keyboard shortcuts.

~~~
nick_resky
Hiya, great ideas! Love the calendar one. We're working on all of those
things, and they're on the roadmap to be released in the next couple of months
(or weeks in some cases).

------
Odenwaelder
I registered, logged in, tried to add a new collection. When I want to open
the new collection, it shows me a "something went wrong" page. Doesn't seem
very stable yet ...

~~~
sororke
Hi, thanks for letting us know. It was an issue with scaling (HN kind of took
us by surprise :) it should be fixed now! Sorry for the late response!

------
dangoor
Are all of the views available? I saw the mindmap in the demo on the front
page, but I didn't see that view as an option when playing around with Zenkit.

Looks very cool from an initial play!

~~~
SirAiedail
Hi! We're releasing the Mind Map really soon. We included it in the video
because we weren't expecting so many people to see it before we released it :D

~~~
dangoor
Nice, thanks! I'll likely play with Zenkit some more next week and will
undoubtedly have some feedback for you as I've been looking at a lot of
project management tools recently.

------
cameronstanley
Looks neat! I really like being able to switch between lists, Kanban,
spreadsheet, and calendar views. Design looks very clean and intuitive.

~~~
mwelker
Thanks very much! This is Martin from Zenkit. I will try to answer all of your
questions.

BTW, we are on Producthunt today and we have some other interesting comments
there..

------
maxhudson
Awesome app. A few comments:

\- It'd be really nice to see a weekly view of the calendar because I can't
see more than 3 things at once on a day.

\- After about 30 minutes of leaving the page open the drag-and-drop
functionality on the calendar breaks and my browser (Chrome) thinks I'm trying
to drag a link around.

\- Marking things as complete is an absolute necessity here. Most individual
users will be using this as an advanced task list. Trello just added this
functionality, so it would be good timing and help keep them from getting an
upper-hand here.

In general it's an awesome idea. Let people view their data in the form they
want and let them track what they want. However the interface is a bit
sluggish. If all of the inputs were live inputs (actual input tags, not
elements you click on and then get processed and turned into inputs) it would
probably feel much more responsive.

------
scriptdevil
This is really really neat. However, it would be nice if the tags could be
decoupled from Kanban column names. For instance, to track what I am learning,
I want to tag stuff "Learning" but keep it in "Inbox" in the Kanban view.
Currently there seem to be two alternatives - 1) Create a new collection
(which makes me lose a combined inbox) 2) Add a custom field called "mytags"
\- which works, but is hard to add because I need to go to expand the task
each time. Could any person from Zenkit help me understand what your workflow
is for this?

Also, it would be cool if there was a way of marking a task "done" and
removing it right in the list view. A keyboard shortcut to archive might be
nice, I suppose.

Edit: Table view + New field with "tags" type solved the first problem to a
great extent.

~~~
pbender
Interesting ideas! Would setting up a label field called 'tags' & allowing new
labes to be created/ multiple labels to be selected work (you don't have to
use them as kanban lists). Or just set up the field that contains 'inbox' and
'learning' to allow multiple labels? If not please get in touch to explain a
little nore, if you like hello@zenkit.com

Re: marking done and archiving - we're working on dependencies & automation,
so it'll be possible soon!

------
jgmjgm
BUG: I can't read the terms of service or the privacy policy unless I log in.
:-)

Update: I can cut and paste the policy and TOS urls and they work in a
different browser window. For some reason, when I am at the registration page
for the beta and I click these links at the bottom it sends me to a login
page.

~~~
sirorke
FYI @ All- this bug has been fixed, along with a couple of others that were
affecting some users. Thanks everyone for all the great feedback!

------
Kinnard
Must have an API, or at least export as csv AND json buttons. I use the
pomodoro technique, it 100% necessary for me to be able to connect my task
list with the pomodoro app I use: [https://pomotodo.com](https://pomotodo.com)

~~~
sororke
Hiya, yes! We agree. (And I am also an avid pomodoro fan :D). We'll be
releasing the API when we release our iOS app next month. We're working on
exports too, they're on the way :)

------
spoinkaroo
Great interface - I look forward to trying it out for various projects, and
hope the beta goes well!

------
wehadfun
Price?

