[HN Gopher] Notion Calendar
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Notion Calendar
        
       Author : dylanirlbeck
       Score  : 142 points
       Date   : 2024-01-17 17:03 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.notion.so)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.notion.so)
        
       | iamthirsty wrote:
       | Seems like calendars are all the rage, again.[0]
       | 
       | -
       | 
       | [0]:https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/01/09/hey-calendar-
       | no...
        
       | PurpleRamen wrote:
       | Still no offline-mode? Notion is a really great tool, but I
       | really want my data local to tinker with them in all kind of ways
       | which Notion was not made to support. And all the clones and
       | alternatives are still years away from Notion's level of
       | polishing. Really strange.
        
         | posix86 wrote:
         | It'd be such an easy win of customers. If they support offline
         | calendar, and human startup time, I'd replace my calendar with
         | Notion in a heartbeat.
        
         | canadiantim wrote:
         | Does this look like keeping the data on a local sqlite?
        
         | jwoq9118 wrote:
         | Checkout Anytype. Privacy focused alternative to Notion
        
           | drakonka wrote:
           | Thank you for the recommendation; I've wanted to start a
           | private Notion for a while but had the same requirement for
           | local data storage.
        
             | SN76477 wrote:
             | if you start a Notion variation, let me know. I would love
             | something like notion but offline and secure.
        
               | ezst wrote:
               | If you don't need collab, give Trilium a try. It's IMO
               | better than notion at keeping things organized (notion
               | lets you create types/objects as "databases", but craps
               | at polymorphism, i.e. extending and specializing those
               | types). I really don't need the bling of
               | notion/capacities/obsidian if they can't manage
               | consistent data, and Trilium works offline, too, and is
               | impressively hackable.
        
           | j45 wrote:
           | Thanks for the recommendation.
           | 
           | Someone recommended trying out Outline as well which is self-
           | hosted, but requires using web connected single sign on.
        
         | j45 wrote:
         | Glad I'm not alone on the offline mode.
        
       | emptysea wrote:
       | UI wise it looks like they've cribbed some design notes from
       | Apple's calendar apps
        
         | solardev wrote:
         | I wish more people would do this! Imitation is the sincerest
         | form of flattery and all that, sure, but especially with UI/UX,
         | gosh... just give your users some time-proven patterns that
         | work well, developed by giant companies who have more UX people
         | than you have employees. No need to constantly reinvent the
         | wheel only to deliver some stylish thing with terrible
         | usability...
         | 
         | Oftentimes I wish the Web had built-in UI primitives like this,
         | the way we do for a checkbox or text field, so that websites
         | aren't constantly trying to reinvent basic widgets. Bootstrap,
         | MUI, Tailwind components, etc. kinda do that, but they're not
         | really standard.
        
         | gdudeman wrote:
         | A quote that is often helpful in product design: "Good artists
         | copy, great artists steal."
        
         | paxys wrote:
         | A UI like a calendar has been iterated on enough by now that it
         | doesn't really need reinvention. Google, Apple, Outlook and the
         | rest all look largely the same for this reason.
        
       | nikolay wrote:
       | This is actually renbranded Cron.
        
         | dewey wrote:
         | First sentence says "Cron is now Notion Calendar" as they
         | bought them two years ago.
        
           | nikolay wrote:
           | I know. But althoguh I knew Cron and new about the
           | acquisition, it wasn't obvious in my mind that this is only
           | rebranding and nothing more.
        
             | manmal wrote:
             | Seems to be common with calendars. Sunrise (iOS) became
             | Outlook. RIP my most favorite calendar app ever.
        
       | dewey wrote:
       | Cron was bought by Notion in 2022:
       | https://www.notion.so/blog/notion-acquires-cron
        
       | jasonjmcghee wrote:
       | So Notion acquired Cron? What's the story here? What a strange
       | product announcement. "cron.com" just says "Cron is now Notion
       | Calendar"
       | 
       | Edit: Oh wow, Notion acquired them back in June 2022. Guess that
       | was context i was missing
        
       | w-m wrote:
       | In case anybody from Notion is reading here: I'm very frustrated
       | by being logged out on all my Apple devices (MacBook, iPhone,
       | iPad) every few weeks to months.
       | 
       | By itself this would be only annoying, but on top of the spurious
       | logout, none of the Notion apps support Keychain access. Thus
       | when having to log in (with my email and password combination), I
       | need to hunt for those in the password list and copy/paste them,
       | which takes quite a bit of time doing that on each device.
       | 
       | Google searches tell me that I'm far from alone in experiencing
       | it and that the problem seems to exist for several years.
        
         | DandyDev wrote:
         | Add me to the list of paying users that are disgruntled by this
         | malfunction
        
         | rvlfly wrote:
         | Hi there, really sorry to hear about this problem. Can you use
         | the Help & Support -> Message support function to submit a
         | ticket with the problem you are experiencing? We will make sure
         | to look into it and fix it.
        
           | casperb wrote:
           | I got the same thing as well. It feels like it is by design.
        
