We kick off Season 4 of the Podcast with an extra special group podcast featuring the awesome Podio brains of Pete Cuff, Mike Demunter, Joel Ordesky and of course, our host Jordan.
In this episode the group focuses on some of the key mistakes people make when they set up Podio (or try to grow it) and speak from personal experience about how bad decisions can impact you down the line.
This is a great episode to gather some tips and tricks about Podio and to hear from four key podio partners who have built and supported Podio across the world.
See the Podcast on Youtube
Show Links:
Gamechangers Podio Consultancy: www.wearegamechangers.com
Future Solutions Online: https://futuresolutionsonline.co.uk/
Quivvy Solutions: https://quivvy.com/en
Quivvy Tools: https://quivvytools.com/
Private Guru (Joel Ordesky): https://www.privateguru.net/about
Try out smrtPhone for 30 Days
We kick off Season 4 of the Podcast with an extra special group podcast featuring the awesome Podio brains of Pete Cuff, Mike Demunter, Joel Ordesky and of course, our host Jordan.
In this episode the group focuses on some of the key mistakes people make when they set up Podio (or try to grow it) and speak from personal experience about how bad decisions can impact you down the line.
This is a great episode to gather some tips and tricks about Podio and to hear from four key podio partners who have built and supported Podio across the world.
See the Podcast on Youtube
Show Links:
Gamechangers Podio Consultancy: www.wearegamechangers.com
Future Solutions Online: https://futuresolutionsonline.co.uk/
Quivvy Solutions: https://quivvy.com/en
Quivvy Tools: https://quivvytools.com/
Private Guru (Joel Ordesky): https://www.privateguru.net/about
Try out smrtPhone for 30 Days
Looking to do it for
Jordan Fleming:40 minutes, 45 minutes, like no, let's not like it as long as we stay interesting as well. Like, if you guys are boring, Fox then I'll turn it off. Its job. So let's
Pete Cuff:let's we all know what's in that coffee cup. Joe? Yeah.
Jordan Fleming:He's got the green screen. So that's actually a fucking Bar he in he's just, he's just pretending. So Alright, let's listen. I'm gonna do a little roll call first. Tonight. Very happy to have be joined. I'm saying tonight because we're recording it across a number of time zones. We've got good friends of the podcast coming back for this extra special version of the podcast, one of these group podcasts where we get together and tonight it's about avoiding mistakes. So it's about how we can Look at some of the common mistakes that people use when they are getting started with podio. Or when they're just developing further in podio. Because you make mistakes I've ever I've made mistakes at every point in my journey I and I still do. So from, I guess, west to east, I give this is this is where I show my ignorance of fucking European geography we've got coming over from from the Pacific Time Zone, Joel Joel, say hi. Hi, introduce yourself a little bit to be here. Introduce yourself a little teeny bits.
Unknown:Oh,
Joel Ordesky:I run. I'm a podio. consultant. I have a background in business. I'm a former CEO, general manager who was using podio for a long period of time and then worked my way into being a podio. partner.
Jordan Fleming:Absolutely. And then I think in London, we've got Pete
Pete Cuff:I Hi, I'm Pete, I'm the CEO of Future solutions. Were a UK based podio partner, specialising in organisations that try and make the world a better place.
Jordan Fleming:Absolutely. slightly further towards Russia. We've got Mike.
Mike Demunter:That's just like a one hour time difference with London. But anyway, yeah, Mike, CEO of Quivvy and also Quivvy tools Podio extensions since 2013. helping companies to, to grow and work more efficiently with of course, podio.
Jordan Fleming:Absolutely. And rounding it off, technically, is me. And I am obviously Jordan, and this is my podcast. So I'll cry if I want to and CEO of Gamechanges podio consultancy for the last God knowingly knows how long and also one of the co founders of smrtPhone, the only podio phone system. So I think I saw earlier we're going to we're going to do this where each of you are going to be put on the spot. But I think I saw earlier that Pete you had something prepared like homework.
Pete Cuff:I was as shocked as I sat down. And when when forced to think of problems that you and mistakes that you make along the way, I initially said I've never made a mistake. So I'm pretty sure you don't want me on this podcast. But then somehow a load of mistakes started to come into my mind things that I've I've certainly done a few times, things that as we develop platforms for our clients, we see common mistakes that people make. And one of the you know, one of the strengths of podio is that anyone can build anything in it. But like most things, it takes a while to get good at it. And it takes a while to understand what a mistake is. One of those mistakes, I think that's probably most common is that when you build a podio system and you start automating it, it can become very noisy. And that's not only the visual, sorry, the audio cue of every time you get a notification during a popcorn pop, which is polios sound bite of choice to let you know you've received a notification. But also, every time that you automatically update a field or change a value or create a new item, you can set it to be either a hook enabled event, which means that something else will trigger from it or a silent event. And the silent event means that you don't get one of those notifications, which means stuff can just happen. And what's very common is that people don't tick that box in podio, workflow automation, previously globey flow, and they don't tick that box that says silent. And as a result, they get very, very annoyed very, very quickly. When they've got overnight, they've got hundreds of notifications. And it goes from being this incredible platform where you are automatically updated on everything that you want to know about to this thing that just makes low noise and you can't see the word from the trees.
