

Show HN: Dayboard – Daily task management for teams - jtcchan
https://dayboard.co/

======
jtcchan
Hi HN, I'm John, the guy behind this.

I started this while looking for a way to help remote teams run stand up
meetings but it turns out what stand ups offered wasn't easy to capture in an
app.

Instead, it turns out it was much better to build something that helps people
get a day-to-day view of their company and help individuals fight their
distraction, be accountable and stay productive -- which is essentially what
stand ups aims to do (among other things). To do this, I built a (well
received) Chrome extension that helps you stay focused on your priority tasks
- which automatically syncs your progress with your team:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dayboard-new-
tab-p...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dayboard-new-tab-
page/kimodcegbhclamjcbifgfaldeengbgij)

For those interested in the backstory, you can learn more about this from our
feature on Lifehacker ([http://lifehacker.com/dayboard-uses-chromes-new-tab-
page-to-...](http://lifehacker.com/dayboard-uses-chromes-new-tab-page-to-keep-
you-focused-1589532616)) and ProductHunt
([http://www.producthunt.com/posts/dayboard](http://www.producthunt.com/posts/dayboard))

I'll be continuing development on this so expect to see new features and
improvements.

Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Also happy to answer any
questions!

~~~
noir_lord
I really like the sheer simplicity of this.

I started building something slightly similar
([http://i.imgur.com/hzEJgvK.png](http://i.imgur.com/hzEJgvK.png)) as I wanted
a simple to-do list that I could access from anywhere and was completely idiot
proof (drag drop tasks etc) unfortunately I never got past the PoC as I'm
simply too busy but I will get back to it, It had promise and was a nice itch
to scratch.

Nicely done :)

~~~
jtcchan
Thank you! Haha being too busy is a problem we all have ;)

btw, I like where you were going with your timer. I've had similar thoughts
and was going to do something for the Chrome extension in the future. Stay
tuned for that.

~~~
noir_lord
It was intended to be a very simple pomodoro timer with variable times as some
tasks are better divided into different increments (it was also an excuse to
write a jquery plugin which I'd not done before).

I will keep an eye out :).

~~~
jtcchan
Cool -- I personally don't use pomodoros but a lot of my users swear by them.
I'll make sure I deliver!

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yellow_and_gray
I liked this idea a lot, especially the angle that it is made for groups. It
looks great too, keep up the good work. A few thoughts:

\- Would it be useful to integrate this with existing issue-trackers? Would it
help if all members of a group can add tasks in a common pool and then pick
tasks out of that pool (like an issue-tracker?)

\- Is there a danger of people being afraid to add tasks that are new ideas
because everyone would see a half-finished idea? Also, does announcing what
you plan to do make it harder to change your mind if you realize what really
needs to be done is different than what you announced would get done?

~~~
jtcchan
Thanks!

I might change my mind on this but I'm generally erring on the side of staying
away from integrations.

At first, it sounds very convenient (everything's right there!) but over time,
I believe it's going to do more harm than good.

There's a few reasons for that but the main reasons are:

\- an issue / task created on another app might not fit within the scope of a
day

\- integrating tasks across services ultimately leads to having too many tasks
in plain view.

Bottom line is this: seeing all your to dos would encourage you to "organize
your todos" or "work on things you didn't intend to" \-- which defeats the
purpose of this app. There are plenty of other tools that organizes your
thoughts / brain dumps / team communications pretty well and this isn't going
to be one of them.

I'm not sure what you mean by your second point but remember, this list is
really about what "you intend to work on today". Our priorities can and often
do change throughout the day - but this might also show us the discrepancy
between "what we set out to do" vs "what we actually did". Often times, we get
pulled into doing things that are urgent but unimportant which 1) puts us into
a fire-fighting mode and 2) may leave us feeling unaccomplished at the end of
the day because "we were busy all day, but we feel like we got anything done".
It's the same feeling we get when we spend all day in email. We've all been
there before.

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avolcano
This is really nice! Going to give it a shot with my tiny (but 1/3-remote)
team this week.

A few tiny styling issues: the 3D effect modals have sometimes results in the
text being blurred on Chrome OSX (see
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/qna5gj9cm6zbovm/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/qna5gj9cm6zbovm/Screenshot%202014-08-11%2013.57.18.png)),
and the input field background is a bit _too_ low contrast (I occasionally was
confused where to click in a form).