             | rvlfly wrote:
             | Appreciate if you can submit a ticket and we will look into
             | it!
        
               | contrast wrote:
               | This isn't Notion's community forum. Could you please
               | stop spamming Hacker News with requests for your
               | customers to file support tickets?
        
           | w-m wrote:
           | Messaging support in this way would make sense to me for
           | reporting a weird, rare bug. But what I described is widely
           | seen in the community[0-3].
           | 
           | In fact, looking for these links, I now found an official
           | Notion reply from 4 years ago in one of these threads[4]:
           | "should keep you logged in for 90 days per device".
           | 
           | This had me find [5]: "Notion has a default session duration
           | of 90 days. This means all users automatically get logged out
           | if they have stayed logged in for 90 consecutive days.".
           | 
           | If logging out any session after 90 days is the expected
           | behavior, this would completely explain the behavior in my
           | case. Can you confirm that this is happening for all
           | accounts?
           | 
           | [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/brcy5m/random_l
           | ogou...
           | 
           | [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/vi8c9f/constant
           | ly_g...
           | 
           | [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/194xw0m/anyone_
           | else...
           | 
           | [3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/dsi5jo/login_pr
           | oces...
           | 
           | [4]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/dsi5jo/login_pr
           | oces...
           | 
           | [5]: https://www.notion.so/help/hipaa
        
             | rvlfly wrote:
             | Yes it is 90 days but we are actively working on ways to
             | improve the user experience. Stay tuned!
        
               | w-m wrote:
               | That would be much appreciated. I've sent a message to
               | support about the email not being filled in by Keychain
               | on iOS, request 4054436.
        
       | ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
       | Why does anyone use Notion over Excel and Notepad?
       | 
       | I never understood their rise to such popularity.
        
         | DandyDev wrote:
         | Have you ever used Notion? Feature-wise, it has nothing to do
         | with spreadsheets, so the comparison with Excel is irrelevant.
         | Comparing it to Notepad is only remotely applicable in that
         | both could be used to take notes.
         | 
         | As to why it is so popular: despite its faults, it offers a
         | very slick experience for note taking, building a knowledge-
         | base/wiki and project management and anything in-between
         | really. I find the way you can store data in a structured way
         | using Notion databases and present it in different forms very
         | useful.
        
         | outworlder wrote:
         | A better comparison would be Obsidian or Logseq.
         | 
         | If you are trying to do those things on Excel... geez.
        
           | echelon wrote:
           | If Obsidian grew team / cloud features, that would be pretty
           | slick.
        
             | deafpolygon wrote:
             | If that were to happen, I'd switch to something else. I
             | love the single player mode of Obsidian.
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | My team uses Notion and I begrudgingly adopted it. I'm not one
         | to dictate.
         | 
         | The UI is clunky. It's not as bad as Atlassian software, but it
         | makes me miss Google Docs.
         | 
         | I'm hoping Gsuite grows ticket and wiki support, because then I
         | can use Gsuite for everything.
        
           | esafak wrote:
           | GSuite has barely changed since it came out; let's be real.
        
           | Spivak wrote:
           | There are a lot of criticisms I think I could level at Notion
           | but clunky would be one of the last. I'm actually curious
           | what you use Notion for that doesn't jive well.
        
             | echelon wrote:
             | Any time I drag media around, it bogs my system down like
             | crazy (I'm on Linux).
             | 
             | Nothing seems to snap to the "right" places.
             | 
             | My brain also isn't mapping to the Notion way of doing
             | things (which is orthogonal to the other issues).
        
         | esafak wrote:
         | It is multi-functional. You can make it behave like
         | spreadsheet, notepad, or database. All in the same document. So
         | a better question might be "Why use Excel?"
        
         | abdullahkhalids wrote:
         | My work uses notion. We have to write a lot, and I need to
         | write a lot of mathematics. Writing math on notion pages is
         | like pulling teeth.
         | 
         | Till last year, I was writing my docs in markdown on my
         | computer (using emacs), and then uploading using this library
         | for markdown-to-notion-import [1]. But the notion api has
         | changed, and the library no longer works, and I am not sure
         | what to do now.
         | 
         | [1] https://github.com/Cobertos/md2notion
        
         | InitialLastName wrote:
         | I don't love Notion for some things, but I haven't found
         | anything better for mixing structured data and notes in a
         | flexible-but-consistent way.
         | 
         | If I wanted to do something like their databases (large sets of
         | notes with enforced fields of different types including
         | relational links, tags, attached files, with dead easy data
         | entry, autocompletion, search and extraction, all presented in
         | an acceptably pleasing way) in Excel, it would take me hours of
         | tweaking. In Notion, it's 10 minutes before I'm starting to
         | enter data (not to mention the price).
        
       | roscue wrote:
       | Looks a lot like it's inspired by https://amie.so . They also
       | have a Notion integration, but it doesn't work completely
       | flawless yet - but they are only out of beta since a few months I
       | think.
        
