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Ask HN: Review my status board startup

78 points by pmjoyce ↗ HN
Geckoboard launched into private beta last week. It's very much a minimum viable product in that it's a functioning product but there's still lots to do. It's bootstrapped by me with the design and development outsourced to companies in the UK and Belarus respectively.

Geckoboard is SaaS status board that uses other services' APIs to collect and summarise key business information and display it in a way that's easy to understand and interpret.

Data from web analytics, server monitoring, project management, email marketing, CRM/helpdesk etc shown together on one dashboard to give a near real-time status on the health of all aspects of your business.

At the moment we integrate with about a dozen different API but more are being worked on right now and even more on the backlog. I'd love to hear your thoughts and/or suggestions.

EDIT. Signup instructions: We're in private beta but you can bypass the private bit by using the invite code "HN" on the signup page (don't include quotes). Link: http://geckoboard.com

108 comments

[ 41.1 ms ] story [ 1769 ms ] thread
pmjoyce
We're in private beta but you can bypass the private bit by using the invite code "HN" on the signup page (don't include quotes).

Link: http://geckoboard.com

alabut
Hmm, I'm getting a "Invalid or expired invitation code" error - did you cap the number of new accounts?
pclark
What did you make the UI in? looks really nice.

I find the text really hard to read when configuring a widget.

Also, uservoice support :)

pmjoyce
We actually went part down the road of Uservoice integration and it was going to make the first cut but due to a few issue we had it's been put on hold. We'll get it in soon though, I promise.
mkuhn
Wanted to complement you on the design as well, looks really nice! Just one issue, the background is flickering on my Laptop's screen (Lenovo T510i). No of to explore your solution some more.
pmjoyce
Thanks, although full credit for the design has to go to the designer Jason from http://builtbybuffalo.com/

We'll look into the flickering, could be to do with the repeating background image.

charliepark
Just wanted to let you know that I'm getting a flickering on my laptop as well, a MacBook Pro, using Firefox 3.6.6.
kiwidrew
It's flickering on my laptop as well (Fujitsu SH760). Perhaps it's because the dots in the background are so closely spaced?
nudge
This looks fantastic, congratulations!

You might want to remove this weirdness at the bottom of the front page: "Start GOOGLE ANALYTICS<--> End GOOGLE ANALYTICS<--> Start CHARTBEAT<--> End CHARTBEAT<--> Start ZENDESK<--> SupportEnd ZENDESK<-->"

pmjoyce
Thank you. I figured if it was something that you were going to look at throughout the day or even put it on a large screen in the office (as one of out testers is doing) then it has to look decent.

It was actually designed by Jason Reynolds at a company called Buffalo based in Brighton, UK (http://builtbybuffalo.com/). I've used them before and was really happy with the result.

Thanks for spotting the "Start End" weirdness, will fix it.

david927
It's beautiful. Great job!

It definitely needs those additional API's. And could you offer a simple full list of all the widgets upon signup, where you could checkbox the ones you want, instead of hunting one-by-one in a dialog? It would make it easier to get started.

But I would definitely use such a service. That'll do pig!

pmjoyce
Yes, we could certainly use something to make things easier to configure your initial dashboard. Thanks for the feedback.
ApolloRising
Your los angeles time conversion in your clock widget is incorrect, it is one hour behind.

Fantastic idea and UI

pmjoyce
We're working on daylight savings support right now, should be there soon.

Thanks!

ApolloRising
No problem was just trying to help. I really like it and I hope you add on more key google analytics indicators like conversion rate, number of sales, etc.
Sukotto
When you working in the clocks, you should also make it possible to add a caption to each one.
pmjoyce
Yes - someone mentioned this in our feature request forum. I can see how it would be quite useful, should by fairly easy to add too.
grigory
Fantastic app! UI is particularly well done, great job.

Small number of currently present APIs definitely is a let down, but I suppose that will change soon?

I would love to have ability to create multiple "pages", for monitoring different projects - so that their widgets don't overlap.

pmjoyce
Yes - we're ramping up the number of APIs, this was just the bare minimum required to get it out there and hear what people needed.

