[HN Gopher] Notion API - public beta
___________________________________________________________________
Notion API - public beta
Author : cristinacordova
Score : 349 points
Date : 2021-05-13 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (developers.notion.so)
(TXT) w3m dump (developers.notion.so)
| chirau wrote:
| I like the look of this site. Where can I get graphics similar to
| those cartoons on the page?
| jitl wrote:
| We pay professional artists to draw all of our illustrations.
|
| - Roman Muradov: https://www.bluebed.net/
|
| - Iris Chiang: https://irischiangart.com
| Operyl wrote:
| By commissioning or hiring an artist to create them for you I
| suppose.
| chirau wrote:
| I know there are sites that provide stock illustrations, I
| just didn't know which ones they were. But another commenter
| gave me some.
| unculture wrote:
| Here's some illustration sites / products I collected for a
| recent project as possible resources / inspiration:
| - https://storytale.io/ - https://control.rocks/ -
| https://picchustudio.webflow.io/ -
| https://undraw.co/illustrations -
| https://craftwork.design/downloads/friday-illustrations/
| chirau wrote:
| Thanks for this!
| ibdf wrote:
| I really like the idea of what notion is trying to do, but their
| "databases" drive me nuts. They force a default column that's
| useless for relationships... and I never know if they want to be
| database like or excel like. Notion needs a good roadmap, and
| also start acknowledging user feedback, besides the "we got your
| feedback".
| Karunamon wrote:
| It's kinda both. If you're familiar with Airtable, the feature
| sets are almost carbon copies of each other.
| MattRix wrote:
| Along the same lines, the fact that they don't have any simple
| inline tables that aren't "databases" is annoying. Sometimes I
| don't want a database or a spreadsheet, just a simple inline
| table with a few columns.
| Spivak wrote:
| Kinda confused about this one? Inline tables are ... well
| inline tables. Why does it matter that they're actually
| pages/databases? Is it that you want tables in the formatting
| sense?
| [deleted]
| dawnerd wrote:
| A little late for us. We ended up switching away after being a
| very early adopter. The downtime, slowness and poor search really
| did it in for us.
|
| Hoping for the best to the team, you've grown so fast it's
| incredible!
| dagorenouf wrote:
| It's been requested for at least 3 years. I totally understand
| that it takes a while so I'm not blaming them.
|
| But it seems like in the meantime people have started to move on
| (I have). Let's hope this can bring back some momentum for them.
| arnon wrote:
| Move on to what and why?
| andreilys wrote:
| So many other applications out there that don't hold your
| data hostage like Notion.
|
| I learned after spending an hour to transfer notes that they
| have a "limit" on the number of "blocks" (aka notes) that I
| can have.
|
| Absolutely terrible user experience and turned me off from
| ever using Notion.
|
| I ended up going open source with vimwiki (and obsidian as a
| visualization layer, although as comments pointed out it's
| not open source). much more robust and less impervious to
| scummy growth tactics or companies shutting down due to
| acquisitions/pivots in strategy.
| ra7 wrote:
| I tried Notion. It was cool in the beginning, but I got
| overwhelmed by the UI and all the templates they have.
|
| Went with vimwiki. I just store my notes in a private
| Github repository. It's simple and effective. So far I've
| been happy with this setup.
| caslon wrote:
| Obsidian isn't as bad as Notion, but it's also proprietary.
| Unfortunately, there is no good company in this space.
| randomchars wrote:
| > there is no good company in this space
|
| That's a bold statement.
|
| - https://logseq.com/
|
| - https://www.dendron.so/
|
| - https://github.com/athensresearch/athens
|
| - https://foambubble.github.io/foam/
| andreilys wrote:
| Doesn't really matter since the underlying data (markdown
| files) is what obsidian uses (vs hosting the data on
| their cloud).
|
| So in the event that they don't survive or enact policies
| I disagree with, nothing changes for me
| caslon wrote:
| Their markdown is not standard, so stuff might still
| change for you.
| randomchars wrote:
| It's not standard, but that's not a surprise, as Markdown
| is a pretty barebones format. Most of what they extended
| it with is pretty simple, like [[wikilinks]]. There are
| also other tools being developed that can work with the
| custom syntaxt extensions.
|
| Also, at the end of the day, it's still just plain text.
| You won't lose any of your data if you no longer use
| Obsidian.
| enra wrote:
| Outline is open source https://getoutline.com
| nomad225 wrote:
| I had the same experience. It started off great, but I was
| not a fan of the idea of having all my data hostage with
| Notion. I'm using emacs with org-mode and org-roam right
| now, but I still don't have good flow with org-roam.
|
| Both Obsidian.md and vimwiki look really cool though. Do
| you use Obsidian and vimwiki together, or for separate
| purposes?
| andreilys wrote:
| I take notes with vimwiki (using tags) and then obsidian
| is the visualization layer (being able to filter and see
| what notes are related to one another)
| Karunamon wrote:
| The limitation only applies on free accounts, paid accounts
| for personal usage are extremely cheap, and it has full
| exportability into markdown and csv. Not sure what you're
| talking about unless this was a long time ago.