Jordan Fleming:What do you guys think about that?
Joel Ordesky:Oh, absolutely. You know, managing notifications is critical. It's it's a lot of user. You know, a lot of companies that will give up is because they get flooded with notifications. The sales teams gets angry. I think I when I train I train people how to deal with excessive notifications. And certainly you need to start that at not over programming notifications in flows.
Mike Demunter:Yeah, same here. I if I get a new client on board, I say, yeah, you can you can have like emails, also have notifications. turned it on for like a couple of weeks because you'd have to get to know the system that afterwards most definitely turn it off all of them and just look into the one place your notifications use the silent. That's it. etc, to keep your notifications, not from flooding yourself.
Jordan Fleming:Well, I actually I want to push back on this a little bit because I agree with you in the one hand, but I also want to push back on the under valuing of what notifications can really be. Because I think I agree with you that too much noise is like it's the same to me. It's the same as an email inbox. If your inbox has 5000 unread emails, fuck it, like, Who cares? I mean, you might as well have none. It doesn't matter if 5000 like, what do you do that, which is why my inbox is always at zero. Every day, I make sure my inbox is down to zero. And I either if I have to do something, I create a task for me to do something and then I get that email out of the way. Or if I if I can reply to it like that, I reply to it immediately and forget about it, right, like I clear it out. And the reason I do it is to make sure that what matters to me is always visible what needs to happen. And I think notifications are I agree with you Pete about the the noisiness but I also don't think enough people understand just how powerful having notifications can be to make sure that their workflow bits that matter. Get get to them in the right way. What do you guys think? Yeah.
Pete Cuff:Well, I I completely agree with you. But I think one of the things that that one of the reasons why some people struggle with it, is because there is this comfort that people have with the sanctity of an email inbox, where they know that an email lands into an inbox and it sits there until they decide to do something with it, they can look at it as many times as they want, they can categorise it as many times as they want, they can reply to it and still leave it there with a podio notification because of the way that it's set up. It's designed to be looked at it once decide what you're going to do with it and move on. And for many people, that's quite a hard, jarring experience based on what they how they've worked up until that point. And that kind of touch at once. Make a decision thing move on is very aligned with a productivity methodology that I strongly adopt. I'm sure many other people do called getting things done by David Allen, an awesome book that changed my look changed my life when I read it. But that's very much in the spirit of decide what this you know, a thing comes into your world decide what you're going to do with it. So Jordan, yes, a notification coming into your life, there's someone throwing something into your inbox and saying, Here's something, what are you going to do about it. And if you can clear it down to zero, which is a big part of getting things done methodology as well. You have it David Allen says it's like a mind like water, you can just cope with stuff, and nothing can happen to you and just deal with it and move on. Now, I think there is a slight finer point then about this skill that comes out of then managing notifications, which is that a lot of people don't realise that when you interact with a podio item, you then receive all updates about anything that happens with that podio item forevermore. But there is just one little button you can click up at the top which says, unfollow. And if you unfollow that all that noise goes away for that item. So that can be a really powerful way in you know, in the same way that you might unsubscribe from a mailing list that you don't want to be on. That's the equivalent in podio is if you don't want to hear any updates about this anymore. Click that and unfollow button. all that noise goes away forevermore.
Unknown:Well, it's why you need to sorry, it's what you
Joel Ordesky:need to know when you need to know it not not not I'm see seeing you on everything approach. And that's that makes is a whole world of difference in these systems. But you must manage notifications and and I do say you you need to not repetitively automated the over notify. Sorry, Mike.
Mike Demunter:Yeah, don't worry. I was just going to say like, for me, notifications are really great. Really, I use them all the time. They're great. But that's for me as a consultant. If you're like a client just working everyday, do your work and all the items clicking around, always having to do the unfollow thing is not fully intuitively for a lot of clients. I see you know, each time you click on it, the flow springs up again. You have to unfollow it again. You know, it's kind of a trade off between what is manageable for you. But there's for me, there's a difference between being a consultant and being an end user.
