Opening the Lid on the Workspace Black Box.
Providing transparency into how your team is using Coda and the power to act on it.
Do you ever wonder why we find it so hard to wait for an order at a restaurant? It can’t take that long to make that pumpkin spice latte you orderedーcan it? Do you ask to see if they’re working on it, or does that seem rude? A pleasant treat-yourself morning turns into a frenzied period of anxiety and uncertainty. On the other hand, ordering pizza delivery from your favorite app is just so easyーyou can see every step in the process, from when they’re putting it in the oven to when it’s getting rushed to your doorstep. Not knowing what is happening can cause a lot of problems.
During our Coda 2.0 launch last October, we released a slew of changes, including Workspaces — a dedicated space for teams and organization — and pricing. In the months of lengthy discussions prior, the team exhausted various pricing options and ultimately decided to choose a more complex but fairer model for our users. We decided to only charge for Doc Makers (instead of the most common model of per-user) and to provide a smooth path to transition from a light user to a power user of Coda.
However, with this model comes several complicated interactions that can leave users in the dark about what precisely is going on in their workspaces. It doesn’t help that the problem only grows with your team as more and more people come together to collaborate in your workspace. We’re back to wondering about that latte and what happened to it. Being in the dark about what exactly is going on in a collaborative space can create decision paralysis due to lack of information and, even worse, cause people to distrust the product.
At Coda, we believe in empowering individuals and teams to take control of all aspects of how they work, including the data and design of that work. By laying the foundation for surfacing insights into how teams work in their workspaces and what kinds of information people are accessing, we are taking the first step to give that level of transparency and control for the team.
Introducing the Membership Activity Log.
In your Workspace settings, you should see a new “Activity” tab that contains the Activity Log of all role changes occurring in your workspace. Every change, including how and why it happened, is listed to give you transparency into how your team is working and being charged. Based on the information, administrators can quickly take action to make changes that haven’t been applied, reverse undesired changes, and adjust the relevant settings to accommodate their preferences.
In addition, we’ve launched a daily digest email that notifies Workspace admins of changes that have happened in the past 24 hours. These emails show clearly how much more they will be paying (or how much credit they will be receiving) on their next bill, along with a list of the changes that caused the bill to change.
So to recap, you will now have access to the Membership Activity Log in the Admin settings of your workspace. You will also get email recaps sent daily whenever there are billing changes so you can stay on top of your subscription. With this foundation, we’ll continue to provide more detailed insights into how your team is using Coda, giving administrators the power to leverage what is going well and revise what could be improved. Instead of fumbling in the darkness to figure out which systems are working for your team and which aren’t, we hope to make building successful systems as apparent as looking up your pizza status.
I hope you’re as excited as I am about the steps we’re taking to improve workspace insights and accessibility! You can find the newly available Activity Log in your workspace settings under the “Activity” tab.
Behind the desk.
Thanks to Jeremy for walking me through how to properly frame problems, present possible solutions, and being a great model for how to think critically about design, Oleg for handling my constant flood of questions (dumb ones included), Jaime, Erin, and Andrew for getting this launch ready to go, and the rest of the team at Coda for being sources of constant learning!
If the idea of a work environment of thoughtful discourse, encouraged exploration and learning, and an endless hunger to solve hard problems interests you, we’re hiring!