| andreilys wrote:
| It's highly unlikely that I'll continue to use a paid
| service for 10-20 years, or whether that service is even
| going to be around. Which is what the whole motivation
| for having a "second brain" is for me, Having a robust
| note taking system that I'll be using for decades to
| come.
|
| Unlikely that vimwiki or markdown will be going away,
| can't say the same thing about Notion.
| Karunamon wrote:
| That's an entirely different problem (one I sympathize
| with, but am not bothered by due to exportability) than
| spreading misinformation about how it works. Your post
| was false in one way and misleading in another. Saying a
| place where your files can be exported in a standardized
| format "holds your notes hostage" is hyperbolic and
| inflammatory.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > I ended up going open source via Obsidian
|
| Obsidian is not open source. I'm hesitant to dump my stuff
| into Obsidian because their markdown has plenty of
| nonstandard features. You can't run a directory of Obsidian
| notes through Pandoc and copy the output to your website. I
| think someone did write a partial converter at some point.
| This is kind of an issue with all the recent notes apps
| like Dendron, Logseq, and Athens.
| andreilys wrote:
| Yea I don't take notes on Obsidian, it's all through
| vimwiki.
|
| The main thing I use obsidian for at this point is
| visualizing connections between my notes
| whoisjuan wrote:
| Coda and ClickUp came to mind. They have had a public API for
| a while.
| nojvek wrote:
| Notion is probably the most prominent startup to make .so
| (somalia) domain more acceptable. I've seen plenty of .io and
| .ai, but .so was new for me when I first saw it.
|
| I thought it was a scam when I tried Notion 3 years ago.
| todsacerdoti wrote:
| We integrated the Notion API into Pipedream. Triggers and actions
| coming shortly:
|
| - Demo: https://pipedream.com/apps/notion
|
| - Workflow Example: https://pipedream.com/@tod/p_D1C3LlN
| tacosaretasty wrote:
| I'd be sold on their product if they had better security
| implementation. Company wiki's are troves of sensitive
| information and I'm uncomfortable that I have yet to find any
| central logging on the product.
|
| I wish these things were also taken into account
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| It really irks me when the pricing page for any product has any
| tier that requires contacting "Sales". If you don't want to
| include pricing for a tier, exclude it from the pricing list or
| add a "need something else" or "we also offer enterprise plans"
| after the table. Maybe just a me thing, because I'm guessing it
| obviously works based on how often I've come across it.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Seems reasonable enough to me. At a certain scale giving a
| price is meaningless because there are tons more factors that
| go into the cost.
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| The reason pricing is not shown for that tier (in most cases, I
| can't say for sure for Notion) is because it's not a normal
| tier, it includes the possibilities of negotiated pricing and
| custom setups. Why does it bother you?
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I love Notion, the tool/product, but I want something exactly
| like it but open source and where I can store my data where I
| want it. I guess I should get started...
| dogas wrote:
| I was a huge Notion fan. However, the long sync times were
| driving me nuts. I have since moved to inkdrop
| (https://www.inkdrop.app/) because it's much better for my use
| case:
|
| * I can write Markdown notes. I've only wanted to write markdown
| notes.
|
| * The syncing is incredibly fast because it's using an existing
| technology purpose-built for syncing (CouchDB)
|
| * I can bring my own CouchDB and not have my data locked in
|
| * Has a mobile app that works well
|
| * There is a "vim mode" and that makes me happy.
| nojvek wrote:
| The big attractor to Notion for me is the All-in-on workspace
| idea. It's a table-database, it's a wiki, it's a kanban board,
| it's a team calendar, it's a project gallery, it's a blog.
|
| Tables can have wiki notes, which can have tables. The
| recursive nature works very well for organizing your
| knowledgebase and having an entire org work together.
|
| The things I hate about notion.
|
| 1) pressing / anywhere opens the menu. So annoying.
|
| 2) It's live collaboration on code is awful. We end up using
| codesandbox and then copy-pasting back.
|
| 3) It looses and new edits every now and then. Their sync needs
| work.
|
| 4) No way to proper version control documents and have a pull-
| request/suggestion like model for editing authoritative docs.
|
| The other player in the same market is https://coda.io. They go
| quite a bit further than notion in terms of formulas and
| reference tables.
|
| With both Coda and Notion, I feel I seldom have to use google
| docs.
| resource0x wrote:
| FWIW, my note taking app is github. Created a private repo,
| keeping my notes as "issues". I can label, link, search them,
| insert images, add comments etc. Can someone name a relevant
| feature that is missing from github?
| isbwkisbakadqv wrote:
| Can you explain how this works in more detail - I'm intrigued!
| resource0x wrote:
| Every time I want to memorize something, I either open an
| issue against my fake repo (created specifically for this
| purpose) or add another comment to an existing issue. It's a
| good idea to create 1 issue per topic and just keep adding
| separate comments. Cross-references can be added for the
| linked concepts. Github markdown is quite rich. There are
| features (like "<details>") that can be found only there.
| There's not much to say actually. Try it out - you will
| figure out what works best for you.
| brainzap wrote:
| Time to export articles as static website
| WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
| Finally! Cool API stuff aside, this could make an excellent use
| case for a content back-end to your Jam-apps or quick little
| apps.
|
| For example, Vercel reverse-engineered the internal API and made
| a super awesome demo here when introducing "Serverless Pre-
| Rendering". [1]
|
| There's a video demo and code of how they did it.
