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

monicahq.com

241–250 of 586 posts

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

#242
post #166
post #82

I built one of these for myself in 1995 and have been happily using it ever since. Here's the source code: 0 0 19 7 * /usr/bin/mail -s "REMINDER: john T. birthday" me@mydomain.com 0 0 1 8 * /usr/bin/mail -s "REMINDER: MAKE xmas hotel reservations NOW for good pricing..." me@mydomain.com

Could you explain how it works? I wonder what 0 0 19 7 * means.

The file is a "cron schedule" [1]. Paste the series of numbers (and the *) into the box on the site below and you'll see it means "midnight on July 19th every year". The commenter will probably have this in their personal "crontab" file. They're emailing themselves every year on that date.

[1] https://crontab.guru/

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

#243

My uncle died suddenly this year. He was unbelievably caring - and not just to family - but to everyone he ever met. His funeral was jam packed with everyone from homeless people to executives of multi-billion dollar companies. I always thought that his ability to always have you, and whatever you had last talked about with him, on his mind at any moment was some kind of supernatural gift. I was surprised to find out…

Dale Carnegie wrote about doing just this in How to Win Friends and Influence People. This is very common among successful people, and shows an astonishing level of caring imo.

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

#244

Quick note to the founders: You need to add more genders. A lot of early adopters in the Bay Area have friends who are non-binary or are non-binary themselves. I don't want to be forced to mis-gender people who don't identify as male or female.

Definitely. My bad. The kind of stuff you don't think about when you are your only user. I'll add that, as well as the possibility to not indicate gender at all.

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

#246

Founder here. Here to answer any questions you might have. The site is not perfect, it's not mobile optimized, there are probably bugs, there is a gazillion features missing, no APIs but it's a labour of love, open-source and I hope it will help people other than me. I want to grow this product but I need to know what you need, people. Edit: sorry for the bugs I see on my server popping here and there. Didnt expect t…

The first thing I looked for was data export and import. I have an export from google contacts I'd like to import to get started quickly. I would also like to know that I can get my data out to use in other applications (a table for the activity logs joined on the relationship's ID, a table for the relationships, etc.).

The "Edit" link under "Personal Information" should also be Blue, like the "Add" links under the other sections. It took me about 40 seconds to figure that out because of the confusion.

Editing reminders would be useful. More flexible reminder timing (things like "end of the month", which could be more or less than 30 days apart, are very useful).

You should be able to select an existing Person entry for the Significant Other field. Also, if you add somebody through the Significant Other field, they should show up as a person.

You should also be able to delete a Person.

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

#247
You spoke about how to monetize Monica. Based on the number of comments requesting a mobile app, perhaps that's the launch point. I would use Monica's browser interface for bulk data entry, but I would use Monica on a mobile for push reminders since that's how I get my reminders/appointments now via Google Calendar. So, keep the browser interface free, but charge for the mobile app.

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks a lot for the advice. I've been product manager for most of my career so I totally understand what you mean. I will definitely be careful in where I want Monica to go, and definitely I'll reach out to you on your email (but not today, I just received way too much feedback and emails thanks to HN today :-D

... Did you add him to your Monica? BTW is there a better way to say that?

Yeah, I had Monica set that up for me.

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

#249
Love this! Definitely gonna be using it from now on!

Adding a way to import contacts would be super cool, though I like the idea of slowly going through all my contacts and making sure data is current, etc (something I haven't done ever, since I first got my phone 10 years ago).

Only thing I just noticed is that when I try to add a gift idea, it conks out, with a: "Whoops, looks like something went wrong." message.

But I really like this and will be messing around with it!

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

#250
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a unix/linux crontab, for repetitive task. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron It's minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week In this case, repeat every 19th of july at midnight.

This is why I like HN, and why it continues to be a much-higher-quality place to visit on the web than many other forums: there were no snarky replies, no "I can't believe you don't know cron" - just multiple friendly, helpful replies explaining exactly what this format is. What a good community.

Agreed, though my first reaction was definitely: "I can't believe you don't know cron". I had to step back a little and remember who the audience is. Then I wrote my comment (at the same time as everyone else here did).
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