Jordan Fleming:Okay, and what do you think? I mean, my my, I think, again, given this as a kind of a podcast about mistake. I think that one of the things I think people leap to shut off notifications too quickly. In a sense, I while I agree with up you can always go and you can unfollow it or you can. There are times when we make apps silent and control notifications strictly by globey by pw a as well, but actually, there's there's more, there's an easier methodology, notifications build up, I simply go up, and I go to the app once. Because the honest truth is it's the app mentions that matter. Pretty much universally, everything else is either a process is going to do something, it's gonna create a task that can do something for me, or anything else. So I simply just every more every throughout the day, it's a it's more of a training thing than anything else. But I also think there are times when we we devalue, people call it noise. But sometimes having a sort of a faint view of what's going on in your organisation, isn't the worst thing depending on where you are in the level of your organisation. Just seeing that, oh, the team has done this, or that this has happened is not the worst things. And I think sometimes people rush to, to cut the noise out completely to their detriment.
Pete Cuff:I completely agree with that. And but I think part of it is about putting, allowing the user to make their own choices about what they want to follow what they want to receive notifications about. And you know, things like you can choose to follow apps, and therefore receive notifications when other people create items in the app. So for example, one of my other companies, I follow the sales pipeline app there, because I'd want to paraphrase you, Jordan, I want a high level awareness of what that other company is looking to sell, what are we working on at the moment, but I don't need to know the detail. I just want to kind of have a background awareness of it.
Jordan Fleming:But it's a vision of like, I see something's happening. And I'm at least aware of it. And I don't care enough to actually go right now and see it and look into it. But actually, I find certainly as a business owner of a couple business, I run completely in podio. Just just having that go bypass me, I actually think hugely valuable. And I think people they get obsessed with this, they get over obsessed with the notion of noise too quickly. Without getting over the hump of understanding what noise what is actual noise and how to manage it. That's my view. Everyone rushes I
Joel Ordesky:think it's right. But the to the distinction from a business point of view is the sharp knife and the dull knife. If if the notification creates a sharp knife, that's great if it if you're if you're cutting through the paper constantly over and over and over to the point that it's a dull knife. You know, and and I say this in a concept of like, and I think from the mistake is that when developing something as a flow or a set of flows, you know, so for example, if you're doing a flow, and you're going to add in who's the member field mentioned, right? If you're going to do wells, things to that, dimension lamps, because the mentioned will be the notification the person needs. If you do the mention first, then they get the mention and they get all those other changes occurring. And that dulls the knife down and makes that that that peripheral vision now becomes I neither going to look to that side because it's just so much noise. And it also I think is demoralising. And I've said this to staff because I think this is a corollary mistake if you use automation to assign tasks. So massively, that someone wakes up in the morning and their notifications is it 750 and they've beaten it back to 100, when they went to sleep, they're so demoralised at the end of every day, that they don't want to do the work. Now they can't blame their boss. So they're going to blame the system. So again, that just totally goes the knife down. And now you might as well be beating them with a baseball bat instead of cutting with a knife. So that from a business perspective, both of the sides are valuable, but you have to as a developer, keep the knife sharp and make sure that it's really effective and not just noise
Mike Demunter:for me to take away is take your time to trim down your notifications to how exactly you want to have them take a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months. But then in the end if you have streaks, it's just the way you like it. It's a brilliant system.
Jordan Fleming:It's interesting. Pete Did you have more of your of your homework assignment that you have on
Pete Cuff:this boat now?
Unknown:I'll start Well, I'll
Pete Cuff:take let's take a completely different tack, which is that as I think podio beds into an organisation, more and more people are likely to kind of start getting the bug to go this this is interesting. This is exciting. This could work or how do I make this work better for me And I found that it can be quite easy that your system starts to sprawl because multiple people are now building it, multiple people are now changing it. And it can be important relatively early on, I think, to determine and decide and communicate, who is responsible for polio, in your organisation, have a named person have someone that when you're doing, you know, the equivalent of change management of saying, if it's a minor change, you can make it if it's a major change, it's got to be passed by the person who's responsible, or you've got to document it or both. Because otherwise, you just kind of end up with different approaches to things, you might not have the same style, you might not use the same words, you might not capitalise things, etc, etc. So this is a thought by
Jordan Fleming:I think that's a good point, actually, I think, actually, and actually, I'll pick up on one question there. What do you guys think about because I think about this a lot about creating a app style, for your, you know, for the app layout style, and sometimes it's naming conventions. Sometimes it's, we always put these things next to like, underneath these, you know, it's this, the communications that will be followed by the tasks bit by the whatever bit in every app, we do it to make sure that there's familiarity, I think, sometimes a mistake people make is they hodgepodge it a little they, you know, because it potentially beat as you know, you're putting out to your point, multiple people are doing it, they end up having the, you know, a different flow of of information per app, which I think is ends up causing confusion. Whereas as a small amount of standardisation and setting up almost a house style can make a big difference. What What do you think? Yeah,
Mike Demunter:what we do is, when we're building new apps, we start off from where we call it D clone app. It's like an kind of empty app with with all the no structure and fields, which we want to reuse over and over again, for every client. So that's where that's really our starting point. And we have training between the employees that we use the same conventions, stuff like that, try to get the customers along with the convention set, tell them why we do it like this. I've talked to us if they want to build themselves, we're not prohibited them to build themselves. But they're saying just to check with us if that's a good way to do it. Yeah, take it from there.