And thanks for the multiple pages suggestion. Certainly something we'll look into!

losvedir
Oh, this is fantastic. I can definitely see myself using this, thanks!

One quick note: On the Beta sign up form there's a misspelling: "Acount" instead of "Account."

jarin
That is awesome, both because it looks great and also because I was going to build something similar and now I don't have to!

If you could add Clicky and Recurly support I would be your best friend.

pmjoyce
Thanks! I'll add Clicky & Recurly to our feature request forum. We don't have any finance APIs integrated yet, this is certainly something we're looking to address.
mcdowall
Great Work, we created our own custom Status Board a few weeks ago but this definitely rocks. Will be using this in the near future on other projects for sure! Great work.
unwantedLetters
I know this isn't going to concern you TOO much, but I thought I'll add my comment anyway.

I'm on a Fedora X86_64 box running Firefox 3.0.11 (with no flash, but I don't think your site needs it anyway), and whenever I click the "Add a Widget" button, I get an error.

I provided the browser/OS details to help narrow the problem.

The screenshots make it look like it'll be a great app. Congrats on getting it out there.

pmjoyce
I'm pretty concerned about this and would love to dig into it a bit more. Could you mail me paul at geckoboard.com with the error message and/or any other details and I'll look into it straight away? You're right - you don't need Flash.
unwantedLetters
Email sent.

Cryptic Subject: Error details.

(So check your spam)

paolomaffei
Care to list which APIs you integrate with? Just to decide if I want to check it or not
pmjoyce
Sure, this ias the list as it stands today. More APIs are being developed as I speak.

  Basecamp	Project Management
  ChartBeat	Web Analytics
  Clock
  Email	 
  Get Satisfaction	Customer Service
  Google Analytics	Web Analytics
  Highrise	CRM
  MailChimp	Email Marketing
  Pingdom	Server Monitoring
  Prefinery	Beta Management
  Text	Custom Alerts and Messages
  Twitter	Social Media
  Zendesk	Customer Service
Edited for formatting. Edit 2. Removed Calendar from the list, it's not quite ready yet.
daveambrose
Awesome stuff.

Anyway you can add Salesforce into this? My team would LOVE you for it. :)

pmjoyce
We can certainly consider it and I'm sure you're not the only person who would find it useful - what sort of data would you like to display on the dashboard?

The problem with many API requests is that, unless you're a real user, it's hard to figure out what the important metrics are.

Plugawy
Any chance for adding own data through REST api?

I'd be nice to see output of my custom monitoring daemon sent as JSON to your service and displayed in the Dashboard.

vyrotek
I would use this as well!
pmjoyce
This is a big thing for us and something that will definitely be included. We're working on a design for that at the moment and I hope it won't be too long before we can include it.
mcantor
How about XPlanner or some other custom task-list integration?
keyle
Very nice UI. One big improvement could be a small graphic with instruction when you get to the blank dashboard. At the moment it's looking a bit empty at first impression (and that matters!)

Maybe provide a desktop version which is just a shell for the online site? That is, using AIR or Prism or other?

Good luck, it looks like a great product.

pmjoyce
Agreed - user communication and flow management is lacking at the moment.

Hadn't considered a desktop version until now. What benefits does it bring over and above the web app do you think?

kristofferR
It can run in full screen live updating on displays for example.
bl4k
I wouldn't bother with a desktop version, most users already have enough things running. Doing a Dashboard widget would be easy through, so would a notifier plugin for the common browsers
keyle
Webpage tabs get closed, open, closed.. if this is actually updating all by itself throughout the day, I could see value as running it like a desktop app.

The cost is minimal (to make a prism version for example) and it takes 0 maintenance, and some users which are not uber-geek enough to make their own desktop version might see it as a big plus. "And it run on desktop too? Cool".

Also I could see it running a "public version" on a television hooked on the wall for everyone to see the web app live. Just a thought.

