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Notion API – public beta

developers.notion.so

251–260 of 262 posts

Re: Notion API – public beta

#251

Big fan of notion. Not a fan of the data lock-in or haphazard security. For tools like this, SaaS will almost always beat open source just by virtue of elbow grease and a product direction. So I’m willing to forego the open source alternatives. But I really wish Notion gave me more options for how to host my data. AFAICT they offer no “dedicated storage” or “on premise” plan, even if you want to pay for it. In fact I…

Sigh, it is a paradox. As a consumer, I want my software on-prem. But as a producer, I want to deploy as frequently as possible, so that I could iterate without friction, and I would try to avoid platforms/techs that are not hot upgradable. As a consumer, I want no data tracking. But as a producer, I want data-driven growth, so that I could understand where I did wrong and how to improve it. And data comes from track…

It’s possible to make self-hostable software that auto updates. Besides, managed deployment and single tenancy are not mutually exclusive.

In this case I’m not even asking for self-hostable. I mostly want single tenant. Yes, self-hostable or “bring your own storage” would be cool, but provider-managed single-tenancy at least eliminates a whole class of data security bugs. This way, even if an application-layer dumps all the rows in the database to the client, at least they’re only my rows.

Re: Notion API – public beta

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many regulated organizations do, though. Single reason we didn't adopt notion is lack of ability to self host.

Out of curiosity what do you use for documents and email? Not using Office365/Google Docs/Outlook/Gmail at all?

We use plenty of cloud stuff, I guess that wasn't clear from my initial comment. We use Office 365 & teams for our 'business' teams, Slack for tech teams & Monday.com for our 'Jira'. The business has evolved from on prem exchange so its natural a trust in MS is embedded.

I wanted notion to get out of document hell. Legacy business with many spreadsheets and word documents. With notion it wasn't the cloud being the issue, we run all in house software & DBs in AWS.

But some startup from San Fransisco offering a platform with notable downtime / performance issues and no direct ownership of DBs was an issue for something like a wiki where you want to be able to publish sensitive information, ip etc. We're in a regulated industry so compliance & security input is ultra relevant.

Sharepoint is a fucking abomination, it's what was previously used. Notion makes a perfect wiki solution.

If it had a self hosted option we'd have adopted it. It was turned down, and fairly so, by our ops team for the hosting situation. There's no reason for something as *simple* as a wiki should be completely outsourced. Portability is a factor too.

We chose wikiJS in the end. Great wiki but terrible writing experience. Tend to write everything in an external markdown editor and just copy it in.

Re: Notion API – public beta

#253
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, you will find this kind of org uses Office365/Outlook, and not Gsuite/Gmail, as they have in place a commercial agreement with Microsoft which covers regulatory requirements put upon them (and some they put upon themselves). Of course they could _try_ to get an agreeable contract in place with Google, but Microsoft is Enterprise-friendly and can make this happen much more readily.

That's still not self-hosted though ...

Hes right though, certainly in our case.

Microsoft has been deeply embedded in the org for years and they can certainly give stronger contractual assurances than Notion can.

Re: Notion API – public beta

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craft is really slick, but it's not really an option for those not using Apple products. Well, I guess until the web editor is out of beta. I'm keeping an eye on AnyType https://AnyType.io

Honest question, since this thread seems to be mostly about the data. If AnyType uses IPFS, doesn't that mean data will vanish at some point?

From what I understand, it's all stored locally on your devices. IPFS is just used to sync between your devices and to share with others.

Re: Notion API – public beta

#256
post #183

I've recently started using Notion and I'm surprised at few things that I find incredibly annoying with it so far. Since it seems there are some Notion staff here I'll take this as a change to give some feedback to hopefully improve the product. * No read-only mode. I like to have documents default to a read-only mode so I don't accidentally typo random characters, or delete something when try copying. etc. * No floa…

Item #4 on your list drives me nuts as well. I can't remember which, but either making the page full width or locking the page gets rid of them.

I just added custom CSS to make the scrollbar only show on hover

Re: Notion API – public beta

#257

Big fan of notion. Not a fan of the data lock-in or haphazard security. For tools like this, SaaS will almost always beat open source just by virtue of elbow grease and a product direction. So I’m willing to forego the open source alternatives. But I really wish Notion gave me more options for how to host my data. AFAICT they offer no “dedicated storage” or “on premise” plan, even if you want to pay for it. In fact I…

I’m curious: notion lets you export everything as markdown and CSV. If you had a sync/backup job running, that, say, imported the csv to a Postgres database every night, how would you feel about your concern?

Re: Notion API – public beta

#258
post #56

I like the look of this site. Where can I get graphics similar to those cartoons on the page?

Hire an illustrator to create them for you.

What makes the Notion illustrations so appealing and effective to me is not their style, though I love the way they look, it is that they are created for the need at hand. They are individually made to a purpose.

Side note: I manage several illustrators for a team that produces educational media and one of the hardest things we have to communicate to users is what an illustration is good for.

I have users come to me with an image and say, "I want an illustration that looks like this."

And we ask them, "But what do you want the illustration to do."

And they answer, "We want it to look like this."

They don't have any particular purpose for the illustration, it's just wallpaper for their website. A way to break up a page. A function of general art direction, rather than a working part of the content.

We end up doing a lot of what amounts to custom clip art, because that's what users often want. And it really does help a website or a video, or a document to have consistent art direction. But by far the the most compelling and engaging content we work on isn't from when a user asks for a set of stock images and icons, all in the same style, but it's when they comes to us and says, "We have this problem explaining this idea, or telling this story. Can you help us with that?"

Re: Notion API – public beta

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obsidian ( https://obsidian.md ) also offers offline, + for free.

Are either Roam or Obsidian collaborative?

Not sure about Roam, I've been using Obsidian, and my purpose is for personal, making note archive offline. So never had any need for collaboration. But with Sync and Publish features, maybe there is a possibility.
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