Joel Ordesky:Yeah, I generally have, I generally say to clients, they need a podio cop, they need a person who is the the point person, I try to very much limit who has admin access, and can even do all of this. Part of the reason is because then I can go to that that person, and or maybe a couple people, that's fine. But there are certain rules of the road that need to be followed, you know, things that prevent other mistakes, no bi directional apps unless not absolutely necessary. App a doesn't refer to b and b refers to a, it's just, it can, there are reasons to do it occasionally. And there are valid reasons to do it occasionally, but as a general rule, it will mess things up. And people's temptation to do that, I like to say, you know, it's like, you have to have a rule that water flows in one direction, okay, water doesn't go up and down the river, it flows in, in a path. And, you know, getting people to think about that. So, you know, you have a lot of issues here of business workflow, code workflow. So you need one person who can see this vision. And so by setting some ground rules and rules of engagement with this podio cop, then we can, you know, prevent a lot of problems down the line, keep some uniformity within that organisation, which may be vastly different than another customer, but at least within their organisation, they, they hit that up. And also, they have to process of asking for changes, not just doing changes within to the cop, so that, you know, I had a client where the owner who was a former developer, wonderful, wonderful person, but one day, he just decided it would be great if all the app titles were in uppercase. Well, the problem is I had a whole bunch of flows that looked to see whether it was a human or the app modifying the record. And every one of those flows broke because I was of course looking for proper case and He then made it all uppercase. So you know, Someone if he'd cleared that with a photocopy, she would have said, No, you can't do that, because they're close, that would be impacted negatively. So you have to have that point person, otherwise it becomes a train wreck.
Pete Cuff:thing also on the this the part about thinking about future planning and future proofing your platform, because there is that there's that fine balance between, for example, if you're a team of 10, having one person who's responsible for polio, that's great. And that makes sense today, because everybody in knows who that one person is. But what happens next year, what happens if that person leaves the organisation, so you think about the succession planning of who's who's shadowing whom, who knows how much who can take over who, you know, I'm always a fan of having redundancy, as in extra capacity in place, for people who are looking after stuff, if you've got two people who can do the same thing, then one of them can be offset, and it can still happen, one of them can leave and it can still happen. So thinking about if you're going to put in someone who's got, you know, all of the keys, or the metaphorical system keys, making sure that there's at least a second copy somewhere else on somebody else's hands to?
Jordan Fleming:Absolutely, the I think, to me, I you know, I think one of my takeaways from this, or one of the things that I think is useful to highlight for anybody who's starting out in podio, particular is, is I agree with you is limiting how many people can play with all the tools, so that you don't create a wild west environment of, of, you know, you're trying to build this tool to help you run your business. And if you if ever, if you just let everyone have added, then the chances are you're going to create absolute chaos. And, and also you're going to you're going to break things, you're going to do this, you're gonna get rid of that. And really, another part of the equation is where is everyone's time meant to be? Are you there to do a job and to fulfil, you know, is podio here to be your full time job? Or is podio here to help you do the thing you're supposed to do? And and I think that there's a real danger sometimes with new people to podio that if they got the sort of mindset, that they'll they'll become the person who wants to keep tinkering until you die, instead of like, I'm building something to do a job. They become sort of self obsessed with podio, if that makes sense, right? I mean, and I think sometimes you need to set rules and limitations on that as well.
Pete Cuff:I was about to say on that four of those people on this call.
Jordan Fleming:Not me anymore, man. I don't build anything anymore. It's great. Which is great. What about Does anybody else have any kind of ease like mistakes? mistakes that they often see? Mike, you I want to?
Mike Demunter:Yeah, just finishing one of the list of Pete again. But making apps templates too long as a one I see happening a lot of the time. And there's almost never a reason to do that to have an app like under fields, it's like, probably just have to rethink it a bit and split it up and get your relationships right. Not too many, not too less. And you will have a far better system. I've seen that there are quite a lot. Yeah. Always persuading people to to do the to do the work to split it up.
Pete Cuff:What Why do you think it is that people create big, long mega reps saying like, they're probably going to control everything? It's going to be great.
