Summary.tools

summarytools

An average Slack user gets bombarded with dozens - sometimes hundreds - of messages daily. And let's face it, not all of them carry the same weight. That's where the brilliance of a well-chosen Slack summary tool comes into play. And trust me when I say, investing time in finding that 'Goldilocks' Slack summary tool - the one that fits just right - can be a game-changer for your team's collaboration and productivity. Let's get started. Discover Slack Apps in the . Slack App Directory What problem are you solving on your team? Is your crew a compact startup team of ten or a sprawling corporate network in the hundreds? Do you work with a specialist software team, a sales team, or do you have a variety of roles under one roof? Who is it who needs the tool? Lastly – what problem are you trying to solve? Do you have a simple use case, where you just want to summarise simple Slack threads, or are you looking for a fully-fledged collaboration tool that allows your team to surface insights and decisions from various tools that they would otherwise not have had access to, and solve communication issues inherent in the human condition? These answers dictate the kind of tool you need. What features do you need? Summaries at the channel/thread level or team/project level? The term 'summary' tool would be a misnomer if it doesn't provide you with summaries of some kind – but what exactly do you want to summarise? If communication and collaboration are a pain point, or you want cross-functional collaboration or a tool that keeps people on the same page. Summarise at the team/project level: : If there is no need or appetite for a tool that keeps people on the same page, or has a very simple use-case, such as someone who wants to save a bit of time. Summarise at the channel/thread level Integrations with other tools? Depending on your team's function and tools, your tool should summarise more than Slack. Tool overload is a real issue in the digital workspace, though, so it might be important not to add another standalone tool to your stack. Slack is your only collaboration tool, and it would be overkill to integrate with others. You just want Slack: Perhaps you want threads from multiple tools all in one place, or want actionable insights or suggestions from across your tools. You want cross-platform context: Memory? There is a big difference between different classes of Slack summary apps. Many are thin layers between your Slack data and an LLM, like ChatGPT. And for some use cases, that can be enough. Not every team is looking for a complete collaboration tool. Good for saving time in simple use cases. Simply summarises the content of recent Slack messages, either in Slack channels or Slack threads. Short-term context: Can form a long-term memory of the context and activity of what happens. Highly beneficial for teams with high-volume updates or complex cross-functional activities. Perfect for the “information overload” use case. Memory capability: Data privacy? This will be non-negotiable for many larger teams or companies in regulated spaces. Ensure the companies behind tools have watertight privacy and security practices. While the right tool can optimise your team's efficiency, it shouldn't come at the cost of compromising sensitive information. Three Slack summary extensions for different use cases Here are three of the best-in-class tools depending on your needs and use case. However, there are more tools. Here’s a guide to the 6 best Slack apps and integrations for software teams. TLDR TLDR is the simplest summary tool. It uses generative AI through large language models (LLMs) to summarise long Slack messages and threads into brief, comprehensible summaries via a straightforward slash command. While it lacks long-term memory, deep context or tool integration, TLDR can present the crux of long conversations efficiently. It isn’t specifically built with privacy in mind, though. TLDR fits the bill for businesses and teams across various sectors that predominantly rely on Slack for their internal communication and simply want to save some time reading. As its capabilities are strictly limited to Slack, teams operating with a broader array of communication tools might find its utility somewhat restricted. Good for: Add TLDR to Slack CollabGPT is at the other end of the spectrum. I’m building it with my team at Stepsize. It is a powerful, secure collaboration tool that not only offers summaries aided by long-term memory and can suggest actionable next steps and answer pressing questions. It integrates with tools like Slack, Jira, GitHub and more. CollabGPT Where CollabGPT gains an edge over other summarisation tools is its sophisticated AI architecture. It can get a deep understanding of your project context and goals. Teams who want to collaborate better – especially software and product teams. It keeps track of everything happening around you so you can make better decisions. Its prowess lies in its deep "memory" and seamless integration with popular platforms used by software and product teams like Jira, Slack, GitHub and more. Good for: Try CollabGPT theGist theGist is a Slack app designed to summarise both Slack and Gmail conveniently in one place. theGist uses AI to cluster and summarise emails, facilitating swift inbox management straight from Slack. Teams looking for a convenient way to handle Gmail as well as Slack. While theGist may not offer in-depth context and memory, it could prove convenient for teams whose communication heavily hinges on email. Good for: Learn about theGist Try before you buy Most summary tools offer a free trial or a freemium version. It's a golden opportunity to assess the tool in the wild. Here's how you make the most of a trial period: - Test integrations. See how well the tool integrates with Slack and other frequently used productivity tools. Watch out for any hitches that could disrupt your team's workflow. - Evaluate features. Scrutinise the features you've identified as essential. Does the tool deliver on its promise? For example, is it improving visibility or saving time? - Team feedback: Include your team in the trial period. They're the ones who will be using the tool day in and day out. Their feedback can give you insights no product review can. Rounding up Choosing the right Slack summary tool will make a big difference to your team’s productivity. Some tools are simple and will save a little time. Some will help overcome the complexity of working in large, cross-functional or distributed teams. We’re building CollabGPT to help software and product teams keep track of what’s happening around them so they can make better decisions. We’d love for you to try it out and see what it can do for your team. Give CollabGPT a whirl and let me know what you think. Also published . here