You seem to have all your features coming along, I just wanted to bring my 5c :)

Have some fun.

pmjoyce
Thanks for clarifying this. I'll certainly give it some consideration.
zaph0d
Amazing app. Need more plugins/custom APIs.
dchs
This is way too pretty to be a minimum viable product - great work!
denisu
looks cool so far. one little bug: mail adresses with a + are dedected as invalid, they are not.
pmjoyce
Thanks, I'll make sure this is addressed.
agaton
Wonderful! This is EXACTLY what I requested in a HN post here just a month ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1441770
pmjoyce
Glad to hear it. Although I have no idea how I missed your original post, sometimes I feel like I spend all of my time on this board!
agaton
as a little request, it would be awesome if you could connect to salesforce.com in some way, so we could have a widget with sales numbers
barmstrong
Yep - I would anticipate this sort of "leaderboard" to be a big use case.
jeb
Really nice. Needs plugins, so my specific business needs can also be aded.
charliepark
UI suggestion:

I'm in the "add widget" pop-up. Currently, I select a widget, then have to hit the green "select widget" button. I think that step could be eliminated? I actually went through the different service categories on the left, and for the ones that I wanted, I just clicked on the small gray box, and once I got the green dotted highlight, I thought that I had maybe added the widget.

Not a big deal. Just a thought.

pmjoyce
Thanks for the suggestion and sorry the instructions aren't what they should be. We'll address both.
tkahn6
This is awesome! I will definitely be using this.
revorad
This is beautiful. I've just played with it for a few minutes. Only comment so far is have defaults wherever you can, instead of asking the user to fill in a value. For example, "label" for the email widget can be "email" as default instead of blank, so that it doesn't fail when i just want to add it quickly. I can always edit to relabel it. In a similar way, you could probably reduce the number of clicks it takes to add a widget.

Fantastic idea and pretty good execution so far. All the best!

iaskwhy
I wanted to work on something similar so I'm very curious about the pricing of this app. If it's not what I expect I might consider trying to work on it with a different approach so it wouldn't be just a copy. :)
pmjoyce
Pricing is still to be finalised. It will come from a conversation with our users. I want it to be reasonable and affordable.
HyprMusic
I'd feel a lot more comfortable if I knew what you were doing with my Pingdom password (e.g. securely storing it), and if you used an input type="password" when entering it.

Also, I'd would be cool if I could choose to show only stats from Gmail with a certain label. That way I could show stats about unanswered ticket/support emails.

pmjoyce
I totally understand and appreciate your concerns and I hope to re-assure you that your authentication details are being stored encrypted as per industry standards.

User privacy and security is of utmost importance to us, without trust we're dead in the water. Where there are options to use OAuth we only use OAuth, and for each API we aim to use the strongest possible storage solution.

We don't allow you to change connection details for an account meaning that if someone gained access to your dashboard they would not be able to see your connection details.

We can certainly change the input box to a password type to reduce the risk from over-lookers. We'll put it in the next drop.

Please let me know if you would like to discuss any of this in more detail.

kylebragger
This is really slick & feels especially solid, especially given that it's an MVP.

I'd love to see Clicky integration.

Also, thoughts on pricing? Flat rate, per widget, other?

kylebragger
Also, Buffalo didn't happen to design it, did they?
pmjoyce
That's 2nd vote for Clicky.

Yes, Jason from Buffalo designed it (I've credited him elsewhere in this thread). He totally got it and did an amazing job IMO.

pmjoyce
Thanks. We're working on fleshing out a pricing model but it won't be implemented until the product has matured a little and we've added a few more APIs. Nothing is cast in stone but I like the idea of a freemium model which included a couple of levels of paid accounts in addition to the basic free model.

I'd love to get the thoughts of people who would pay for it to hear what they need before I set out exactly how it would work so I will be consulting in the coming few weeks.

atlbeer
Bug note: The "What is this?" button doesn't work

Mac OS X: 10.6.4 Chrome: 5.0.375.99

No errors in Javascript console, sorry

enki
create a demo site. personally i wouldn't start entering passwords before having seen a demo and being convinced that it'll be useful.

also a votebox (as in dropbox.com/votebox/) to suggest widgets would be nice.