Mike Demunter:Probably because a lot of them are used to excel and things like that. to just go Yeah, I'm going to create a new Excel and do everything in the one sheet over there. Because I don't know how formulas work. So let's do it all in one sheet. And yeah, I'm always a little bit horrified when I see, like these kinds of single page, Excel sheets and say there's the first thing I say, yeah, if we're going to use podio, we're going to get rid of the Excel sheet. And we're going to do it in four apps instead of one. Yeah, and if you get the customer along, and why you're deciding to do that, because they kind of can complain like, yeah, it will be more difficult to fill in my data. And it's actually not because one of the things that you're really great at is like entering data into multiple apps at the same time, putting that that's a brilliant design system within podio just to go from app to app without you actually even noticing you're in different apps. So I don't really understand the complaint. Unless people don't know podio. I haven't seen it. Well.
Jordan Fleming:Actually, I want to push back on that again. I'm sorry. And by nature. I want to push back into this very specific reason though, because I agree with you. I'm saying by the way about the power of podio is in the relationships and a lot of times Something you learn, right? But I actually think one of the common mistakes I see is people not aggregating data to single points of reference signal objects. And that is not actually what you've just said, Mike can open yourself up to a massive problem around that, where people, for instance, I see this, we've probably all at some point touched the real estate market in podio. At some point, we probably all with a gun to our head or not had to do it. And one thing that I see a lot is people moving, the natural inclination almost mentally is to be like, I've got a lead that turns into a client, you know, I've got this prospect or seller lead that turns into a property that turns into the deal, you know, and, and you've got this flow, and podio apps make sense. It's linear, and it's flow. And you can use the CWA to move them on and on. But what I see is people pushing the same data from app to app so that instead of Jordan Fleming being an object that can be linked by many things. I have Jordan Fleming, the seller lead, who turns into Jordan Fleming, the seller on the property, who turns into Jordan Fleming, the guy on the offer, who turns into that, and then you have data chaos in
Pete Cuff:Fleming the contact project.
Jordan Fleming:Yeah, I mean, the object right, and that, but I think that is twinned with what you said, Mike, because there's, we've got a there's a balance, balance there that I think people get wrong a lot. And Dayton, to me, has to be aggregated to single business objects, so that you can use the power of relationship fields.
Mike Demunter:Yeah, definitely. We just can't stress it enough that you can just have just one contact step, just one organisation? Yep. It's really crucial to every setup. We do you have to have that because, yeah, we just want one Jordan and the system. Actually, one is enough. So
Pete Cuff:yeah, I think we all agree with that. The thing I would add is that you, one thing that can really help prevent mistakes, is especially if people are getting really interested in podio. And what perhaps it could do for them and their organisation is going and learning a bit about good database design. Because what we're talking about here is normalising a database and making sure that to put it in a different way, you only write one thing in one place, once you don't write it over and over and over again. So you know, taking Dawn's example, if you've got a person who can hold many roles with you, or, or interact with you many times don't write their name over and over again, don't write their email address over and over again, have a place where you capture people their names, their email addresses, their phone numbers, their addresses, fantastic. And link to it, use a relationship fields link to it over and over and over. You know,
Joel Ordesky:I see I see a lot of people tempted, you know, so I normally have like, in real estate, I'll have you know, prospect which are unqualified, the masses leads, which are opportunities. And then it goes into the next app, and I pushed lead as far as I can push it, and then it becomes a property when it's under contract. What I run into with clients sometimes is they go okay, but I need everything that was on the prospect to move to the lead and everything that's on the lead to move to the property. And I'm like, No, you don't, because you can one click pop back to the other place. I said you only need here, what you need every day of the week on this record, because you have the ability to go backwards and get that data to click one click away and get it and maybe the answer is to say okay, you can click through to both the prospect and to the opportunity record from the property so you don't have to daisy chain through you know, the other thing to that point is that from a KPI standpoint, certain other things is that I had a client once go, Why is my Why am I linking this the prospect the original prospect through and I'm like, because when I total everything up, you're gonna say to me, how many prospects did I get? And then how many of them converted the leads and how many of them became properties, I need that data structure. So the first point into the system is that is the the hero points into the system. And therefore everything has to string together back to that for data analysis. And people get a little strange about that. They would rather just say I forgot everything. And I'm going to bring into this one more big mistake and this this comes into this conversation. If I hear one more client Tell me why I want to delete it from prospects. It's I'm gonna say this once. No person ever got fired for deleting or for not deleting records. If delete a record, people get fired for that. Don't Don't go deleting fields, you know, that have been historical fields to hide them. If I had a dime for every time someone called me and said, Oh, we deleted a bunch of fields, we thought we were done with them. But it turns out there was data in them. Unlike roles first rule, don't delete things. Pretty much ever hide them. Be Ripley? Sure. You can live with yourself after deleting this. And, and because believing always leads people to bad regret,
Jordan Fleming:how many rules is to have and you have a flat card? And can we all go right, but I should, I should put that one there to meet that, Thanks, buddy. We'll meet up that we have we need much. I was gonna say, in terms of this data, hierarchy and aggregation. But I think I'm gonna toot my own horn here, because I think that smartphone has enforced that rule for a lot for a lot of people in real estate where they used to go to copy to copy to copy because smartphone only connects to one Contacts app, which has, admittedly, it drives some people nuts for other reasons. But that actually has forced the aggregation to a Contacts app and then moving it you know, this contact is the seller for this property for this offer for this in a way that I think we've been helpful for, I think it's, we've been more helpful than not in that case, I think person.
