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

monicahq.com

311–320 of 586 posts

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

#311

Why a web-app instead of a local application? Why does this need to be connected to the internet, when it doesnt interact with anything? Is it because you want to be able to sync to other devices, such as a phone app in the future?

this is a strange question. most users of a tool like this would expect it to be available from different computers and devices, like virtually any other website they need to create an account for. and you'd certainly want this data backed up.

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

#312
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can't import ANY data from your friends from Facebook. Facebook doesn't allow to.

That's true, but you can see if any of your FB friends are also using the same service! 'Importing' isn't ok, but verifying via API is ok.[0]

[0]: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/common-scenar...

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

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered the ability to "Share" a Contact? For example, if my Wife wants to share the info she collected about our niece? Or is the entire idea that each person is logging a unique POV or set of information about someone, rather than the system gravitating towards there being a single, cultivated profile about each person that is shared around? (right now it's kind of the anti social media -- which seems l…

Instead of sharing, I wonder if I should add multi users to an account, so you and your spouse could manage their relationships with their loved ones, for instance.

Why not both? I would like a Family or couple account but wouldn't care for a share option.

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

#314

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.

The gender field will have to be changeable as well, since people might come out or change after they join, or after a record is created.

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

#315
The biggest problem I have with any productivity, life improvement tools, todo lists, etc is not the tools themselves but getting past the apathy and lethargy of not using said tools.

That is I just can't create good habits or care enough to use them even though I know I could really improve my life if I did.

I would imagine its sort of like exercising (albeit I actually do do that).

Some never do it, some do it no matter what but the mass majority get on and off the wagon. We do it for a short post New Years'-eve-like period and then just eventually stop.

I need some way to force good habits like a drug (and yes I know about James Clear who blogs about this).

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

#316

Pro-tip: put your link to the newsletter, github and your twitter profile in the header of your site :). Clearly states if it's open source, self hostable or a service.

Excellent point. Thanks, I can see how that will help. I'll update the site.

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

#317

This is very cool! My question is, is this really free? If so, how and why? It seems like it was a ton of work to build and presumably you could monetize it somehow - is that just something you're planning to do later on? If it gets a lot of users, how will you pay the (albeit small) server costs? I'm curious. Thanks again for building it!

It's free for now. I wanted first to see if there is an interest. The product is open source, so it'll be free forever anyway. I like the GitLab approach - free for everyone, but perhaps put some way to monetize this. I just have NO idea how. I honestly didn't think about it, because I wanted to have a side project that would be useful for people, and I don't know if people need this.

I think some may fear it for one of the natural monetization routes for a product like this, selling the personal info to marketers, intel-companies, credit agencies, etc.

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

#318
Sorry to be that guy, but isn't there a huge legal issue? In France, the CNIL requires a declaration of any file, especially if you keep information about people in it, whether it's a spreadsheet or in good old punch cards. Such files can only be maintained for specific purpose; notably keeping tabs on what people want or their secrets can be used for bribes and leverage. An Excel file on your computer won't get you arrested because of leniency, but if we start issuing such software, the defense is less solid than for Torrent software.

i.e. What happens if a database is leaked?

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

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Does it integrate with my calls from my iOS / emails from gmail? So that I can sort by "least recently connected"? otherwise writing notes each time and looking it up gets tiresome. 2) is there a mobile app? 3) how much will it cost monthly? 4) how are reminder sent?

1) No 2) no 3) nothing 4) by email :-D

I love the idea of a personal CRM. However, I hate the idea of duplication of effort. If you can't create interfaces to these other apps, then perhaps make sure you create an interface to IFTTT with enough control that would let me aggregate my data (phone calls, emails, etc.) to folks in Monica without user intervention.

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

#320
I think this product is Fantastic. One of the main jobs I hire FB for is Birthdays, looking forward to using this:

Few tiny feature requests: - Make the of the page the person you are looking at, really helps with multiple tabs. - Filters for Gender & more options for non-binary Gender would be great. - Just been adding a bunch of contacts, a tiny help would be when pasting a name into first name, to split on space and put the second name in.

Hope you can find a way to add Paid features you keep this going over the long term.

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