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However I’m bit curious why it’s not deployed as a standalone desktop or mobile app? Is there a technical limitation?
The authors are rewriting this software under a new name. https://github.com/monicahq/chandler
Author of Monica/Chandler here. Thanks for posting this. As others have pointed out, we are rewriting Monica from scratch, codename Chandler: https://github.com/monicahq/chandler We've also written OfficeLife, an open source tool to manage your employees: https://github.com/officelifehq/officelife , yet to be released. I think we have too many ideas and side projects :-)
Now try looking at classic model: anything is a single application, from the OS to user-programmed simple automation. That's true for Smalltalk workstations to LispM. This is so effective that I found today far simpler and power using Emacs than any other modern software, even if modern Emacs just run on top of something else, lacking a LispM underneath, and even if it's development lag in many areas for modern usages.
So to say: all FLOSS authors, instead of trying competing with commercial tools their way, do your best to resurrect the old way. Please choose to learn classic languages like Lisp (CL or anything else) or Smalltalk (see Pharo as an example) to rediscover the idea that there is NO APPLICATION but just one with various bits of code plugged is as needed. So for instance a PRM can include a mail system, a complete agenda/calendar system, ... without trying the Greenspun's tenth rule way, and fail as usual.
Monica had issues importing my contacts. Too many it says. I didn't have /that/ many. It always stopped me from exploring it further.
How many? (an estimate is ok)
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Well this is a very simple system and could for instance be reimplemented in Ruby On Rails in ... a few days?
Founder of Monica and Chandler here. It's so easy that the rewrite (aka Chandler) has taken Alexis and me 11 months so far, as a side project, and working most nights and weekends (check the number of commits). I know that Monica appears to be easy, and Chandler also, but it's not easy. Making a clone for yourself is easier, although not that easy if you want to replicate all the features. Making a clone for an entir…
If you took away a dollar for every software engineer who I heard say that, and actually followed through, I'd still be a rich man.
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It's self hosted, so you could just run it on the local machine. It's a pity it uses MySQL because pgcrypto could enable you to make the database publicly visible.
Founder of Monica/Chandler here. We support Postgre too, and SQLite on Chandler.
I've started doing this with Obsidian, since I can template and query any type of data I want in it.
How do you structure your data?
I use obsidian for tracking meetings, people, and documents in a civic engagement sphere. So hundreds of entities and a few meetings a week.
I have folders for interpersonal meetings (calls, coffee dates, one on ones), public/group meetings, people, and a few other things. Every individual gets a top-level entry in the people folder. Every meeting or personal meeting gets a page in folder; folders are organized by year, then month. E.g meetings\2022\november\public forum with x on November 15, 2022.md
I use templates for each document type; that helps me keep things consistent so I’m tracking the same information for meetings. For meetings I run, I have special templates that help keep me organized.
When I take a note about a person saying something or attending a meeting, I type [[, then I get a list of people to choose from that autocompletes. I use the alias feature on people notes to track things like job titles, name variations, and acronyms.
The approach is more flexible than Monica, and it lets me grow and change the data I collect over time. The tool is a super power. Obsidian tracks all the back links so if I want to find out which meetings a colleague was in, it is very easy to do that.
I used to use OneNote but Obsidian is much more scalable. I’m putting 10x as much info in it as I ever did in OneNote and I expect to put 10-100x more before I move on to something else.
Bonus notes:
Obsidian plugin system is great and has a pretty robust, if not super well documented API. I’m working on plugins to automatically improve records and already have plugins that have saved hours on some special-purpose tags
You can embed pdf documents like images and have a preview show up as an embed. Amazing for meeting agendas.
If you have standard fields for notes, you can surface those in a table using dataview.
Todoist integration is pretty cool if you want to make a “Dashboard” note for project management.
The iOS version keeps the synced files on the file system. That means if you refer to a PDF, you can mark it up with a dedicated app (e.g. PDF expert) in place and keep it synced in your vault.
You can create links before creating a matching note. This is great for fast moving meetings, and then you just need to click into the link to create a matching document.
Author of Monica/Chandler here. Thanks for posting this. As others have pointed out, we are rewriting Monica from scratch, codename Chandler: https://github.com/monicahq/chandler We've also written OfficeLife, an open source tool to manage your employees: https://github.com/officelifehq/officelife , yet to be released. I think we have too many ideas and side projects :-)
I would really encourage you to push forward with OfficeLife. I believe the HR space is primed and ready for a decent open source offering. For what it's worth, APIs would be super useful, e.g. in the recruiting world there are hundreds of different background checks etc. that anyone serious needs to integrate with.
This has been badly damanged during lockdown - just walking past someone's desk and being reminded I need to speak to them was useful. And just saying hi kept the "relationship" fresh