Pete Cuff:Sorry, another benefit of using relationships and reference fields between between apps is that you get instant insights into that. Or you could just go and look at a contact in your contact app, scroll to the bottom, and see all of the related items that link to this one item. So you can see that this person was a buyer for three properties or seller for five, etc, etc. And it all depends on your, you know, your business, your use case, but the power of relationship fields in podio is insane. And if you aren't using them, that's a big mistake.
Jordan Fleming:And going back to our kind of mistakes, this is almost a hint, not a mistake. But I think one of the things people need to look at immediately when they start working in podio, in terms of pw a is understanding the power of getting the referenced of getting information, because that once you understand, I mean, okay, set aside, you can also just search or do use their put your item IDs to get well blah, blah, blah, but that's more advanced. But once you know that a connects to B, then you and you realise that you can use podio pW a to go through grab data and do something, you suddenly don't need to panic about them. I think a lot of times people think they need the data here to send an email often or to send a signal e signature document or whatever they they kind of go well, if it's not all here, then I'm not going to be able to merge the data because I don't know what to do it. And that power of you know, the the power that globey flow that I'm going to come up with for I don't give a fuck flow has in that ability to go deep into your podio system and grab data that's related to you. Even if it's one, two or three bits away, I think is 100. It is what makes globey flow. absolutely essential tool versus Zapier that can go one level, and then you're done. And you're like, well, I can't go anymore. With globey flow, you've got the ability, so you don't have to worry. And I think it's something that I wish globey flow had better tutorials on to be able to be like, hey, look, guys, if you ain't links to b and b leads to C, don't worry, because all that shit is available to you. I mean, that's
Joel Ordesky:you bring up one of my that mistake, a double level mistake that you just brought up, I totally get what you're saying but that you have to know what you're doing. Because more often than not, when a client calls me and says I have a flow that is not working properly. And and I see the get reference, these mistakes are almost always at the heart of it. The any error, okay, it's they it's forward reverse. And then they chose any instead of choosing the field that any The only time you use that any is when you specifically intend to use that any a good example of that is I have five contact fields in this in this app. And it Yeah, I'm I want to make sure that I'm looking at any of them whether it's the owner, the by the owner, the contact the buyer, or whatever I want that's in true use of any, if you use any in any other contact, it's on text, it's going to it's going to hurt you. And then the other one is and I see this all the time, and I may be overly careful about it is the use of update all reference. Okay? It's Doing like they get reference very selectively, and then maybe doing a for each and filtering down to what you want. But when you say update all references that's bought and you and if you have the earlier mistake of bi directional relationships, all hell breaks loose, all kinds of weirdness will occur. These things at Lowe's is is just Badal, in sooner or later, they're going
Jordan Fleming:to 95% of the time, what they're trying to do is they're trying to go to this one item via this fields, and update the collected items, that's 99% of the time, probably actually, for new people. It's they're actually trying to go find the seller, or find the whatever, and update this thing. And you I don't think many people actually use the the update, they get all that you were talking about Joe, I don't think I think very few people use that in, in the way that it should be used, I think 98% of times in novices, it'll be I wanted to go via this field to get that one thing. And then that's it. I agree with that. I agree with that.
Joel Ordesky:And the system lets them get away with it most of the time, but it it it, it's those times, that then builds a really bad habit of never defining the field. And then when they get into a situation, it's bad. And like I said, that's the same with the update all references, you can update the all the references quicker than doing a get reference and update collected. I it's one less thing you need to put in. But all sudden, you know, the team creates a bi directional link, and you're suddenly updating things and by you know, both directions that you never were before, and now things are going dreadfully wrong.
Jordan Fleming:I agree. I agree 100%. Without any other. You know, this is actually this is actually quite interesting. I don't I don't mean to sound surprised by the three of you. But I think this is quite interesting, because there's a lot of little things that I probably made every one of these mistakes when I was starting out and and and learn the hard way. Are there any other sort of ones? Pete?
