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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

#381

Post by lucb1e »

cmdkeen wrote: post #366
confounded wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As these things go, the privacy policy is excellent, and can be read in under a minute: https://monicahq.com/privacy.html

It's not excellent. Nothing about data security, encryption at rest, and a whole load of things that would be covered by GDPR (yes the service is registered in Canada, but GDPR standards should be the benchmark now for what is considered acceptable for anything). This is an intriguing idea as a concept but feels like it isn't a sufficient focus. The privacy page hasn't been updated in 18 months either, yet the releas…

Just as a data point, this is the first time I ever heard about GDPR. Not sure it's "the minimum acceptable standard for anything".

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

#382

Post by HeavyStorm »

codewritinfool wrote: post #57
positivecomment wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I actively avoid sites that offer only FB logins.

I've deleted my FB and have no desire to recover it. Any service that's FB only can count me out.

(yeah, I can create a dummy account for that purpose alone, but I rather not bother)

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

#383

Post by confounded »

keithpeter wrote: post #290
robinhood wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't export for now, but this is something I have in mind. You should be able to be in total control of your data, for sure. So I'll do that. Probably in CSV.

Excellent and I suppose CSV is the nearest we have for a lowest common denominator format for structured data

CardDav exists for pretty much this purpose. It's how contact lists are exported from Google, LinkedIn, iOS, mail clients, etc., and has fields for arbitrary metadata.

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

#384

Post by cacarr »

WorldMaker wrote: post #321
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if you have a slightly over-romanticized view of the old FB. I got on FB sometime in 2007 and for a few years it was overrun with quizzes and games and such spam. It was a different kind of spam from ad-spam but today's FB seems much more streamlined in many senses.

2004 when I first joined was a year or so before a lot of the quizzes and games and such spam. At the time the "spam" was a large collection of "Groups" that had silly in-joke names specific to your College/University. That time "Groups" were more like a list of hobbies than the "Groups" of today. "Photos" also didn't show up until a few months after I first joined. I'm not saying we should romanticize the incomplete…

"Fun"?

Facebook was fun in 2005. Now it's just ... addictive.

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

#385

Post by nbm »

robinhood wrote: post #288
microcolonel wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

You are right. Import is high on my roadmap [1]. Export will be next, too. It's vital to not be locked in. Editing reminders, yeah, I didn't do it at first because it's way less trivial that it might look, but it's in my todo as well ;-) Thanks for all your ideas, they all make a lot of sense. [1]: https://github.com/monicahq/monica/projects/1

Separate from non-lock-in reasons, I'd consider using the hosted version if I could export data at a later time so I could go self-hosted in the future (say, if I start writing some code for it and there's no API that does what I want).

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

#386

Post by confounded »

This looks superb, thank you for building a great product with a non-hostile privacy policy.

Before trusting my data/time with something, I generally like to understand the motivations of the creators.

Do you intend to run this as a profit making business, or just as an open source project? Do you have thoughts/opinions on monetization? How do you intend to continue to develop it in the medium/long term?

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

#387

Post by librett0 »

Improvotter wrote: post #378
robinhood wrote: post #5

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…

It would be neat if there was a demo. For this kind of stuff I'd rather not give my information till I know what I'm in for completely.

There are instructions for setting up your own instance on the Github page. https://github.com/monicahq/monica

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

#389

Post by clairity »

robinhood wrote: post #5

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…

as someone who built a similar product (but for networking), i will reveal a very hard-earned lesson about CRMs that don't target sales & marketing: no one cares.

everyone will tell you what a great idea it is, and how useful it could be, but no one wants to do any work to that end. it just doesn't solve a real pain for enough people to build a business around (given the product you present on the home page).

however, if you're serious about this space, you will automate the crap out of data collection and make the product a super-passive intelligent assistant (for mobile). make users seem more kind and thoughtful than they otherwise are with this app, and people might just pay for it. there's a potentially big privacy hurdle but i found most people to be surprisingly unconcerned about that if you provide tangible value.

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

#390

Post by confounded »

robinhood wrote: post #283
lakerz16 wrote: post #262

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.

Sorry to keep writing "CardDav" under everything, but vCards are an established standard for sharing contacts with arbitrary metadata.
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