         | mxstbr wrote:
         | Other way around! Notion bought Cron, which was around for a
         | long time before Amie and (one could argue) inspired Amie.
        
           | dewey wrote:
           | Apart from not really seeing how they are very similar
           | (Except the calendar view itself...which looks the same in
           | every calendar app) it actually looks like Amie was around
           | one year longer. At least based on public announcement
           | timestamps I found. Doesn't really matter in the end, as they
           | have very different ideas in the same field so there's
           | nothing wrong with that.
           | 
           | - Amie, 2020-08-24:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24263960
           | 
           | - Cron, 2021-11-18:
           | https://cron.com/blog/2021-11-18-announcing-cron
        
             | shawiz wrote:
             | I really hope Notion Calendar will build the "schedule
             | todo" feature for its Calendar. That's the primary reason I
             | used Amie.
        
         | jahewson wrote:
         | They both look broadly like Apple's Calendar app with some
         | features of Google Workspace's Calender mixed in.
        
       | nikon wrote:
       | Long time Cron user here. Cron just uninstalled itself during an
       | update and I had to find this announcement manually. Not a good
       | look.
       | 
       | After downloading the new app, I now get this error:
       | 
       | > This app has reached its sign-in rate limit for now.
       | 
       | Did you not consider the migration path for existing users?
        
         | DancerOfFaran wrote:
         | Quite frustrated about this.
         | 
         | It also didn't restart the app for me, so took me until I
         | missed the starting of a meeting to realize the workflow was
         | broken, and THEN my launcher app couldn't find the name Cron
         | (IE, the aforementioned uninstall). Then, opened it finally,
         | and had to also redo Google SSO Auth, but there's a malformed
         | request error (that seems to be a Google issue...) and I can't
         | log in.
        
         | roldie wrote:
         | Same exact thing happened to me. Super frustrating. I'm ready
         | to just leave it uninstalled at this point.
         | 
         | I'll probably switch to Sunsama or give Amie a try again
        
           | apigalore wrote:
           | It's not uninstalled. It updated itself to Notion Calendar.
           | Probably kept the old app bundle ID
        
         | ethanbond wrote:
         | Sounds like Notion ownership to me!
        
         | kamranahmedse wrote:
         | Happened the same to me and I thought of some updater glitch
         | until I visited their website.
         | 
         | The schedule links I created with cron seem to be not working
         | as well.
        
         | harrismcc wrote:
         | Exact same for me. Was late for my meeting because Cron just
         | deleted itself from my computer entirely. Super annoying
        
         | HelloFellowDevs wrote:
         | +1 for this, I didn't even know they had gotten acquired by
         | Notion at all. It just updated and disappeared, this article
         | was how I found out why!
        
       | gdudeman wrote:
       | I've been using Cron for the last year and a half and migrated
       | from Vimcal.
       | 
       | It's a delightful calendar with all the modern keyboard shortcuts
       | including Vim's J/K for previous next and logical shortcuts for
       | everything else (m for month view, w for week view, c for create,
       | etc.).
       | 
       | It's speedy. (Hopefully Notion keeps it that way and doesn't
       | introduce Notion's annoying lag)
       | 
       | They've nailed the details: - meeting participants are easy and
       | logically sorted - you can move an event between calendars and
       | accounts with no hiccups (Apple Calendar used to die on this
       | repeatedly) - they expose just the right amount of information
       | for a calendar invitation in the right order - Title, Time,
       | participants, conferencing, then location - so you can tab
       | through and hit enter when it's done
       | 
       | Conferencing is great - select your app and the meeting is
       | automatically generated and added.
       | 
       | It has Vimcal-like sharing mode where you can block off time and
       | autogenerate either an easy to read list of available times and
       | dates or you can opt to append a link so people can book online
       | and see current availability. I have a couple of quibbles with
       | this implementation - it's hard to add 15 minutes to a selection
       | - but overall it's quite elegant.
       | 
       | The last thing that delights me far more than it should: Command-
       | Shift-J opens your Meet / Zoom / Whathaveyou no matter where you
       | are on your computer.
        
         | guytv wrote:
         | how does it compare to google calendar? From the video, it
         | seems to have almost identical UI. is that indeed the case?
        
           | ethanbond wrote:
           | The UX _was_ just way, way better.
           | 
           | That said, it's clearly been neglected since the Notion
           | acquisition. IMO it has gotten actively worse/buggier, and
           | the mobile app hasn't seemed to improve at all? I am not
           | hopeful for its stewardship under Notion, given how clunky
           | Notion is. The _entire_ value prop of Cron is the lack of
           | clunk.
           | 
           | I've switched to Amie (amie.co) and been really enjoying it.
           | The aesthetic is a bit overly "playful" for my personal
           | preferences but it's decidedly not-clunky, which is what I
           | care about.
           | 
           | FWIW: Cron and Amie both sit on top of Google Calendar.
           | They're just better frontends. So it's not really an "either-
           | or" type decision.
        