Picking the Best Slack Summary Tools (And 3 Top Picks)

Don’t be scared of your next Code Review About a decade ago when I was freelancing, I could write code however I wanted. I could develop bad habits and give names to functions and classes that only I would understand. Once I started at a company with a dozen other devs, it was clear that having a set of coding standards was critical to the team’s success. Working in a small team taught me the importance of having guidelines and tools to develop in a quick and efficient manner. Back in 2012, our frontend team had a shared Visual Studio settings file and a simple JSHint config. We had configured JSHint to only throw an error when building the entire project or running a test. This was not very efficient during development as it would not cause errors or warnings in real time. It was always an afterthought to go back and fix your code… and always replace those double equals with triple equals. Fast forward today and we have an extensive document outlining best practices, a verbose ESLint config, and great formatting using Prettier. Let’s go over how we got there. The groundwork Our team has many documents that contain guidelines, gotchas, and rules to reference, and these are constantly being updated. A great starting point was to actually show code samples of Javascript controls and HTML templates. We would expand on this by showing examples of API calls, how to prefix classes and subscriptions, and many other conventions we adopted along the way. We even took the time to create a component library which helps with development so much I can’t believe we didn’t do it earlier. How should you get started? Start by creating a document full of best practices. For example, how to prefix CSS classes, how to name event handlers and functions, and how to structure React Components. Documenting best practices is great, but how do you enforce them? Preferences like naming conventions and Javascript structures may be difficult to enforce but can be caught during design and code reviews. For syntax patterns, details like quotes and semi colons, or global formatting, we need to look at tools like ESLint and Prettier. ESLint ESLint is a linting tool for Javascript. It helps make your code more consistent and enforces its rules across different editors and developers. It can help prevent future problems by warning of bad coding practices and potential issues. Our team has added our own rules and expanded on our existing configs. Airbnb provides a solid configuration which many other companies use as a starting point. Along with general Javascript errors we use ESLint to enforce stylistic rules like word wraps, quotes, and redundant semi colons. It has been really helpful as our team is and we don’t have years of experience with ES6. ESLint has helped us through this process and has warned us of issues that may occur as we learn new technologies. When refactoring or cleaning up code, it usually comes up that a variable has been assigned but was never used, or we forgot to name a function. It’s beneficial to go back and update these things to keep your code readable and maintainable. transitioning to React and JSX If you don’t agree with any of the rules or configuration settings ESLint provides by default, you can always turn them off. When you first enable ESLint it might look like every line of code is underlined in red, but don’t worry, as ESLint will provide you with an answer and it will help you become a better developer. eslintconfig.json extending airbnb’s "extends": ["airbnb-base""eslint:recommended","plugin:react/recommended"] _A pluggable and configurable linter tool for identifying and reporting on patterns in JavaScript. Maintain your code…_eslint.org List of available rules Prettier Prettier is a formatting tool that works with many languages, not just Javascript. It helps standardize formatting so your entire team can code in a similar style. Formatting can be tricky because everyone has a different coding style. An obvious benefit is that you don’t need to memorize a specific style — you can develop how you like and have it formatted after. We decided to “test drive” Prettier and allow it to format code with a specific command. Many teams enable it whenever you save a file but we choose to take the on command approach first. One reasoning behind this is to keep code reviews manageable. Usually, we would save the formatting until we are ready to merge our changes and then run Prettier. We understand the value that this tool provides and are deciding to take a step by step approach. Example of function after Prettier _Prettier ships with a handful of customizable format options, usable in both the CLI and API._prettier.io Options · Prettier On-boarding When our team adds a new member we would require them to review general development documents as well as best practice ones. After reviewing them, a new developer could then work on their first task with a basic understanding of our coding standards. An alternative approach is to have the new member jump off the deep end and start writing code right away. This is great if the exercise is well documented but it’s also important to have one source of truth that can be referenced. Most projects contain legacy code and if a developer uses this as a starting point it’s not very helpful. Summary Tools like ESLint and Prettier are important because they provide a set of rules that every developer must follow. Our team uses Git and Bitbucket for version control, and utilizes the pull request feature for code reviews. When reviewing code I don’t want to see extra white spaces, line breaks, and any other distractions, I just want to see the code you added or updated . Without these rules, developers would dread reviewing their peers’ code and the team’s stress levels would rise. (unless Prettified) A developer should be able to read your code and know exactly what is going on without the use of extensive comments. Could you imaging trying to teach a new developer all of the coding caveats your team has followed over the last decade? This would take months and wouldn’t be fair to a new developer either. The smart way now is to let your editor do the teaching. Tools like ESLint and Prettier have made our team better developers and allow us to work faster. If you are interesting in learning more about these tools, check out the Syntax podcast where Scott Tolinski and Wes Bos go over them in depth. https://syntax.fm/show/113/hasty-treat-code-quality-tooling