|
| [1] https://vercel.com/blog/serverless-pre-rendering
| seumars wrote:
| So Notion is essentially a CMS now. I still wonder what one could
| _realistically_ do with the API other than small quirky
| experiments
| yawnxyz wrote:
| I'm using Notion as a CMS for a static site I've built for a
| grant-funded academic project. My collaborators edit the
| project page, which includes nested pages, tables, and even
| uploaded videos and images.
|
| After they've updated it, they click a special link that
| triggers a Vercel build, which converts Notion into JSON for
| the site to build into static pages. I'm using this as my
| backbone: https://github.com/benborgers/potion and it's a lot
| more powerful than the Notion API... this reads tables and lets
| you show image attachments and more
| myky22 wrote:
| Beings using it for a year. Perfect and flexible for developing
| :) Maybe I try some pythonist adaptation for my homework...
| mattwad wrote:
| I have to give a shoutout to the dev who wrote Nishan, a wrapper
| around Notion's internal API used by their webapp. I've been
| using it for a while and it will be a long time before the public
| API catches up. Getting users to find the api token from cookies
| has been a pain though, so I'll be looking into migrating asap.
| https://github.com/Devorein/Nishan
| owlbynight wrote:
| When I initially signed up for Notion, I did so thinking the API
| was already usable. It was used as a selling point for their
| premium service even though it wasn't implemented. This was a
| year and a half ago or so.
|
| I felt pretty burned by it and killed my subscription. Hopefully
| this turns out well for the people who've been waiting for it,
| but that experience left a terrible taste in my mouth.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Same.
|
| That said, Notion is a really good product.
| wpietri wrote:
| For those like myself ignorant about the company, Notion
| appears to be a project management tool with integrated wiki
| and docs support. With at least a claimed strong user focus.
| StacyC wrote:
| I set up Notion as an intranet for my wife's company and it
| has been enormously useful for posting company documents,
| policies, handbooks, announcements, etc. Employees are
| invited as "guests" at no additional charge.
|
| We also use a Notion database with various views for tracking
| customers, sales pipeline, rewards, and a lot more.
|
| When we bring on a new customer, we quickly create (from a
| template) a personalized welcome page for them with an
| embedded copy of their service agreement and a few other
| things. Notion can generate a public link so we send this
| right away and it makes a nice impression.
|
| Performance isn't great but it is so useful for us that I
| don't mind. I do hope they provide an offline version soon as
| that is my biggest wish right for it right now.
|
| * I'm not affiliated with the company, just a pleased
| customer.
| fishtoaster wrote:
| I see it more as a google docs or dropbox paper replacement
| that happens to include some on-page elements that work as
| project management tools.
| aeyes wrote:
| The opposite is true, its a WYSIWYG wiki which you can abuse
| for project management. The project management capabilities
| are similar to Github Project boards which means that it is
| very basic.
| MattRix wrote:
| Yup, that's how they present it, though in reality it's
| pretty clunky as a project management tool, and you'd almost
| always be better off using a purpose-built solution.
|
| Notion makes a decent tool for a personal/organizational wiki
| but it's too slow/unresponsive/janky to use for many other
| purposes IMO.
|
| I've been using it for a couple years and I used to hold out
| hope that the performance could be optimized, but at this
| point I think it must be some fundamental issue with their
| tech stack (or some other organizational issue). It just
| feels bad to use. The pages take forever to load, the search
| is slow, and the actual page editing feels sluggish.
|
| It's a shame because otherwise I really like the core ideas
| of how Notion works. If someone released a tool that was
| "Notion but fast", I'd switch in an instant.
| disordinary wrote:
| When it first launched we talked to the guy who made it
| (pretty sure it started as a side project) and IIRC it was
| backed by a relational database with every block being a
| row and a lot of joins that make up a page. Hopefully
| they've optimised it since then, but if that's still the
| architecture it's going to be hard to get performant.
| ternaryoperator wrote:
| Your comments reflect my almost two-year experience with
| the paid version of Notion.
|
| I found it very difficult to figure out how to use the
| tools beyond very narrow use-cases they provided in
| examples.
|
| And I found the docs were almost useless in explaining the
| overarching design. As a result, despite a lot of time
| spent, I kept bumping into unexpected limitations or design
| corners with no way out other than to scrap the document
| type I was trying to construct.
|
| I went back to Trello for project management, Todoist for
| to-do's, and my Dropbox-backed markdown files for notes.
|
| It's a shame because with more attention to the user
| experience and better docs, I think they'd have a killer
| product.
| jrcii2 wrote:
| I had a similar experience. The slowness of Notion to me.
| I now use Obsidian which has tons of nice shortcuts and
| is snappy, even as it's what I believe is an Electron
| app.
| [deleted]
| fudged71 wrote:
| I just recently deep-dived into using Notion for our
| boutique management consulting firm.
|
| It has been great so far as a lightweight CRM, and a
| collaborative meeting note--taking tool with backlinks into
| CRM. Also documenting our internal processes.
|
| Project management and ToDos haven't stuck.
| bnt wrote:
| Isn't that the whole point of Agile MVP development? Sell
| something that doesn't exist and hope someone buys it?