------
client4
Hey! Awesome looking site and I'm looking forward to using it. My only request
is when you do decide to monetize, that you pick a pricing strategy that
doesn't cause me to stop using your product. I was using upwave.io until they
went to $4/user. Compared, Slack is $6.67/user and Google Apps for Business is
$5/user per month. I'm in the small business market (less than 10 employees)
and an option for 'up to 5 users' for $15 a month would be an easy purchase. A
$5/user option would be an easy purchase if we keep your app open in a tab all
day.

~~~
skororke
Thanks so much for your suggestions. We have plans for freemium pricing & will
probably start charging in the Q1 of 2017. Pricing will be in the range of
other productivity tools in the market.

------
soneca
Congrats on the launch! Very complete and well-thought from what I can see.

I assume you were not ready for HN #1 traffic, as I registered to start using
on a real project of mine but faced some hiccups along the way of creating my
own collection. I was able to create it and edit the settings, but right now
as I try to access my recently created collection I only get: _" Something
went wrong, sorry about that! If this happens again, please let us know."_

I will try later and I am in no hurry, but you should try to fix it asap. I
logged in with the email on my profile if you need to check my specific case.

Good luck!

~~~
sirorke
Thanks so much for the early confidence ;) That issue should have been fixed
by now, it probably had to do with the database not scaling quickly enough. I
hope it's working for you now!

------
positivity89
The calendar is not working for me. It shows grey bars instead of text.

~~~
srorke
Hi, thanks for letting us know! First suggestion - refresh or clear cache? If
that doesn't work, please would you send us the email you registered with to
info@zenkit.com and we'll sort it out :)

~~~
adevine
Hi, just first want to say I think this is a great product so far. Being able
to switch between the Kanban view and the list view is key for me and some
folks on my team.

Regarding the calendar, I'm having the same problem - 4 of my tasks are
showing up correct, but 3 are showing up on the wrong date as gray bars. I
will send a screenshot and more details to that email address.

------
eclipxe
Looks great. Needs on premise install option to keep data local.

~~~
djsumdog
Yea, I'm not impressed by projects today unless they have a docker container
that's designed to be linked to a database via env variables and documented
storage/volume locations.

It should be easy for people to host their own data.

------
infodroid
Yet another product or service with inappropriate use of Zen in the name. What
does this have to do with Zen, the school of Mahayana Buddhism?

~~~
hrxn
Why does it have to have to do anything with it?

------
webwanderings
If you add a timer on the tasks, I'll consider moving. I need the native
platform to provide a start/stop timer on tasks.

~~~
sororke
Thanks so much for the suggestion, I totally agree. Massive pomodoro fan here.
Timers are definitely on the roadmap, but we have a lot of great features
coming up, so no guarantee when they'll be available.

------
stewdellow
Really cool. I'm a big Trello user, but it has some shortcomings so I'm always
interested in new offerings.

Have imported one of my organisations and will work with a bit to see how this
works out. The first thing that jumps out at me is the lack of Markdown
support in the descriptions.

Also, why is there no select field / list option for custom fields?

~~~
sororke
Cool! We found some limits in Trello too, which was part of the reason we
started developing Zenkit. We're working on markdown support, as well as a
couple of other fields ;)

What do you mean exactly by select field/list option? Do you mean select all
items in a list in kanban?

~~~
stewdellow
Not exactly. It would be nice to define a select/dropdown list and some
options. Then users can select one of those options for the card item.

That said I've used a labels custom field for my use case but I still think a
dropdown list would have some merit.

By the way vertical/horizontal grouping in the Kanban options are superb.
Really great idea.

~~~
stewdellow
Looks like when you open an item and try to move to another collection from
the "Actions" drop down it doesn't work. Works on individual items from the
collection view though.

------
madlynormal
This is a nice to have, but I would love to see integration with Jira and/or
Pivotal Tracker.

~~~
srorke
Thanks for your suggestions! We're working on integrations at the moment and
will be releasing new ones soon. :)

------
ilikescience
This is definitely speaking to me — I like being able to switch between tools,
depending on the project, but dislike the silos most tools (trello, google
sheets / airtable, canvas / google docs / text) create around structured data.

~~~
SonicSoul
can you elaborate on the idea of "tool silos" ? not sure what you mean

~~~
mholmes680
they probably mean the data is less portable across multiple tools. So, you're
putting data in multiple places, and creating individual relationships based
on the view.

And, putting data in multiple places means extra time and money managing it.
Generally.

~~~
skororke
Siobhan from Zenkit here - You nailed it, that's exactly what we mean ;)

------
_ezhik
Two factor authentication (2FA)?

~~~
mwelker
Hi! Definitely on our roadmap. Please have a look here:
[https://zenkit.com/enterprise](https://zenkit.com/enterprise)

------
z3t4
Very good video and on-boarding! Looks ten time more useful then anything I've
seen so far. The user interface isn't unitive, like I tried pushing the plus
sign where I should have pushed enter. It needs tutorials!