Pete Cuff:Yeah, I've got one that kind of dovetails on to the idea that we're talking about the about good database design, and you know, breaking things down to the smallest parts so that you can use them in multiple different places, something we see quite a lot. And there isn't a golden rule on this. So that's what makes this kind of quite hard to understand and explain. But is when it can be appropriate to use a category fields and when it can be appropriate to use a relationship field. So we've talked about relationships fields quite a lot where you link from one app to another. But category fields are kind of quite straightforward. They're you know, pick from this list. Here's a list of options choose one or many. But relationship fields can be used in a very similar way to to category fields. In that again, it's once you link it to an app in the app, you're choosing from a list, it's just that you're choosing from a list of items that are in another app. And some people what we see quite often is that they will say choose to give a good example, let's take say the states in America. So all the the abbreviations of the states or whatever. In fact, no states in America is a perfect example for two reasons. What you will see is that sometimes you want to have the name of the state, sometimes you want to have the abbreviation of the state the two letter two letter abbreviation, if you put that into a Category field, you've got to type that out 50 times 50 options. That's a bit crazy. And then if you say, oh, in this app, I want it to be the abbreviation this app, I want it to be the full name, then you've got to write it out twice, it would be a lot better in that instance, to have one app called united List of United States and then have 50 items in it. One was a one thing.
Jordan Fleming:But you've got a great call, you've got a great point. I think that's actually a really interesting point for a beginner, because I think it's sort of like using a tasks app versus the podio native tasks. In that sense. Category fields are sexy, because they're colourful, and they're quick, and they're quick and dirty, and they're colourful, and you can colour code them in the calendar, which means that's what you should be using them for you should be using them for these things. I use the mainly for like statuses or you know, like that type where a lot of relationship fields, background apps as picklist apps because it also means you can add new picklist items without really changing any flow without really whereas if you start messing doing a Category field, you're you're the game changes quite quickly or you've got to open up the template modify and do this and that. Whereas instead, if you've got a picklist app, anybody can go and add new services or products. And it ties into what you've got. It's more scalable, is that, you know, I think that's a good point.
Pete Cuff:And let's also say that they create the 51st. State tomorrow, then in that 51st state, as you say, you're just going to add one more, and all of the apps that you've linked to saying, go and look for the states in America is all of them are updated, you don't need to go and update five different apps where you will where you want to link and
Jordan Fleming:you can have them going, sorry, Mike, I'll let you come in. And you can also reference that same picklist from other apps. And, and have a unified place as opposed to having to type out another fuckin category fields worth of things every time you do it. Unless you're quoting app, sorry, my,
Mike Demunter:yeah, I have a we have a couple of rules of thumb, which probably most of us have, it's like, if it's really static stuff, you know, like a status, which is new in progress done cancelled, definitely use a Category field. Also, another rule could be if I have more than eight options are most likely I'm going to go for the relationships field because well, podio only has eight colours, for it may seem like a stupid rule, but it's not as stupid as it sounds. I think, you know, it's really like if it's really static, go for the category filter, great for that. calendar options, yes. But as soon as you want something dynamic, which is might change next week, or next month to relationship do do extra little bit of work, and you'll be very happy with it afterwards.
Joel Ordesky:Okay, category fields also have another flaw that people don't think of, especially if they're, they're triggering lows, okay. A lot of people, when they get a large list, like the state drop down, that Pete was talking about will instead of obviously, instead of doing in line, they use the drop down. Now the drop down is prone to user entry mistakes, because you're spinning down, you find the one that your fingers slipped slightly, and you pick the wrong one. So we've had clients who have erroneously triggered on dropdowns of category fields, the wrong thing, whereas in a relationship lookup, you type it in you, you can go. So by saying, like Mike said, I'm going to I'm going to limit myself to eight, you can always do the line across, and you get the benefit of the colour. And it's, it's a nice big target. And you don't have this flow drop down, that can trigger a flow that you never meant to trigger. And that accident through user entry, I actually have had to with clients who won't let go of it, I put a blank, a dashed line above and a dashed line below the critical ones. So that nobody chooses them by mistake, because there's a buffer around them. But I think that's an important thing. The other thing you touched on was that, you know, from a growth perspective, yeah, you may only have 12 of these things today. But you may have 30 of them tomorrow. And if that set of if you have to copy that category, from this to this to this, because you want it for filtration purposes, which is totally legit, then what you run into is someone has to then say, oh, we're going to add one, now I have to go add them in five different apps, I need to go add that, and I have to spell it exactly correctly. In our case, and, and without an extra space at the end, because that's fatal to otherwise when podio tries to make the record ID errors out, it doesn't make the record because he couldn't put that in and it fails. So you know, relationships are just much better that way.