Write attractive code with ESLint and Prettier

Getting Product Strategy right Companies fail all the time. And your product strategy is the best defence you have against it, says Intercom’s Des Traynor. : In a short talk, packed with insights, Des Traynor explains why, in the early stages, nailing product strategy is even more important than perfecting sales and marketing. In Summary Deep-diving into the problem your product solves, its defensible ‘moat’, the relationship between product and brand and the importance of being agnostic, this is a timeless masterclass for founders and product leaders everywhere. technology The Product Strategy Toolbox My presentation to the London Product Strategy Meetup in November. An overview of the product strategy landscape in 2017. This covers everything from Ben Thompson’s ‘Aggregation Theory’ to Anju Sharma’s ‘Stack Fallacy’ via Jobs to be Done, Switch Analysis, the Value Pyramid and the Story Arc. In Summary: Your Strategy is a Hypothesis! In today’s uncertain environment, it makes sense to view strategy as a instead of a plan, says Amy Edmondson and Paul Verdin in the Harvard Business Review. hypothesis Most companies view strategy as analytically sound and regard all failure (such as missed sales targets) as flawed execution. Cheating and cover-ups are natural byproducts of this, as management refuse to accept ‘No’ or ‘It can’t be done’ for an answer. Just ask VW and Wells Fargo. In Summary: Closing the gap between strategy and execution may not be about better execution, but about more dialogue between strategy and operations. And more experimentation. The key indicator of ‘strategy-as-hypothesis’ lies in how managers interpret early signs of gaps between the plan and the actual results. Does it mean teams are underperforming or that initial assumptions are flawed? What the f$%* is Product Strategy?!? As the Cheshire Cat observed, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there, says Yoav Yechiam. Startup CEOs tend to be so obsessed with output and ‘progress’ that they forget to check their course. In Summary: Startups fail because they aren’t able to achieve product/market fit fast enough. They run out of time and money too soon. They neglect their product strategy and focus on tactics, tricks, and easy fixes instead. If you’re trying to move onboarding conversion from 30–60% while your user acquisition cost is 10x lifetime value then your real problem isn’t your product manager, it’s your product strategy. What it means to ‘Invest in Product’ The decision to invest in software is no different from any other investment decision. It should start with a business case and be linked to the primary value drivers of your company In Summary: Over-investment in product at an early stage is a common problem. It’s adviseable to build your initial product with web technologies that are accessible by anyone. Native apps are powerful vehicles for delivering customer value, but wrong for early stage experiments. Don’t expect to ‘discover’ new monetisation models as (chances are) they don’t exist. Focus on ones that are already established (charging for downloads, software as a service, advertising). If you can’t foresee a path to profit, then question the value of making the investment. Nine out of 10 product ideas aren’t worth building. The ‘Mobile App’ business is dying The dream of building a mobile product that launches a business and nets $billions is looking less likely every day, says Fast Company. Comscore’s recently published Mobile App Report sheds more light on the dominance of the app space by a handful of Tech Unicorns. Three of the Top 10 most used apps are owned by Facebook, four are owned by Google, and the other two are Snapchat and Pandora. Every single app on the list is owned by a publicly traded company. In Summary: The fastest-growing new apps are ones that have been gaining momentum for years, the products of marketplaces or services that benefit from powerful ‘network effects.’ Think Uber, Venmo and Music.ly. What will Product Management look like in 2028? When it comes to product management, we’re still in the MS-DOS phase, messing around with floppy disks, says Alpha’s Thor Ernstsson. Product Management is all about making data-informed decisions to deliver value to customers. Much of that involves equipping those doing the design, engineering and marketing with the and data to do their jobs effectively. In Summary: tools Aside from certain product leadership roles, product management processes in the future will be integrated into other roles and functions across the organisation. By 2028, every business will be customer-first. No consumer or business user will have patience for a frustrating product, especially when they can quickly turn to a competitor. Users always opt for frictionless experiences, often without realising they’re making a switch. Product Quote of the Month “Product-market fit is not revenue growth, it’s not growth in users, it’s not being #1 in the App Store. Product-market fit is retention that allows for sustained growth.” Great piece on the Metrics That Matter, by Pinterest’s Casey Winters. real And finally… Thank you (and Goodbye) This is the last edition of Pivot Product Hits. I’d like to thank everyone who has taken the trouble to subscribe, read, and share our mutual interest in Product Strategy. I hope it’s been as rewarding to read as it has been to edit and publish. So long. Paul J | Pivot Originally published at . Pivot Product Hits

