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Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

monicahq.com

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Re: Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

#21

Post by tyingq »

positivecomment wrote: post #16
robinhood wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn it, I broke it. I'll fix it today, or remove it entirely, I still don't know about it. I like the idea of being able to quickly log in, but it's yet another feature to maintain, so...

My personal recommendation is to drop third-party logins and allow users to sign-up via usernames (without emails). That means you need to deal with "lost password with no way to recover" situations and spam but it's still better than third parties controlling the most important aspect of your application.

FB integration, though, might be nice for initial import of friend data that's already there.

Re: Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

#22

Post by noxToken »

This seems like something I may use. I have terrible memory, so I never remember birthdays, anniversaries or even my own doc appointments.

Tangentially related: I wonder what the fallout is for the average person who may get discovered using this. I could see someone catching flack for having software send them reminders of things that "should be important enough to remember". Then again, what's wrong with using technology to help me enrich my relationship with others?

Re: Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

#23

Post by robinhood »

positivecomment wrote: post #20
robinhood wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I use Homestead because it's much more convenient. But you can use anything that you want, as long as you have PHP and mySQL. MAMP, for instance, XAMP, or really whatever. Have you heard of Valet ( https://laravel.com/docs/5.4/valet ) ?

No I'm very alien to the PHP ecosystem. Valet seems to be Mac-only. I'm a happy Windows user who has some Linux servers to play around. It would be very nice to have a step-by-step manual installation guide, then who knows, maybe you would get a pull-request with a Dockerfile! :)

This is where I need the community. I'm just a small Laravel amateur developer who doesn't know much about Docker I love simple solutions and Laravel seemed to me the easiest way to build something simple, and more importantly, easily maintainable, which is the most important for me.

Re: Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

#24

Post by robinhood »

1123581321 wrote: post #15

Nice project. Keep in mind I'm just a tire-kicker on HN, but it would be neat to have dynamic periodic reminders similar to spaced repetition learning algorithms except you rate the strength of the relationship after each session. Strong ratings mean you can see them a little less frequently; weak means you should see them (a little) more frequently. Ideally this would let you maximize the number of maintainable acqu…

Thanks for the idea. How would you rate the strength of the relationship? A star mechanism?

Re: Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

#25

Post by positivecomment »

robinhood wrote: post #18
tertius wrote: post #14

Security. Make me feel safe when adding very personal information about people I meet. (Btw. I've been considering building something like this myself, I meet so many people that I want to recognize and remember what they told me about themselves. Memory fails me almost every time unless I really put the effort in. Right now I just make a note after every interaction using Simplenote, better than nothing.)

The security aspect is also very important to me. I'm trying to do my best to make it secure by following best practices, and this is also one of the reasons I've open sourced it actually, so the community can help make it better and check that I don't do nasty stuff with it.

Do you have any plans to integrate with contacts on any device/platform?

It may allow you to automatically save calls and manage metadata in sync with an established system.

Re: Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

#26

Post by robinhood »

positivecomment wrote: post #16
robinhood wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn it, I broke it. I'll fix it today, or remove it entirely, I still don't know about it. I like the idea of being able to quickly log in, but it's yet another feature to maintain, so...

My personal recommendation is to drop third-party logins and allow users to sign-up via usernames (without emails). That means you need to deal with "lost password with no way to recover" situations and spam but it's still better than third parties controlling the most important aspect of your application.

Exactly. Excellent point. Moreover, you can't import any of your Facebook contacts anyway, so it's pretty pointless, and I hate relying on third parties.

Re: Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

#27

Post by robinhood »

positivecomment wrote: post #25
robinhood wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The security aspect is also very important to me. I'm trying to do my best to make it secure by following best practices, and this is also one of the reasons I've open sourced it actually, so the community can help make it better and check that I don't do nasty stuff with it.

Do you have any plans to integrate with contacts on any device/platform? It may allow you to automatically save calls and manage metadata in sync with an established system.

I've been thinking about this. First step would be an API. Second step would be to either me learn Cocoa, ObjC or .NET to do this on the phones/desktops apps, etc..., or let the community do it.

Re: Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

#29

Post by positivecomment »

robinhood wrote: post #23
positivecomment wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I'm very alien to the PHP ecosystem. Valet seems to be Mac-only. I'm a happy Windows user who has some Linux servers to play around. It would be very nice to have a step-by-step manual installation guide, then who knows, maybe you would get a pull-request with a Dockerfile! :)

This is where I need the community. I'm just a small Laravel amateur developer who doesn't know much about Docker I love simple solutions and Laravel seemed to me the easiest way to build something simple, and more importantly, easily maintainable, which is the most important for me.

That's what I meant, I would contribute a dockerfile, which people may use to run the application with one command. Would standard Laravel instructions to deploy an app[1] help me here or do you need additional steps?

[1]: Maybe something like https://medium.com/laravel-news/the-simple-guide-to-deploy-l... (first thing I could find)

Re: Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

#30

Post by jakecraige »

robinhood wrote: post #9
canes123456 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sign up with facebook is not working for me. Perhaps because I have two factor on. Also, consider adding an import feature from gmail, vCard, etc Finally, why include male/female binary as the only required field besides name. Seems a little odd

Damn it, I broke it. I'll fix it today, or remove it entirely, I still don't know about it. I like the idea of being able to quickly log in, but it's yet another feature to maintain, so...

I'm a fan of FB login. In practice it's pretty trivial to maintain once it's set up, I don't recall ever having to do any updates to an FB login system once set up.

It's nice that I don't have to create yet-another-password for a new app as well. I use a password manager so it's not a big deal for me, but for other users it could be so they may just use a shared password and having FB login would be a way to have them not do that.

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