           | gdudeman wrote:
           | I find Google calendar on desktop to have a bunch of little
           | annoyances relative to Cron.
           | 
           | Examples: - When you create an event, it pops over your
           | calendar instead of on the right - You can't easily tab
           | through the event creation process - Not simple to share a
           | list of available times for scheduling with external users -
           | To switch which calendar my event is going on, I have to
           | click to expand, then click to change
           | 
           | Cron (excuse me, Notion Calendar) is just cleaner.
           | 
           | I know there are ways to make a web app act like a desktop
           | app, but I prefer installing an app and being able to jump to
           | it or open it from Command-Space on Mac.
        
           | mmcclure wrote:
           | I won't rehash what others have said in the thread (UX good,
           | etc, all of which I agree with).
           | 
           | I explored switching away from Cron a few weeks ago because I
           | use Fastmail for personal stuff, and the thing I found myself
           | struggling to live without is the global shortcut for joining
           | the current meeting. It feels silly to say, but I freaking
           | love that feature.
        
             | pneff wrote:
             | On Mac I can recommend MeetingBar [1] for that.
             | 
             | [1] https://meetingbar.app/
        
               | nklmilojevic wrote:
               | Raycast also has this natively + Alfred has a plugin for
               | it.
        
       | webwielder2 wrote:
       | May this be more successful than Dropbox's acquisition of
       | Mailbox.
        
         | muhammadusman wrote:
         | Oof! What a great app ruined by a bad acquisition!
        
       | throwaway689236 wrote:
       | Is there a calendar that can show the whole year and mark days
       | with different colors if there are all-day events? For some
       | reason calendar apps don't treat year view as something important
       | which is crazy to me. I like to have an overview when planning
       | vacations and stuff like that.
        
         | jianshen wrote:
         | Second this. I've written my own private Google Apps script
         | specifically for this view and I wish more calendar apps would
         | do the same. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough.
        
         | smeej wrote:
         | I've been looking for this kind of feature for a long time.
         | Lots of orgs need to plan out certain things over the whole
         | year with their various teams (you don't want two teams trying
         | to do their biggest fundraising at the same time, for example),
         | and it boggles my mind that calendar companies don't make this
         | easy to see.
        
           | j45 wrote:
           | I have found a few excel templates that print out the whole
           | year on a tabloid piece of paper.
           | 
           | There's one landscape template that works well enough that it
           | could also look good on a monitor. If I can find the original
           | link to it I can share it if interested. I ended up writing a
           | script that just populates the excel template until I get
           | around to replacing it, or discovering it.
        
         | jabroni_salad wrote:
         | I really like Teamup's year and timeline views. Set it to
         | multiweek for 30 weeks and span it across all your screens:
         | http://teamup.com/examples/ex12
         | 
         | I also keep a printed copy of this at my desk.
         | https://davidseah.com/node/compact-calendar/
        
         | dewey wrote:
         | I was looking for the same recently, would be especially nice
         | for vacations and remote working periods. It feels like the
         | best method is still a paper wall calendar and a marker which
         | is a bit surprising. If someone has any suggestions I'd be
         | excited to give them a try!
         | 
         | https://twitter.com/tehwey/status/1614201251356463106
        
         | j45 wrote:
         | I don't think its crazy either. Having a view of your year with
         | major things that require lead ups and follow up is critical.
         | It actually makes the year go much smoother.
        
         | kevinob11 wrote:
         | I wanted this so bad I wrote up a quick personal app that pulls
         | from a couple of subscribed Google calendars and does almost
         | exactly like what you are asking for. I don't know how anyone
         | plans multi-day events without it. Huge for family meetings
         | where we are planning out the year.
        
         | Leftium wrote:
         | OneView Calendar did this (even multi-year), but it seems dead,
         | now:
         | 
         | -
         | https://web.archive.org/web/20191029164736/http://www.onevie...
         | 
         | - https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/11846108
         | 
         | - https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/13601391
         | 
         | - Demo (try zooming out):
         | https://web.archive.org/web/20191003004300/http://app.onevie...
        
       | nsriv wrote:
       | Was really interested in this at the time of Cron's acquisition,
       | hoping it would mean Cron would be cross-platform (specifically
       | on Android). 18 months for ecosystem integration and a rebrand
       | and no platform expansion.
        
       | DavideNL wrote:
       | The thing that has always stopped me from using Notion is that
       | it's not end-to-end encrypted. So much personal data will be
       | uploaded, with the possibility of abuse and/or getting stolen in
       | a leak, or as often happens, some other company buying them
       | including all your data, and changing the policies;
       | 
       | For tasks i've been using OmniFocus, which is an excellent app.
       | e2e + syncs between all devices.
       | 
       | Haven't found a good Calendar app yet of the same quality...
        
         | jbverschoor wrote:
         | Noteplan combines them quite nicely, although the calendar part
         | still needs a lot of work
        
         | mulderc wrote:
         | Fantastical?
        
           | zuccs wrote:
           | Price just got jacked, again.
        