| Personally, I don't expect much from it, after working with
| Airtable's API and hating every second of it.
| louisvgchi wrote:
| What in particular did you not like about their API?
| villasv wrote:
| You nailed the opposite of an MVP, which is to deliver it
| immediately and improve it later.
| Areading314 wrote:
| Theres a lot of reasons why it makes sense to sell
| something before building it. You want to be up front about
| this fact but getting commitments to buy something is a
| good idea before actually spending money and time to build
| it.
| villasv wrote:
| Of course. That has nothing to do with agile MVPs,
| though.
| arcticfox wrote:
| Well you've either got to make it clear that it doesn't exist
| yet, or not actually charge them until you build it.
| Otherwise that sounds like fraud.
| wpietri wrote:
| There's some validity to the criticism, but that's more the
| intersection of short-cycle methods and American "hustle"
| culture than anything to do with an MVP approach itself.
| People with more integrity can take an MVP-centered approach
| and just be honest with customers about where they are.
|
| Indeed, I think that honesty works better; underpromising and
| overdelivering is a great way to build trust among your
| initial customer base. Trust that you need to carry people
| through the inevitable bumps and anticipations of an early-
| adopter experience.
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| I didn't quite have the impression you had, but I did sign up
| for a "early access beta", that mostly resulted in me receiving
| a bunch of spam from the company telling me how almost ready
| the api was.
|
| Happy the thing is released finally, it is a big improvement on
| Google docs.
| scubbo wrote:
| Thank you for the reminder that I should try converting from
| Evernote to Notion again. Last time I tried (~2 months ago), the
| automatic importer died after importing ~10% of my Evernote
| content.
|
| Though, based on some of the comments in this thread, maybe I
| _shouldn't_ and should try Obsidian instead.
| fudged71 wrote:
| Obsidian/Roam if you have a lot of interconnected notes
| julianz wrote:
| Interesting, I was able to convert a couple of thousand notes
| spread across about 10 notebooks from Evernote to Notion and
| there didn't seem to be too many issues, apart from needing to
| reformat quite a few that had suffered from Evernote's
| formatting weirdnesses.
| zimbatm wrote:
| That's good news. Some services like https://super.so/ (which is
| brilliant) were already using unofficial APIs.
| tekacs wrote:
| It's nice to see this happening at last!
|
| This is a promising start, but so far it's read & append it looks
| like -- no updating (of blocks at least).
|
| Updating page properties can take it a way, but looking forward
| to seeing it expand a little.
| [deleted]
| adam_ellsworth wrote:
| I've seen Notion discussed on HN for a time now, and while this
| seems to be well received I'm not really sure what it's for.
|
| What are the use-cases here? What's Notion being used for that
| this new API functionality will help in? How are you using it
| either personally or professionally?
|
| Thanks
| disordinary wrote:
| Just a wiki really which is made up of smart blocks. I've used
| it a couple of times professionally but the companies have
| usually moved on to something simpler after struggling to get
| buy in across the team. It can be daunting when you first use
| it, although very powerful.
| spullara wrote:
| Who makes a database API with no way to change records in the
| database?
| jitl wrote:
| You can update the properties of a page in a database using a
| PATCH request to v1/pages, details here:
| https://developers.notion.com/reference/patch-page
|
| (I work at Notion, but not on the API team)
| spullara wrote:
| Yeah, I found that later. Still seems odd there isn't a
| direct API for it.
| Spivak wrote:
| Is this not the direct API? Databases are just a bag of
| pages that have the same properties. I would kinda expect
| that updating a record would just be a page operation.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| Pretty big deal, people have been requesting this for years.
| Probably the number one requested feature I've seen.
| truth_ wrote:
| > Probably the number one requested feature I've seen.
|
| Along with stylus support.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| > Start building with the Notion API BETA
|
| Okay, but what does it do and why do I want it?
|
| Why do sooooo many businesses insist on homepages that tell me
| literally nothing about the product they provide?
| detaro wrote:
| really, the notion homepage tells you _literally nothing_ about
| the product? https://www.notion.so/
| tanaypingalkar wrote:
| but the product is great but it is underrated for some
| reasons. I think it is underrated because it is a small
| company compare to its competitor microsoft and google and
| getting use to notion is also little bit tricky.
| awill wrote:
| How good is Notion? Is the lock-in worth it?
|
| I'm fearful of lock-in, and just use markdown plain text, sync'd
| with dropbox, and then use different markdown apps on different
| OSes.
| Spivak wrote:
| I've actively searched for years to find a system to dump my
| brain into and Notion is the absolutely perfect fit for me. The
| fact that everything is a page, anything can go into a page,
| and you can nest forever on the fly is exactly what I need to
| model my actual IRL problems.
|
| Putting together a Christmas list? Create a list and start
| adding stuff. Ahh crap, I know I want a new TV but I don't know
| any specifics. So I just open up the TV item in the list and
| dive into my research. Create a database inside there for
| prospective options, a separate view for finalists. Copy in
| images, links to articles and reviews without "losing my
| place."
|
| I don't have to spend any mental energy thinking about how to
| organize my notes because I can just pick a direction and go
| without being stopped by anything. Everything lives where it's
| most relevant I guess it how I'd say it.
| RunawayGalaxy wrote:
| imho The primary value is their pared-down databases that
| mostly just work like you want them to.