Pivot Product Hits | The Final Cut

The Product Strategy Toolset A canvas masterclass, from Alex Osterwalder. Selling colleagues on the value of product strategy can be challenging in startups and tech companies where the prevailing culture is one of coding rather than talking. To succeed, Product Managers need to deploy and methods that deliver maximum value in the shortest possible time. In Summary: tools In my experience, the most effective combination is Alex Osterwalder’s Value Proposition Canvas and combined with Ash Maurya’s . These can be completed by a group, are easy to use and swiftly achieve closure around the target customer, the Job to be Done, the value proposition and the channels to market. Value Map Lean Product Canvas In this excellent short, Alex Osterwalder uses the Value Proposition Canvas to demonstrate how Tesla serves a variety of its target customers’ needs. What (exactly) is the Product Customisation Curve? In product development, there’s no single thing you can build that will make all users happy, says YC’s Aaron Harris. If you’re a , any angry customer can feel like the end of the world. This often leads product teams to create unsustainable product customisations. The biggest danger is committing to large costs that are hard to remove. Doing this can force your company down a path to failure or an extreme pivot. In Summary: startup The harder thing to do is figure out which customisations to make, weighted by the increase in happiness of the users you actually want. As a guiding rule, customisations that are software features are easier to build than customisations involving people processes. If you have to build a people process, build one that can be replaced with software later. Don’t invest in Products, invest in Customers It’s not a feature problem, says Vonjour’s Dan Tawfik. Product is the foundation of a startup. The first iteration of a product delivers the kernel of value that the company delivers for years to come. But small iterations in the product just deliver marginal returns. If you don’t acquire users in a meaningful way, you’re not giving your business the chance to survive. In Summary: When building Vonjour, Dan’s team rapidly developed new features thinking each one would be an inflection point. (‘Ticketing will be a game changer’…) But, not one moved the needle when it came to growth. Eventually, they stopped building features and invested the remainder of their capital in marketing, rather than product. In doing so, they discovered that the imperfections they noticed weren’t an issue for users. The majority were perfectly satisfied with the product as it was. Designing Products with AI Designing with AI is just like designing anything else. Focus on people problems, test your assumptions, and provide affordances for when things go wrong, says Facebook’s Erica Virtue. The allure of AI is that it can make your product ‘magically’ work. In Summary: But good product design uses AI in a way that enhances the experience, rather than defines it. Whilst working on Facebook Recommendations, Erica’s team didn’t try to invent a completely new behaviour. Instead, they found an existing one and made it far better. Even if your AI works most of the time, there are going to be moments when it fails. So, usability testing with real people remains important. By watching people go through experiences early, Erica’s team uncovered a lot of issues with their AI they wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. Feature / Product / Company? Most companies begin life somewhere between a feature and a product. And that’s where most companies end, as a collection of features that feel like a product but are really somewhere in between. In Summary: Features provide specific point value to users. Products stitch together related features into bundles that solve problems that are universal. The bigger the opportunity and the more ubiquitous the solution, the more focus can pay off. Instagram built a series of relatively simple features into a product. But the opportunity was so large they were able to turn that product into a company by stitching together its users into something larger. The features were ubiquitous across the user base. They solved a problem that many people had the need for in a way that worked for everyone. How to make Product Decisions without Doubt When you doubt your product decision, step back and ask yourself: what do I believe about the world, and does this push us in that direction? asks Slack’s Paul Rosania. From introducing the algorithmic timeline to Twitter, to turning on Do Not Disturb for all Slack’s users by default, Paul Rosania has presided over some of the most hi-profile (and hi-risk) product decisions in tech. In Summary: Product decisions of this nature can be paralysing acts of faith. But, rather than avoid critics, Paul’s advice to Product Managers is dive headfirst into their doubts. Start by getting the debates off email and offer direct, human contact to solicit feedback. This process will help return you to your product’s purpose, your company’s worldview and (critically) your instinct. How WhatsApp and Facebook design Products at scale When building a product, having a clear problem to solve can be half the battle, says WhatsApp’s Charlie Deets. Whereas Facebook uses a high level mission to drive company decisions, WhatsApp uses design principles to focus product conversations so the majority of their thinking goes into the minutiae of the execution. In Summary: Also unlike FB, WhatsApp prefers to alert people to new features in the product. They assume that, if they build features that are obviously useful, people will find them and engagement will naturally follow. not If WhatsApp had a product motto, it would be “Move Slow and Deliberate.” When designers hand off to engineers, they try to deliver as much of a finished spec as possible. Product Quote of the Month “Keep it short. Respect users’ time. Get to the point and get out of the way.” Great primer on designing voice products, from Clearleft. Originally published at . Pivot Product Hits