       | jbverschoor wrote:
       | Looks like anyother calendar.. I actually like the way Hey
       | looks/works
        
       | smeej wrote:
       | As soon as someone invents a calendar/to-do app that helps you
       | schedule your next tasks by using AI to reduce context switching
       | (e.g., can tell from a meeting's attendees and a project's
       | responsible parties that you're probably thinking about the right
       | type of topic, and this is the optimal break in your calendar to
       | hammer out this task), it'll be worth changing things up.
       | 
       | Until then the improvements are too small to be worth the time
       | cost to switch.
        
         | jitl wrote:
         | Notion Calendar is a Google a calendar client. If you use
         | Google Calendar the "cost" to "switchl to this app is one click
         | + OAuth to log in, and (optional) however much time it takes to
         | pick the keyboard shortcuts.
         | 
         | (I work at Notion but not on Calendar)
        
           | smeej wrote:
           | I don't (and won't) use Google Calendar, so there's still a
           | cost to me.
           | 
           | In fairness, I don't use Notion either, and wouldn't start
           | for a calendar (I've tried, but I seem to be one of the odd
           | people for whom Notion is radically, deeply unintuitive), so
           | this particular switch wasn't on the table for me in the
           | first place.
        
         | marcinzm wrote:
         | Isn't that what Clockwise (https://www.getclockwise.com/) aims
         | to do?
        
           | smeej wrote:
           | I actually wasn't thinking about the team scheduling element,
           | though that seems really useful especially in scrappy teams
           | that have to wear a lot of hats and sync ad hoc a lot.
           | 
           | I was thinking more about the task side, where if I had come
           | from a meeting about, say, marketing, and only had half an
           | hour until another meeting, I might be able to knock out a
           | marketing-related task because I was already in that
           | headspace, whereas a similarly complex task about some other
           | topic would require more of a context shift.
        
         | lbrunson wrote:
         | Working on this over at https://beta.flexibly.ai
        
           | smeej wrote:
           | Do you have a mockup video or docs or something that would
           | help me get a better sense of what this hopes to be? I'm not
           | able to find much info on the linked page or on X about it.
        
         | jonny-bravo wrote:
         | It's not "AI", but Motion's (not to be confused with Notion)
         | algorithm is pretty good.
         | 
         | When you add a task, you specify an urgency, time estimate, and
         | what "schedule" it belongs to (e.g. work, personal, etc).
         | Schedules are different categories with their own "slots" of
         | time that a task can fill. You can also specify whether to use
         | chunking, which lets the algorithm break a task into multiple
         | events based on the "minimum chunk duration" you set for that
         | task.
         | 
         | For example, let's say you create a 9-5 "schedule" for work.
         | It's currently 3pm. You add two tasks:
         | 
         | - 3h, Task A, low priority, set min chunk duration to 1h
         | 
         | - 1h, Task B, high priority
         | 
         | Motion will schedule this as follows:
         | 
         | - 3-4pm today, Task B
         | 
         | - 4-5pm today, Task A
         | 
         | - 9-11am tomorrow, Task A
         | 
         | If you were to swap the urgencies, it will automatically
         | reschedule those tasks (and any tasks that follow it, assuming
         | they are marked as "auto-schedule")
         | 
         | Tbh the only problem is it's price. I use it quite a lot but
         | I'm not sure I'll renew my annual subscription next month.
         | 
         | There's also Reclaim.ai, but I found Motion was faster to use
         | and had a better UI
        
           | smeej wrote:
           | These are on the way toward what I mean for sure. They're
           | still missing the element of, "Your last meeting was with
           | Alice and Bob, who are in Marketing. You have half an hour
           | before you have to leave to get to a client meeting, so you
           | can probably knock out this marketing-related task because
           | you're in that headspace, but this equally involved task
           | planning the details of an event in a week might require too
           | much of a context shift to get done right now."
           | 
           | Those are the types of little time blocks I lose all the time
           | because I can't switch fast enough, whereas if a tool could
           | figure out my contexts well, it might really be able to
           | surface things when I'm already in the right headspace.
           | 
           | It's not going to be perfect. Maybe Alice and Bob are part of
           | the event for the next week too, because they're also on the
           | company softball team with me and the tool wouldn't
           | necessarily know we were actually meeting about the event,
           | but even switching to the task of "review task list to choose
           | a task I might be able to get done now" is one context shift
           | too many when I have a short gap.
        
       | muhammadusman wrote:
       | This looks a lot like the default macOS calendar app, enough that
       | I went back to Calendar.app and added back my calendars and now
       | I'm using it again. Someone else mentioned no offline support
       | which is a big thing for me, I like to clean up my calendar and
       | other "productivity" related areas like Reminders, Notes, etc
       | while I'm on long flights which often don't have internet access.
        
         | jstummbillig wrote:
         | Increasingly less so, I am sure?
        
           | HumblyTossed wrote:
           | Why would you be so sure?
        