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| They offer the ability to export to markdown, so I don't think
| using it would lock you out of reverting to that option
| shubhamjain wrote:
| I have been using Notion in its API form for a while through
| notion-py[1]. Currently, it powers my blog[2] and for me, it's a
| really good integration. I write something, ask my friends to
| review it. I run a command to publish it, and it's live. The
| workflow is really, really good and removes a ton of friction
| because the software that you write in is also the one that
| powers your blog's content.
|
| Overall, I think Notion API can open up many, many possibilities,
| since it can become a really good CMS, besides already being a
| great note-taking tool, and a team app. Notion has millions of
| users, and it's a huge market already.
|
| Btw, if you're interested in running your blog on Notion, I would
| love to hear from you! [3]
|
| [1]: https://github.com/jamalex/notion-py
|
| [2]: https://shubhamjain.co/
|
| [3]: https://twitter.com/shubhamjainco
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| I am interested in running my blog with Notion. I currently use
| a Gatsby blog on Netlify using NetlifyCMS. So I'd need to
| export any entries to Markdown and commit them to the blog's
| repo (the rest is handled by Netlify). I'd ideally like it to
| be bidirectional though, so that any changes to files in the
| repo are going to be reflected in Notion...
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| I absolutely love Notion and I'm excited for the future this API
| will bring.
| heipei wrote:
| Glad they learned from their painful mistake and ditched the .so
| domain in favor of a .com.
| dhritzkiv wrote:
| Can you fill me in about why a .so domain was a mistake?
| Because DNS providers/ firewalls sometimes block foreign TLDs,
| or was there something else?
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| > Because DNS providers/ firewalls sometimes block foreign
| TLDs
|
| yes, this
| enra wrote:
| Seems extremely limited as an API, wondering what people can
| actually use this for.
|
| For example markdown support for read/write would make it much
| easier to use it as CMS or sync the data, instead of working on
| the custom block types.
| truth_ wrote:
| Nothing is perfect. But if Notion had stylus support and a Linux
| native client (even Electron), it would be perfect to me.
|
| They said in Twitter that stylus support is a priority, but no
| plans yet for a Linux client.
|
| And, the Android app is quite clunky, not as good as Android
| native Notes apps.
| tomComb wrote:
| The Windows and Mac apps are just electron - not much advantage
| over just using it on the browser which has its own advantages.
|
| So, yes, since they are using electron they might as well
| provide a Linux one too, but I don't see why the lack of one
| would hold you back.
| ramnes wrote:
| I'm writing a Python client right now, 99% copied from their JS
| implementation, if anyone wants to join the fun!
|
| https://github.com/ramnes/notion-sdk-py
|
| I hope they will release an OpenAPI specification file soon so
| that code maintenance between different clients is kept to a
| minimum. :)
| barbazoo wrote:
| For anyone looking for a open source notes app that let's you
| keep control of your data, have a look at https://joplinapp.org/.
| urlwolf wrote:
| I really like zim (a desktop wiki) together with some filesync
| software
| barbazoo wrote:
| What I like about Joplin is that it lets me sync with my
| phone without much hassle via e.g. Dropbox
| InitialLastName wrote:
| The biggest thing I'm trying to replace as I move off of Notion
| is the dynamic lists embedded in notes. I couldn't tell but
| that doesn't seem like a thing in Joplin; am I missing
| something?
| barbazoo wrote:
| You mean lists like this: https://www.notion.so/Products-
| Materials-92c8bdfbcbd049e3a97...
|
| That doesn't exist in Joplin.
| petemir wrote:
| But perhaps it is doable with the new plugin system!
| r5Khe wrote:
| Interesting that there's apparently no way to update databases.
| That's unfortunate, because otherwise this might be a useful
| Jamstack data API.
| r5Khe wrote:
| Whoops, apparently this isn't true!
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27145301
| yawnxyz wrote:
| I guess one could just stuff json in these properties haha...
| fishtoaster wrote:
| Well that's awesome! I've been waiting for this for a while. My
| company uses notion internally for project management and I'd
| love to extend it a little bit (eg to generate burndown charts).
|
| I'll probably try to resist the urge to build a massive, poorly-
| written project management tool on top of the notion api.
| Probably.
| jkhdigital wrote:
| And I need to resist the urge to build an entire accounting
| system on top of the Notion API
| orliesaurus wrote:
| Full Disclosure - I have been lucky enough to have closed BETA
| access to the Notion API and here are some things I have noticed.
| BTW I do not work for Notion, im totally indie :P
|
| - The team building the API has been super responsive and
| respectful, very good collaboration on their Dev slack and I had
| a great time testing things
|
| - The documentation has been updated with the feedback from the
| community who had access, it's in a MUCH better status now than
| when it started
|
| - The API speed has increased, it was really slow, now its a bit
| faster :)
|
| Looking forward to see how other companies are using the Notion
| API, whether natively or through other integrations, I've seen a
| lot of activity from the folks at Integromat and Typeform :)
| (which are awesome tools btw!)