Pivot Product Hits | November Edition

How can Machine Learning lead to better Product Design? Quora’s CEO wades in (on Quora, obviously…) Machine can help curate a better product over time. Predicting user behavior helps shape your UX around how people will use your product. In Summary: learning Machine learning helps reduce the need for the user to make choices. If you have a search engine, the searches people perform (and the sites they go to) can predict what they’ll want to search for next. Almost all B2C products these days have interfaces that are driven by machine learning recommendations. These includes Quora, Netflix and Spotify. Netflix, one the one hand, gives users very little control over what it will recommend. Twitter, on the other hand, largely constrains your timeline to tweets from people you follow. Are voice-controlled Products just hype? The full potential of voice UIs is still to be realized. For now, they remain little more than voice-controlled smartphones, says FastCo’s Katherine Schwab. A recent study by Microsoft revealed that most people still don’t have a mental model of how VUIs are supposed to work. The biggest challenge is one of the simplest: it’s hard to understand what they can and can’t do. In Summary: Only 14.3% of respondents used their smart home device to shop. The reasons given were the lack of a screen and not knowing how to use the device to shop. In the main, people use their voice devices to do relatively simple tasks they could also do using their smartphones. The most popular use cases are asking the device to play a song, control smart lights and set a timer. And asking the weather. This indicates that voice is an auxiliary technology, not a primary one, undeserving of the hype it’s received so far. Want to build the next great Product? To spot the next great product opportunity, focus on what change, says David Mattin. doesn’t Consumer trends are made from two fundamental things: change and basic human needs. Most of the products we use today serve some basic human need. Security, value, distraction, convenience and fun are a fundamental part of our nature. They’re never going away. In Summary: Truly new ways to serve a basic human need are rare. The best way to spot new trends is simply to look at the new products entering the market and ask: does this serve a basic human need in a new way? AI is a tech trend. The really powerful trends, that tell you something meaningful about the future, are trends in human behaviour and expectation. How Products hook users Like it or not, habit-forming technology is already here, says Nir Eyal. : As infinite distractions compete for our attention, companies are mastering new tactics to stay relevant in users’ minds and lives. We’re faced with a future where everything will become more addictive. In Summary Companies increasingly find that their economic value is a function of the strength of the habits they create. Following the lead of tech giants like Facebook and Google, product teams everywhere are mastering the mechanics of habit formation to increase engagement with their products. Habit-forming technology creates associations with ‘internal triggers’ which bring users back without the need for marketing or stimuli. As a result, consumers need to understand how habit-forming technology works to prevent unwanted manipulation. What is your Product really selling? In a marketplace of distraction, products that save you time are going to win, says Gary Vaynerhchuk. Too many people focus on shipping a