             | square_usual wrote:
             | Most long flights these days have internet access!
        
         | bnchrch wrote:
         | Been a happy cron user for 2 years now.
         | 
         | Here's the real improvements as I see them
         | 
         | 1. You get a push notification that includes a join button 1
         | minute before your meetings
         | 
         | 2. You always have a heads up to how long to your next meeting,
         | or how long left in your current meeting
         | 
         | 3. I can schedule/find time with coworkers in 2 clicks
         | 
         | 4. I can see my coworkers timezones
         | 
         | 5. I can replace calendly for sharing my availability.
         | 
         | But none of them have to do with Notion so far.
        
           | eitland wrote:
           | > You get a push notification that includes a join button 1
           | minute before your meetings
           | 
           | Why this still isn't an option in every calendar application
           | in 2024 is beyond me.
           | 
           | My current Outlook is at least better than whatever I had
           | before: Now I can at least choose a reminder 5 minutes before
           | something start instead of only increments from $NOW.
        
           | confoundcofound wrote:
           | I'm a long time Cron user but didn't know it had Calendly
           | functionality. How do you share availability?
        
             | yeutterg wrote:
             | I think it's only the "Share availability" functionality.
             | You can drag times you are available, then it copies text
             | to your clipboard like this, plus a booking link:
             | 
             | Would 30 min during any of these times (all in PST) work
             | for you?
             | 
             | - Tomorrow Thu Jan 18, 3-5:45 PM
             | 
             | - Fri Jan 19, 12:15-5:45 PM
             | 
             | - Sat Jan 20, 8 AM - 5:45 PM
             | 
             | You can just let me know or confirm here: [link]
             | 
             | What's nice is that you can also change the time zone so
             | the other person sees the suggestions in their time zone.
             | 
             | I don't think you can just do a generic scheduling link
             | like Calendly, you have to pick the times first.
        
       | Oarch wrote:
       | An aside, but was anyone else horrified at the state of that
       | calendar? I'd catch fire after a few days of running at 100%
       | every given hour. Normalise a bit of downtime, yeesh.
        
         | swalling wrote:
         | Maker schedule vs. manager schedule
         | https://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
        
           | apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
           | I had never seen this before. Really puts into perspective
           | some of the struggles I've dealt with from chaotic schedules
           | and a transition toward management. It has me thinking I need
           | to be more conscious of how I schedule meetings for others.
           | Thanks for this!
        
       | gardenhedge wrote:
       | Are Calendars hot in 2024? HEY and now Notion.
        
         | nsriv wrote:
         | Todoist finally getting around to it as well.
        
       | syngrog66 wrote:
       | Notion: ugh. Forced to use it a few times and it was a UX circus.
       | I've come to see it as a sign of a broken shop to avoid, or bail
       | early as possible.
        
       | lemonberry wrote:
       | I tried Notion a few years ago. Definitely a slick and polished
       | app. And clearly useful to a lot of people. But I'll never get
       | used to the idea of putting that much of my life or business into
       | a web app.
       | 
       | Between potential terms of service changes, potential security
       | issues and now potential misuse via AI (and I LOVE AI) I just
       | will never be comfortable having that much information in someone
       | else's web app.
        
         | azemetre wrote:
         | I feel the same way, I've never been steered wrong just using
         | markdown and grep'ing my notes.
         | 
         | Obviously not advanced as notion but I'm just writing text
         | here, it doesn't need to be advanced.
         | 
         | The hardest part when writing is the act of writing itself, web
         | apps just seem too bloated for my use case of simple text.
        
         | wyre wrote:
         | I was using Notion, but I found Obisidian to be very similar,
         | maybe less powerful out of the box, but feels much better to
         | use. All files are written in Markdown and stored on device (or
         | in iCloud or wherever), has a "marketplace" for user designed
         | themes and plugins.
        
           | psc wrote:
           | I like Obsidian too, but the one thing it really can't do
           | that Notion does well is collaboration. And surprisingly I
           | haven't seen any good plugins that solve this problem (to be
           | fair it's not an easy problem).
        
         | rubymamis wrote:
         | That's why I'm working on a local-first with native-like
         | performance Notion alternative using Qt C++ and QML called
         | Plume[1]. It uses an advanced block editor[2] that I built from
         | scratch. All notes are simply plaintext/markdown underneath.
         | Advanced blocks (like Kanban, for example) uses very simple
         | syntax, for example:                 {{kanban}}       # Todo
         | - [ ] item 1       - [ ] item 2       # In Progress       - [ ]
         | item 1       - [ ] item 2       {{/kanban}}
         | 
         | [1] https://www.get-plume.com/
         | 
         | [2] https://imgur.com/NIgDLOU
        
           | nklmilojevic wrote:
           | From what I see, this doesn't compare to Notion. Notion is
           | not typically used as a note-taking app, but rather as an
           | internal wiki.
        
             | rubymamis wrote:
             | It will support inter-note linking. So you could build your
             | own personal wiki using Plume. The main difference with
             | Notion will be real-time collaboration (which Plume doesn't
             | support).
        