~~~
z3t4
With some more testing I found out it only has 1/5 of the functionality in the
video. The overall experience is bad, like waiting several seconds after
clicking somewhere and lagging animations.

~~~
PeOe
Hi there, sorry to hear there have been problems with the UX so far. It may
have been to do with the database scaling issue we faced earlier. Everything
shown in the video is or will be available available soon (mind
maps/analytics). If you send your registration email address (and HN username)
to info@zenkit.com our programmers will take a look at your case.

------
ijidak
Looks really good. I'm going to start using it. To echo a previous comment, as
far as price range, I'd say $5 a month per user, or $15 a month for teams of
up to 5 is perfect. Just my opinion.

~~~
srorke
Thanks so much for the feedback, we really appreciate the pricing suggestions
:) Official pricing should be released by Q1 2017

------
edpichler
Looks very nice!

I really would like to see a merge of features between Zenkit and Trello.

If Zenkit keeps my Kanban synchronized with Trello, it's already possible to
me use it. I haven't found yet if it has this feature.

~~~
PeOe
Hi, Peter from Zenkit here! We've had a lot of trello fans asking for Zenkit
synchronization so we built a one click importer. What features from trello
would you like to see in Zenkit? Btw we made a comparison page here:
zenkit.com/trello

------
gotrythis
Error when connecting with Google, showed this in a red box:

select * from "strucd_users_emails" where "email" = $1 and "deprecated_at" is
null - Connection terminated

~~~
nick_resky
We’re so sorry for the inconvenience! It seems we didn’t scale our database
fast enough. If you send us an email to hello@zenkit.com with your
registration address, we’d be happy to fix it for you. This scaling issue will
be fixed ASAP!

------
chrisbro
I didn't know how badly I needed the mind map view until I saw it. Re-creates
how I think about planning complex tasks with multiple dependencies.

~~~
nick_resky
We're glad to hear it!! The mind map will be released soon, so keep an eye out
:)

------
hso1
Fantastic! Can you please add keyboard shortcuts? :D

------
Odenwaelder
Also for f's sake, don't send me unsolicited "Getting Started" eMails! I don't
understand why all those webapps think that this is a good idea. I don't want
to read it, I have to find the unsubscribe button, have to click it, have to
click ok and the website and have to confirm in a second eMail that I really
want to unsubscribe. What kind of shitty UX is that? Would you like me to just
click on Spam and tell GMail to block them for everybody?

~~~
sororke
Hi there, sorry about that. Double opt-in is required by law here. The welcome
email is a short term solution that we built because our in app onboarding
wasn't yet ready. As I mentioned before, HN and Product Hunt took us by
surprise yesterday. We're working on a smoother UX for the sign process now :)

~~~
Odenwaelder
This is not double opt-in, it's double opt-out. I didn't opt-in the first
place, you just sent me eMails.

------
johnnyg
This is a cool idea and the demo looks nice.

I registered and am getting a lot of retrys and worker job time outs.

I'll try again later tonight.

~~~
soneca
me too, since just after post. Commented it here, but no replies.

~~~
mwelker
Sorry for all the troubel. These issues should be resolved now.

------
macmac
This reminds me of Chandler, Mitch Kapor's attempt at a PIM. Is there a story
around email integration?

~~~
PeOe
Hi macmac, yes we’re definitely thinking about email integration but it’s
still a little further down the roadmap.

------
vitro
Hi, awesome tool!

Would be nice if it had localization support so I can use it with my non-
english speaking colleagues.

~~~
PeOe
That would be great! It's definitely on our roadmap for Q1-2 2017

------
Raphmedia
You may want to allow the user activation page to work on mobile. I understand
that the entire app is not ready for it but that one page would be important
to allow.

When I receive such an email I always open it on my mobile.

Right now you end up on a page saying that the current device width is not
supported.

Edit: It seem that my account was authorized even if only an error message was
displayed.

------
techvibe2
I just watched the video, it looks very promising. It combine the best of
Asana and Trello.

------
wehadfun
Awesome website. I understand what this does. Love the gif video things.

~~~
mwelker
Thanks

------
jbi
use.fontawesome.com blocks loading of your website if it's not reachable. Can
you move it from <head> to the end of <body>?

And TOS and privacy policy should not require a login ;)

~~~
PeOe
Thanks for the heads up! (And apologies for the delayed response). Both those
issues were fixed & should be working fine now :)

------
kreck
Awesome! I love the simple, clean and tidy design!

------
elvispt
Looks good but this annoys me beyond belief:

[http://i.imgur.com/ETQHhr5.gif](http://i.imgur.com/ETQHhr5.gif)

Write text, then hit SHIFT+HOME it does not select the text. Tried it in
Firefox and Chrome.