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| I've also found them to be pretty responsive (I've messaged
| them a number of times with bug reports and feature requests).
| That really contributes to my overall appreciation of the
| product!
| xvilka wrote:
| Time to integrate it with [Neo]Vim and Emacs!
| striking wrote:
| Can't delete or modify existing blocks yet, sadly.
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| And the Zapier integration is launched, too!
| https://zapier.com/apps/notion/integrations
|
| It has the same basic trigger (new item), actions (create/update
| item), and search (find item) as every other CRM integration. It
| is missing a trigger for item getting updated - still excited to
| see how folks are using it though.
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| CMS* though I am guessing it is being used as a CRM, too.
| arthurofbabylon wrote:
| For the folks who find Notion slow or otherwise unreliable, I'd
| love to hear your feedback on minimal.app (or minimal.app/#beta,
| depending on where you're located).
|
| Collaborative Notes just went live, making it a lighter, more
| focused alternative to Notion.
| EduardoBautista wrote:
| This is something I have been wanting for a while! Markdown
| collaborative notes in a native app!
|
| Definitely downloading...
| Otek wrote:
| I tried Notion for a while, but vendor lock-in makes these tools
| too risky for me. I'va ahd a good run with git+md notes. A while
| ago i successfully migrated to org-mode and not looking back.
| dancemethis wrote:
| Thankfully Anytype, the Notion killer, will be soon in beta.
| voodoologic wrote:
| I used to love Notion, but I switch to org-roam and emacs for
| privacy. The transition took a lot of work, but the cross
| referencing notation is just as good.
| tanaypingalkar wrote:
| this will be great, people will make notion clients for terminal,
| i like terminal todo list or terminal apps and having a great
| productivity tool in terminal which will sync all the device is
| good idea. LIke there is spotify on terminal.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| 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 heard a rumor that the entirety of Notion runs on a
| single unsharded database. If true, combined with the fact that
| this API took so long to ship, I have to assume that there is a
| crippling amount of tech debt in their stack. Hopefully it's
| growing pains and they're sorting it out, but it doesn't make me
| feel confident about the security of my (most sensitive) data.
|
| It's maybe also a cautionary tale about what happens when you
| dismiss too many early decisions as "premature optimization." You
| ship fast in the beginning but a few years later you're buried in
| all the debt you generated.
|
| Granted, it's a good problem to have. If the choice is between a
| profitable, popular company buried in tech debt, or the perfect
| stack with no customers, I'll take the debt.
| closeparen wrote:
| I have more respect for and trust in a product that I know is
| keeping things simple and straightforward vs. fucking around
| with Big Data consistency problems prematurely.
| robbiemitchell wrote:
| Even pretty established players like Asana don't offer on prem.
|
| Curious what you'd be willing to pay for this, as it's
| exclusively an enterprise feature. My guess is an absolute
| minimum of $50k/year contract value, or 250-350 users at an
| enterprise per-seat price (just guessing).
|
| Aside from going fully on prem, the idea of strictly dedicated
| storage is interesting -- like "bring your own S3 bucket"
| simplicity. I don't see that often outside of $10 desktop apps.
| kachnuv_ocasek wrote:
| > it's exclusively an enterprise feature
|
| Are you suggesting privacy and data ownership concerns are
| only limited to enterprises?
| gumby wrote:
| I think it suggests that the support and SLA costs are
| higher in these situations.
|
| These factors make sense to me. Note that Gitlab believes
| the opposite so on prem is also free.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| The support costs are a solvable problem. The challenge
| is architecting your stack to accommodate external
| storage, and delivering a usable experience to your users
| when they connect their resources.
|
| It would be nice if AWS could deliver a smooth OAuth
| experience so that in a few clicks, a user could
| provision an S3 bucket and share it with a service
| provider as easily as they can grant access to a GitHub
| repository.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| > Even pretty established players like Asana don't offer on
| prem.
|
| Sounds like an opportunity ;)
|
| Starting or rearchitecting a project gives you the rare
| chance to make decisions that your competitors never even had
| available to them. You can leverage new tech to move faster,
| and you can learn from their mistakes to avoid their most
| costly traps.
|
| "Bring your own S3 bucket" actually sounds pretty awesome and
| I wish more companies would do this. Everybody wants to be a
| middleman controlling the transaction, but they're missing a
| whole class of customers by not offering self-directed
| storage options.
|
| This is a great example of a decision Notion could make now,
| that Asana would have a hard time adapting to. As long as
| they're rearchitecting, they should keep an eye out for
| opportunities like that.
|
| As for how much I'd pay - if I'm the only party with access
| to my raw data, and I can run the software locally even if
| Notion goes out of business - for a team of 5-10, I would pay
| $50-75 per user per month.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| You might want to take a look at AthensResearch (free,
| self-hosted RoamResearch clone).