               | j45 wrote:
               | Collaboration is definitely where all note taking apps go
               | as soon as more people need to access your notes or
               | participate in them as a group
        
               | rubymamis wrote:
               | There is still a huge market for personal note-taking
               | apps. Obsidian, Joplin, Bear, Logseq, just to name a few.
               | Plume will support sharing notes, and maybe some form of
               | non-real-time collaboration (think git-like) in the
               | future.
        
               | j45 wrote:
               | Personal note taking by no means is solved but lots of
               | much better options coming out like the ones you
               | mentioned.
               | 
               | Still, my personal knowledge graph is great but only so
               | useful in the cases when it's about more than me. Double
               | entry and maintaining anything is a pain especially with
               | a lot of notes.
               | 
               | I think the markdown notes as graph software may finally
               | bring some good opportunities to sharing certain tags in
               | certain ways and not others. If logseq and obsidian could
               | do "plugin groups" instead of installing them
               | individually that would be amazing
               | 
               | Even if something is documented for myself I might tag it
               | shareable. One example is how much I'm proactively
               | recording a loom for doing anything as I work instead of
               | when it's needed. Handoff or asking or help is much
               | easier.
        
               | nklmilojevic wrote:
               | I didn't intend to undermine your efforts, by the way. I
               | hope it becomes successful and thrives.
        
             | CharlieDigital wrote:
             | What is a wiki but a set of notes?
        
               | nklmilojevic wrote:
               | Are we discussing a personal wiki or an internal company
               | wiki? There is a significant distinction between the two.
        
         | j45 wrote:
         | The biggest omission in Notion is that it does not have an
         | honest or complete offline-first mode.
         | 
         | Internet connectivity can vary. People still fly and waiting on
         | slow wifi or data is not acceptable. 30% slower internet speeds
         | makes you work 30% slower.
         | 
         | I quite liked notion otherwise. I just think they will always
         | fight this issue for a group of people who would pay and use it
         | for a long time who may have previously outgrown OneNote,
         | Evernote, etc.
        
         | ryanSrich wrote:
         | This is why I love using obsidian. It's just a directory of
         | markdown files on my computer.
        
         | bluescrn wrote:
         | I took a look at it not so long ago, they were pushing AI
         | features rather too aggressively, essentially turning the
         | cursor into an advert for them.
         | 
         | I noped out very rapidly.
        
       | HumblyTossed wrote:
       | Sigh. Can we please stop hijacking existing names???
        
       | fudged71 wrote:
       | Maybe I'm not understanding the directionality of this
       | integration.
       | 
       | I have items in a Notion database that have dates, status,
       | dependencies, notes, etc. which are assigned to me the user (as a
       | Person property using the Assignee type)
       | 
       | I have set up Notion Calendar and connected it to this same
       | workspace.
       | 
       | The Notion calendar is not showing these assigned Tasks.
       | 
       | Is this meant to be used in reverse where you create an event in
       | the calendar and add links to Notion pages? How exactly is that
       | different from just putting links to your Notion docs in an any
       | calendar event description?
       | 
       | And is there any place in Notion to edit events as a database?
        
         | fudged71 wrote:
         | Edit: I found it!
         | 
         | On any(?) database there is now an "Open in Calendar" button on
         | the top right of the database
         | 
         | However, it doesn't filter to just the ones assigned to you.
         | The full database goes into your calendar. And the calendar app
         | doesn't show properties besides the title and datetime.
        
           | Adrig wrote:
           | Try creating a calendar view in your database and filter it
           | with your name or any properties. It works for me.
        
       | nklmilojevic wrote:
       | I don't see the appeal of web-based calendar apps. They should be
       | native and able to work offline. Fantastical is a great example
       | of such an app.
        
         | manmal wrote:
         | Native: (As a native app dev I much prefer native apps, but)
         | 95+% of people don't care
         | 
         | Offline: Doesn't matter unless you're on workation in the
         | hinterlands - even cheap flights usually offer wifi now
         | 
         | I have to use Notion for my current gig and I've never seen the
         | offline page.
        
       | sarreph wrote:
       | I'd love to give it a try, but the permissions list in the auth
       | dialog is crazy. Including: "See and download your organisation's
       | G Suite directory", "permanently delete all the calendars that
       | you can access using Google Calendar", "permanently delete your
       | contacts".
       | 
       | I am reasonably sure they need (maybe _need_ here is too-strong a
       | word) those permissions in order to perform certain operations on
       | my calendar, but it just seems so scary to give another company
       | that level of control over my Google account.
       | 
       | I do wish we had more granular permissions across a lot of
       | services out there (e.g. Google, Slack, GitHub), because I can't
       | be alone in not trying something that looks cool because it has
       | the ability to wipe my account out.
        
         | ryanSrich wrote:
         | It's totally a failure of the platforms. Some of the
         | permissions I've had to request from the Slack API to do the
         | simplest things are insane. Not to mention the "justification"
         | for requesting certain scopes. Like what? You want me to
         | justify a permission that I have no justification for, and I
         | only need it to do this other very unrelated operation.
        
