I am utterly shocked it has taken this long for something like this to come around. Direct integration of data flows into document processing has been an obvious next-step-up for any kind of scalable document production/management framework for at least the past few years. The amount of time I have to spend on a regular basis inputting, updating, and managing information that is presented in documents but compiled in other places has me apoplectic on a weekly basis.
I'll tell ya, at the moment, this isn't quite where I need it to be, because every team I work in/with is entirely Drive / GDocs-centric, and so what I'll need in the long-run to roll it out is a native integration within that interface. I'd love for GOOG to just buy y'all and integrate that capability into their rapidly-growing Workspace capabilities. Until then, watching with great interest, may play around with it a bit.
Agree! The horrors of updating documents at a previous role is what led me to build Livedocs!
We're trying to work with Google Docs currently. We're aware of the huge switching cost that comes with adopting a new editor, and we're trying to integrate with Drive/Gdocs. Will keep you in the loop!
Thanks much. I'd love to roll something like this out across both my 9-to-5 and a couple of the consulting gigs I do. I see immediate applications in proposal/RFP management (where there are numerous existing solutions, all of which have some critical flaw), contracting (to ensure contract docs align with references and data sources), legal briefing management (which is, to me, the ultimate use case for any system intending to refine the integration between documents and other documents, or documents and data) and obviously academia. If you are looking for early product-market fit, designing to serve one of those markets extraordinarily well could get you some traction.
I've tried Coda a couple times, but have always ended up at the same roadblock encountered with Airtable / Smartsheet / etc. - any "power user" type integrations require learning entirely new workflows that don't translate to any other system. Put another way, these systems should obviate the need for dedicated "Rev Ops" headcount, but the narrow scope of applicability of Coda knowledge (traditional stack knowledge translates poorly into Coda; Coda knowledge translates poorly into any other system) has always meant it's felt like more work than upside, at least in my use cases.
The other two are new. Patera is gorgeous, and the very definition of elegant, based on what I can see. I could easily see myself running proposal documents through something like this to make them much more scalable.
Grid is even more interesting, though I'll have to dig in. A huge crop of dynamic forecasting tools (effectively masks over spreadsheet backends) seem to have sprung up in the past 18mo - I'm most familiar with Causal, but this goes a meaningful step further. Will be digging into it this week.
While this seems like a relevant thread, I’ll drop in our app too. Our approach is wide enough that “reactive rich text” like Patera is a subset of our functionality. See our Twitter feed for recent examples: https://twitter.com/InflexHQ
Our documentation and discoverability is currently zero, and the rich text feature is in development, but another space to watch if you’re into this kind of thing.
I also added a bibliography page, so you can see other apps in this space: https://inflex.io/blog/bibliography (“Vaguely similar market products”)
Comments
I am utterly shocked it has taken this long for something like this to come around. Direct integration of data flows into document processing has been an obvious next-step-up for any kind of scalable document production/management framework for at least the past few years. The amount of time I have to spend on a regular basis inputting, updating, and managing information that is presented in documents but compiled in other places has me apoplectic on a weekly basis.
I'll tell ya, at the moment, this isn't quite where I need it to be, because every team I work in/with is entirely Drive / GDocs-centric, and so what I'll need in the long-run to roll it out is a native integration within that interface. I'd love for GOOG to just buy y'all and integrate that capability into their rapidly-growing Workspace capabilities. Until then, watching with great interest, may play around with it a bit.
Agree! The horrors of updating documents at a previous role is what led me to build Livedocs!
We're trying to work with Google Docs currently. We're aware of the huge switching cost that comes with adopting a new editor, and we're trying to integrate with Drive/Gdocs. Will keep you in the loop!
Thanks much. I'd love to roll something like this out across both my 9-to-5 and a couple of the consulting gigs I do. I see immediate applications in proposal/RFP management (where there are numerous existing solutions, all of which have some critical flaw), contracting (to ensure contract docs align with references and data sources), legal briefing management (which is, to me, the ultimate use case for any system intending to refine the integration between documents and other documents, or documents and data) and obviously academia. If you are looking for early product-market fit, designing to serve one of those markets extraordinarily well could get you some traction.
Agreed.
The default output of a spreadsheet these days should be an embedded web component. Live graphs, linked to data source, edit and customize.
This is also being worked on in other areas with varying degrees of focus:
- https://coda.io/
- https://patera.io/
- https://grid.is/
Thanks!
I've tried Coda a couple times, but have always ended up at the same roadblock encountered with Airtable / Smartsheet / etc. - any "power user" type integrations require learning entirely new workflows that don't translate to any other system. Put another way, these systems should obviate the need for dedicated "Rev Ops" headcount, but the narrow scope of applicability of Coda knowledge (traditional stack knowledge translates poorly into Coda; Coda knowledge translates poorly into any other system) has always meant it's felt like more work than upside, at least in my use cases.
The other two are new. Patera is gorgeous, and the very definition of elegant, based on what I can see. I could easily see myself running proposal documents through something like this to make them much more scalable.
Grid is even more interesting, though I'll have to dig in. A huge crop of dynamic forecasting tools (effectively masks over spreadsheet backends) seem to have sprung up in the past 18mo - I'm most familiar with Causal, but this goes a meaningful step further. Will be digging into it this week.
Appreciate the reccs.
While this seems like a relevant thread, I’ll drop in our app too. Our approach is wide enough that “reactive rich text” like Patera is a subset of our functionality. See our Twitter feed for recent examples: https://twitter.com/InflexHQ
Our documentation and discoverability is currently zero, and the rich text feature is in development, but another space to watch if you’re into this kind of thing.
I also added a bibliography page, so you can see other apps in this space: https://inflex.io/blog/bibliography (“Vaguely similar market products”)