~~~
jtcchan
Thanks for the kind words. Let me know how it works out for you guys. You can
always email me at john at dayboard dot co.

Yeah, there are a few other minor visual glitches as well - sorry, still
ironing things out :) I'm working on it!

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technimad
I really like these kind of task driven dashboards. But I would never ever use
an external service to host it. What happens in my team stays in my team.

I've tried to find software like this that can be self hosted, but it is
either not available or extremely expensive as the self hosted version is
targeted at big companies with lots of users.

Is it just me being old fashioned, or are there more potential buyers of self
hosted software being ignored as a potential customer?

~~~
opendais
I agree with you but I don't think the revenue for self-hosting is likely to
be all that "awesome".

The main problem with it is if its the developer/sysadmin crowd, most small
businesses wouldn't pay for support. So you'd be limited to a few large
companies that likely wouldn't use it anyway.

I'd really like to see a SaaS version that was also open source. That way
people had both options.

------
guruparan18
I took a look, it is great. Here are my 2 cents. I do have one similar task
management appl built totally from groud up. It grew out of Spread sheet to
have a Web GUI. It does the following. You may consider (if not so far).

* Email tasks that are pending at the end of the day. * Change priorities * You can request update, or add items to other's list of TO-DO ( a TODO is a task with same task start and end date). * Pull up the tasks in a calendar. * Search tasks.

~~~
jtcchan
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll give them some thought first but I can say
now that there won't be ways to "change priorities"

I think that's a superfluous feature. Priorities in Dayboard are binary - it's
either important (thus it goes on your 5 tasks) or it's not.

You can sort your tasks visually though. So if it helps to have the 5 tasks
ordered by importance, you can already do that now!

~~~
guruparan18
True. You are right about that. Here is what I wanted to do further, there are
tasks that we want to do on a particular day. In other words, something to
remember and becomes active on a day. Like my important task on Month
beginning would be: "Prepare billing. Finalize last month timesheet". A task
template to automate the task generation/creation/assignment. Oh! I am sure,
there are lot to do there. It is interesting as always. All the best. ;)

~~~
jtcchan
lol thanks.

Yeah, a common request is the "future list" but I'm against it because it
encourages people to spend time "organizing and planning" inside Dayboard --
which 1) is what most task management / to do lists already offer (and isn't
necessarily doing a bad job at) and 2) isn't the actual work that people
should be doing. Having no more room to add more tasks means it forces you to
move on to actually do them (a problem, that perhaps you might not have but
many others would).

But anyway, I might change my mind so never say never. :) Thanks again for the
suggestions!

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jlt
Hi John!

I absolutely love this! I've just created an account and have sent an invite
to my co-founder & designer to sign up!

Hopefully we'll be using this for our day-to-day tasks - it seems like a much
nicer solution to finding out what we're working on than checking in with each
other throughout the day on Skype...

Keep rocking it!

~~~
jtcchan
Thanks for the kind words. That's exactly what I was going for :)

If you ever need help, have questions or for whatever reason, find it's not
working for you guys, I'd love to hear from you. You can always reach me at
john at dayboard.

------
emehrkay
I love it. I played around with starting something just like it a few months
ago.

Thanks, I'll sign up

~~~
jtcchan
Thanks! Hope you enjoy the app. Let me know if you have any questions!

~~~
emehrkay
My co-worker said she would like a backlog of items that she can move in and
out of the top five.

~~~
jtcchan
Hey man, thanks for the suggestion.

I mentioned this in another comment but generally, I'm against it too much
"organizing and planning" inside Dayboard -- which 1) is what most task
management / to do lists already offer (and isn't necessarily doing a bad job
at) and 2) isn't the actual work that people should be doing.

That said: I do personally keep another to do list outside of Dayboard (I use
Asana) where I do brain dumps of all the things I'd like/need to do. It might
seem counterintuitive to use a separate service but Dayboard acts as a
reminder when I get distracted or start doing things that I shouldn't be, and
by keeping my "other to dos" in another service, it actually frees my mind
from thinking about what else I could be doing. Out of sight, out of mind,
right?

Let me know if that makes any sense -- I'd love to hear your thoughts!

~~~
emehrkay
I think your approach definitely makes sense. I've been using your app and it
works great. Do well!

------
Jayd2014
Nice app. Which stack are you using for backend/frontend?

~~~
jtcchan
Thanks man! It's built on Rails and hosted on Heroku. The extension uses
AngularJS.