         | philsnow wrote:
         | This is a perennial issue with Oauth2, but it's way better than
         | what we had to live with before (pretty much just handing the
         | third party your login).
         | 
         | I get exactly why apps ask for the moon when they're asking for
         | oauth scopes: to reduce friction. They judge (probably rightly)
         | that if they first ask for a minimal set which accounts for 90%
         | of usage and then later have to ask the user for more
         | permissions later when they want to do a 10% task, that some
         | proportion of users will not "convert" / won't finish granting
         | the extra permission, even if it means they can't do the task
         | they were trying to do.
         | 
         | So, they ask for the superset of all permissions their app
         | currently needs (and some permissions that are still just
         | planned functionality), and hope (again, probably rightly) that
         | users won't really care and will just click through. This
         | creates nightmare issues for infosec teams.
         | 
         | Some sites/apps will ask for the kitchen sink omnibus scope
         | buffet, and then if you click the "oh no thank you, cancel"
         | button on that scopes screen, will actually present you with a
         | reduced set of scopes. They do this without explaining what's
         | happening or why.
         | 
         | Mobile platforms are getting better about allowing very fine-
         | grained access to permissions. At least on ios, apps that want
         | to access your photos can be given access to only a subset of
         | them. You can pick and choose when to provide location data,
         | etc.
         | 
         | I wish there were an Oauth2 proxy service or something, which
         | let you give apps whatever scopes they ask for, but which would
         | then either fail API requests that use scopes that you're not
         | actually okay with, or else give valid but not 100% true API
         | responses.
        
       | konaraddi wrote:
       | Why does the iOS app for Notion Calendar require signing in with
       | a Google account? I'm surprised they don't have an option to sign
       | in with a Notion account.
        
       | darrenBaldwin03 wrote:
       | Sad. Why can't Notion just focus on fixing bugs and polishing
       | existing product features instead of going crazy with stuff
       | absolutely no one asked for?
        
         | alephnan wrote:
         | Venture capital funding
        
         | Adrig wrote:
         | I have to disagree here. Events, reminders, deadlines and
         | calendars are key to any project management. So far, the built-
         | in calendar view wasn't good enough for anything substantial.
         | Having a proper calendar experience could make me switch over
         | for those use cases, and more.
        
         | cloudking wrote:
         | Seems like they are venturing into Google Workspace and Office
         | 365 territory. May be part of a bigger strategy.
        
       | ripply wrote:
       | The example calendar they show makes me anxious and realize that
       | even though I run my life from a calendar, I don't want to
       | micromanage my time to that extent. Even if I became incredibly
       | productive through use of the product, I never want that kind of
       | life.
        
         | jddj wrote:
         | My partner does this, it's completely full every week including
         | scheduled leisure.
         | 
         | I'm lucky if even all of my meetings are in mine.
        
       | jtthe13 wrote:
       | Probably an unpopular opinion but the lack of MS365 support
       | prevents me from considering this seriously as I must combine MS
       | and Google calendars.
        
       | tiffanyh wrote:
       | Is Notion still slow?
       | 
       | I really wanted to love Notion but stopped using it due to how
       | slow it was.
       | 
       | Is that still a problem?
        
         | cybrox wrote:
         | Yes and no.
         | 
         | Performance on my desktop PC with good internet connection is
         | really good. Even working together on something is seamless.
         | 
         | Opening my shopping list on the mobile app that takes like 5s
         | to start and another 5s to load due to bad connection... not so
         | much.
         | 
         | Their no-offline implementation is starting to bug me more and
         | more and I have moved away from it for a lot of things.
         | 
         | I still really like their clipper addon, though. I use that to
         | rapidly store articles I want to read later on desktop and
         | mobile Firefox. Storing is fast and retrieving is fast enough
         | if I have time to read an article anyways.
        
       | tiffanyh wrote:
       | I'm surprised Notion is still using .so when they own .com
       | 
       | ccTLD (.so) are more prone to outages & risk then gTLD (.com)
       | 
       | And for any company, especially SaaS, safeguarding your domain
       | (and uptime) is an exercise is financial de-risking.
        
       | mastazi wrote:
       | I wanted to try this, but the dialog said I need a Google account
       | to use it and I don't have one.
        
       | justinzollars wrote:
       | I'm not sure I need this. I'm pretty satisfied with google
       | calendar.
        
       | zui wrote:
       | I was excited for this until I realized that this seems like just
       | a Google Calendar client ...
       | 
       | I can't even sign in with my own notion's account
        
       | pentagrama wrote:
       | Sidenote: this page is so sluggish to scroll on my $500 midrange
       | phone. Not a good sign for the brand. Or maybe Firefox?
        
         | maccard wrote:
         | I use notion for work, and it's _awfully_ slow.
         | 
         | This site isn't performant on my M1 mac...
        
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