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Oh I have. Problem is Notion is most popular with the
| least technical people on our team. Migrating would be a
| hard sell.
| jrcii2 wrote:
| This might be an interesting alternative:
| https://github.com/QingWei-Li/notea.
|
| Open source Notion clone that you can host locally.
| TobTobXX wrote:
| Looks awesome, but it relies on an S3 (or compatible)
| backend, which I personally find too much of a hassle.
| sbarre wrote:
| Min.io[0] is pretty easy to set up, if you haven't heard
| of it, and is S3-compatible.
|
| 0: https://min.io/
| chrisweekly wrote:
| You're right about Asana -- but it's worth noting that
| RoamResearch ($100/yr) offers private, offline dbs, and
| Roam's OSS "vassal" app (ie, clone) AthensResearch is self-
| hosted and free-as-in-beer.
| boraoztunc wrote:
| Obsidian (https://obsidian.md) also offers offline, + for
| free.
| dancemethis wrote:
| Zero cost but not Free Software. Another untrustworthy
| thing like Notion.
| rattray wrote:
| Are either Roam or Obsidian collaborative?
| polote wrote:
| Even if the offer is appealing, this is unlikely to happen.
| Confluence who used to offer it, has stopped and soon
| everyone would need to use the cloud version. The thing is
| that for a collaborative tool like Notion (and others) being
| Saas, and in the cloud is kind of mandatory. As you need your
| tool to integrate with other services and thus, can't be
| static.
|
| The only possibility left is "dedicated storage". That works
| for static ressources. But the `page` content itself is
| dynamic and changes often, so you will need more than "bring
| your own S3" and something like "bring your rds" but that
| starts to be pretty complicated. Quip though still offer on
| prem AFAIK.
|
| At the end of the day, the issue with collaborative tools, is
| that you can't e2e encrypt easily, and almost impossible if
| you offer full text search. The best solution is to trust
| your provider for data security. And use maybe some daily
| backups in your own network.
| iampims wrote:
| Backup to s3 every N hours sounds like a good trade off.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Atlassian tools still offer on-prem, but you need a data
| center license now and they doubled the price of that.
| Unfortunate, but they'd be losing some huge customers that
| cannot run in the cloud not just as a matter of policy but
| technology. The entire IC developer platform is using the
| Atlassian suite, for instance, but on JWICS, a classified
| network with no connectivity to Atlassian's cloud.
|
| What's going to end up happening if more vendors decide you
| can only use their service from their cloud is the largest
| enterprises and governments are going to exclusively use
| Microsoft and AWS since they're more than willing to just
| build you your own cloud that meets whatever security and
| disconnection requirements you have, no matter how
| stringent. Already no new government projects that still
| have a choice are going with Atlassian tooling.
|
| We'll see how it goes for them, I guess. Maybe they don't
| need governments and Fortune 500s and can get by selling
| exclusively to startups with no real security or lock-in
| avoidance requirements.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| Apart from the HN growd + a few more, I think more users likely
| just don't care about options to host data.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Many regulated organizations do, though.
|
| Single reason we didn't adopt notion is lack of ability to
| self host.
| pfd1986 wrote:
| Same for my org. We'd have the entire team move, if self
| host was an option.
| codemac wrote:
| They totally care about their data though.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| It's probably a Pareto distribution like anything else. Maybe
| 20% of users care about it enough to pay for a 4x more
| expensive plan.
|
| I'd be curious to read more about what their architecture
| looks like now and how they're planning to evolve it to fit
| their priorities.
| 0x5f3759df-i wrote:
| This is the reason I use Obsidian. https://obsidian.md/
|
| All of your data is locally stored markdown text files with no
| lock in.
|
| All of the amazing benefits of linked note taking without the
| downsides.
| weakfish wrote:
| I personally like Joplin[0] the best - it can sync via
| Dropbox or any other host of options.
|
| [0] https://joplinapp.org
| ruffrey wrote:
| It doesn't work well for a team though, with a bunch of local
| markdown files - does it?
| c_thain wrote:
| Admittedly harder when there is frequent concurrent
| modification required, but Syncthing works well for me to
| share between nodes.
| dimal wrote:
| I absolutely love Obsidian except for one crucial flaw: no
| tabs. They've made every editor view a "pane", which means
| that on a laptop you can effectively only work on one or two
| files at a time. There's a plugin that adds tabs, but it's
| pretty awkward and not what you normally think of when you
| think of tabs. Otherwise, Obsidian is truly incredible.
| ryneandal wrote:
| I've also recently migrated to Obsidian and it's been
| fantastic.
| skadamat wrote:
| Craft Docs is a good Notion alternative I personally like, and
| they're avoiding the data moat angle:
|
| https://museapp.com/podcast/26-no-data-moat/
| nvrspyx wrote:
| 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
| cristinacordova wrote:
| (Cristina from Notion here)
|
| We shared a bit more in the past about how most of our user
| content was stored in a single database instance (see more
| here: https://www.notion.so/notion/Focus-on-performance-
| reliabilit...). That is no longer true and we recently re-
| architected this database to scale horizontally.
|
| Totally understand that you want more options for how to host
| your data. Unfortunately, we don't have any plans on that front
| at the moment.
| [deleted]
| bradgessler wrote:
| My company had Notion hit us up for an Enterprise contract.
| When we asked if they offered enhanced security, single
| tenancy, or even they'd accept some sort of liability if they
| had a breach ... the answer was no, no, and no.
|
| We ultimately decided to not go enterprise since it offers
| little value over their existing plan and keep sensitive data
| out of Notion.
|
| I hope Notion gets to a point where they can offer stronger
| guarantees to their customers. If they pull it off they'll
| easily be mission critical software.