technical iteration or adding features to a product that only complicates the experience. In Summary: No one wants complexity layered upon their daily life. No one cares about specifications and numbers anymore. People literally want cars to drive themselves! They want freedom and simplicity and speed. AI is an important technology because it saves you time. It can learn and automate processes which would have taken much longer. Virtual assistants save you time. Google Now and Siri save you time. Uber saves you time. It’s why they’ve won. The main thing product teams should ask themselves is: how does my product expedite a market experience that used to be tedious and tiresome for all? The Process vs. The Product Customers only care about how our products feel in their hands, nothing else, says Tinder’s Jeff Morris Jr. We work in an industry that glorifies the process of everything we build. We’re obsessed with roadmaps, methodologies, acronyms, and productivity . But we need to remember that customers don’t care about how we build our products, or our process. In Summary: tools We spend our days writing specs, filing Jira tickets, and editing roadmaps. This is Process. Our job is to delight customers through the projects we build. Process is important, but do not forget that customers judge us on one thing. This is the Product. Why Product Engagement is your most powerful salesperson It’s well known that ‘helping is the new selling.’ Which is why delivering product value, measured by user engagement, is the most powerful sales tool you have. Some time ago, SaaS companies discovered they had created a new channel for lead generation. The new channel was the product itself and the new leads it produced became known as Product Qualified Leads, or PQLs. PQLs are users who reach pre-defined triggers that signify strong likelihood to become a paying customer. In Summary: The definition of a PQL will differ from product to product. What stays constant is that engagement strongly correlates to purchase propensity. So sales teams can efficiently invest time and energy communicating only with those that tip the scales. Today, every high-performing SaaS company aligns their product, engineering, customer success and growth teams around a central goal (happy, engaged users) underpinned by robust data that provides measurable outcomes. Your customers hate MVPs! (And you should too…) No one wants to use an unfinished product its creators are embarrassed by, says WP Engine’s Jason Cohen. Product teams have been following the MVP dogma for years without re-evaluating whether it’s the right way to maximize learning while pleasing the customer. Customers want great products they can use now. In Summary: Products that do less, but are loved, are more successful than products which have more features, but that people dislike. Google Docs had just 3% of the features of Microsoft Word when it launched. It succeeded because it did a great job at what it was primarily designed for: simplicity and real-time collaboration. Not every product has to become complex. Some products can (and should) remain simple, lovable and complete. Product Quote of the Month “Simplicity and quality of design has become a moat, especially when coupled with Product features that encourage adoption or new layers of value for incremental users.” Applause for Greylock’s Sara Guo — an excellent summary of the product strategy landscape. Originally published at pivotservices.curated.co .

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