Jordan Fleming:That's a really great point, you will because and that goes back to our aggregation kind of concept of, you know, having a picklist app, which multiple apps can reference means you can't fuck it up. In a sense, you can't wait, you know, if you if you're gonna, if you if you get a link to it from another app, you're using the same picklist you are using the same picklist and you can't accidentally, you know, spell it wrong because you're typing quickly, or have an extra space or any of these things, which I do usually do all the time. Because you'd have to you know, you'd have 10 category options back when I was doing it that way. And and it's very easy to screw that up. It's it's super easy to screw that up. Actually,
Joel Ordesky:I have I have something else to another big mistake that is really done all the time. The top field in every app is the most critical field that is the index. That's the search field. Now what a lot of clients do is they it's the contact name in three different apps. I always put a calculated field at the top of every app and it's it's it's more than just a name. It's a name and a few factors. When you're searching for, so like in real estate, I always like to joke with my real estate clients is you're not selling people, you're not into slavery, right? The guy's like, no, and I'm like you, you buy and sell properties. So I don't care. This is john doe, I care that it's 240, South Linden drive, because that's what you want to buy. And I want john doe's name there, because he's the person we're talking to. So the title has to then be 240, South Linden drive dash, john doe. And then just to make it a little more differential from the next one down the line, I put the status, you know, they're the lead status as well. So now I have this dynamic title. And then when you're referencing it from other places, you get more information, it's easier to spot the right thing. And having that calculated field at the top, not only gives you more clarity, but it also from a flow programming perspective, it gives you a dedicated thing that you can always do, does it exist? What's the item count of title, you can do calculations and relationships to that, because it's never empty. It's it's got a lot of upside gain. But I way too often see, we'll go in and see, especially like someone who doesn't have a contact app, and I'm like, wait, you have 12 records that are john doe, he's like, Well, yeah, john owns 12 properties. And I'm like, Well, how do you tell which one, I have to go into each one until I find the one that I want. I'm like, you know, that's where you have to have it, where it's, you know, property dash the name, it's easy enough to do in JavaScript. To make those, you sometimes have to put a little trick in that says, if the field is null, make it blank, so that you don't end up with the word no, in there. But still, it's it's well worth doing.
Mike Demunter:I would totally agree with you, Joe may be to have like, 100% of the apps we built have an idea as a third field, maybe except for the status bits. I don't like to have, you know, changing information and the ID I want it to be like fixed forever. So I personally wouldn't put
Jordan Fleming:we did see Mike, three guys walk identified only
Unknown:one Shut up.
Pete Cuff:We will, we will do is Mike is is similar is have a different field that isn't the top field. That is the static stuff. So you can always search for this and it will always come up. But things that we kind of tend to use that a top calculation field to go What's the, you know, the critical 10% that we need to know about this record? What does it What does it What's it here for? And how do we find it again, easily. The others, you know, just an ID number isn't I
Mike Demunter:use the relationship badge for that, you know, if you want to have like a maximum of five informational bits, then I use your relationship that should.
Jordan Fleming:The other thing that I think goes hand in hand with that, and this is this is sort of a I think it's unnecessary. An easy top tip to that I put into every single we put into every single app is we always have two hidden fields at the bottom of every app one which has the which we automatically fill on item creation with the podio item Id definitely and one with the URL with the URL field for the item and using the x slash y if people don't realise you can do https colon slash slash podio comm slash x slash y or actually slash slash slash anything slash which I've done for some clients and slash items slash the podio item ID and that will always take you there and having those there and will often put a calculation field in which shows the item ID as a search like here's your search criteria those little things can just make your life in globey flow just and and your life and just general just a lot easier just a tonne tonne easier
Joel Ordesky:by Jordan the HR department would like to see you after
Jordan Fleming:I have I was in a pissy mood once once with I can't remember why but I was doing a system and I and I put like HTTPS podio.com slash fuck slash us slash items slash and so that every URL is but no comm slash fucks i don't i don't think Citrix listens to this podcast so anyway guys um I I can't thank you enough coming on I think this is really fun like to me listening and giving these little tips and listening to you guys experience I think is hugely valuable it's I really also just on a personal level very much enjoy seeing you guys in listening to your your ideas I always learn something every time I speak to you guys I learned something. So I'm sure everybody else when as well. I will make sure that everybody's watching sights are on the podio, the podcast story page and on the description. I do encourage you, if you're listening to this, and you want to reach out to the guys on the podcast, they're all consultants. They're all fantastic podio and other product integrators, so they really know what they're doing. And I just can't thank you guys enough.