| marcc wrote:
| Notion doesn't even need to offer these guarantees in their
| SaaS service. They can just ship to my Kubernetes cluster,
| and let me manage the ingress and storage, and that would
| be enough to make it mission critical software.
|
| In the meantime, we end up using tools with a little bit
| less good UX, but we just can't share that data publicly.
| UX can't win over security, and I hate having to choose.
| tacosaretasty wrote:
| Do you at least have plans to expose audit and access logs to
| customers yet?
| smoldesu wrote:
| >Totally understand that you want more options for how to
| host your data. Unfortunately, we don't have any plans on
| that front at the moment.
|
| This is unfortunate. I tried Notion a few months back, and
| almost loved it enough to pay for a subscription. Once I saw
| that, I refunded the subscription and went back to markdown
| and git. I love your software, but the lock-in is
| frustrating.
| ptd wrote:
| If you're the CEO, would you rather have a frustrating but
| profitable product or a non-frustrating but non-profitable
| product?
|
| I think people forget this part of the math.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| If your product is only profitable because you created
| artificial friction, your business is unlikely to exist a
| decade from now unless you are thinking about
| diversifying already.
|
| Allowing me to host my data myself should not reduce your
| profits as long as your product is still the best.
|
| If you're focused on (relative) short term profits to get
| paid and retire on a beach, and you succeed, good for
| you. I'm totally jealous and wish I was you.
|
| Unfortunately, I'm also not your target customer.
| jitl wrote:
| (I work at Notion)
|
| "Lock in" is not a part of our strategy. We try to offer
| data portability via import and export; you can export
| your entire workspace as HTML (most metadata, pages link
| to each other and can be browsed offline), PDF, or
| Markdown (most easily editable). Given an HTML export and
| a few hours of scripting, I think you could migrate to
| any API-accessible document storage strategy.
| [deleted]
| ezekg wrote:
| Do they still not support things like 2FA? At my previous
| company, we couldn't get buy-in from our security team due to
| them not supporting 2FA. The team loved Notion, but that was a
| deal breaker. Also, if I remember correctly, magic email links
| could not be disabled. There is no excuse for not implementing
| 2FA w/ an authenticator app -- it took me a couple days to
| implement it into my product. They've had people asking for 2FA
| for literal years (just search Twitter!)
| m-p-3 wrote:
| Maybe your security team could implement an authentication
| server with 2FA to cover those softwares that don't support
| it natively?
|
| For example, https://www.authelia.com/ is open-source.
| [deleted]
| jitl wrote:
| (I work at Notion, but not on the Infrastructure team)
|
| We completed our sharding migration almost a month ago
| (https://twitter.com/jitl/status/1383235281457876993?s=21), and
| are now using >1 primaries. The project took a long time and
| really made the "changing the engine while the car is doing
| 200MPH" analogy true for me.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| I bet you have lots of fun challenges!
|
| I hope I didn't come off as too critical. I do love Notion as
| a product and my org is a paid member. I just wish there were
| more options around data hosting.
|
| None of these problems are the mark of bad engineers, either.
| It's just what happens when you ship fast and grow fast. Like
| I said, good problem to have :)
| jitl wrote:
| You didn't :)
| dheera wrote:
| I currently use a 1-person Slack workspace instead of Notion
| because I can write bots to help me with various things.
|
| I'll have to see if this API is complete enough to do what I want
| with Notion.
| tertius wrote:
| Expound on how you may take advantage of it.
| truth_ wrote:
| Do you have a blog or some sort of writeup?
| dheera wrote:
| Not yet but I'll strongly consider writing one soon! Didn't
| realize there was so much interest in this.
| nicomeemes wrote:
| This sounds really interesting to me. Care to explain how you
| use it (the slack workspace/bots)?
| dheera wrote:
| I just use Slack as a universal command line interface for
| everything.
|
| Slack's bot extensibility make it great for:
|
| - As a universal notification system (calendar events, github
| notifications, sms for the idiot apps that insist on it --
| all sms go to my slack instead of my phone, alerts about my
| 3D printer e.g. print complete, alerts about low battery on
| any of my devices or robots, automatic google maps links of
| businesses I have visited, just about everything really)
|
| - Expanding upon references to things, e.g. if I tag a bot
| and type the name of a hiking trail it can fetch the
| alltrails page for it and link it; if I tag a bot and type
| the name of a restaurant it can fetch the yelp page and link
| it
|
| - If I paste code it can run it in a sandboxed environment
| and show the results much like a Jupyter notebook
|
| - As a text interface to Google Assistant (the implementation
| is convoluted; I have to TTS the text and feed the audio
| result into Google's ConverseRequest endpoint. I couldn't
| figure out a way to feed text directly to Google)
|
| - I have all my IOT devices linked to Slack, I can turn
| on/off lights, set thermostat, pause/unpause my 3D printer,
| request a snapshot from any camera in my house, everything
| right from Slack
|
| - Slack is also great because I can upload arbitrary files,
| pictures, videos, sounds with ease.
|
| The best part is that it is available on all my devices with
| data synced through the cloud and native mobile apps so it
| makes all of the above conveniently available on my phone and
| e-reader.
|
| The biggest downsides are Slack's sucky search, and editing
| prior messages isn't the best experience.
| rm8x wrote:
| should someone have perhaps roasted their landing page I wonder
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