Today’s Guest

Andreas Huttenrauch
Owner, Globi Web Solutions
Founder of GlobiFlow, GlobiMail, ProcFu,
Better Super Menu and PoodleSync

Andrew Cranston
CTO, Gamechangers

Episode Summary

In this episode we welcome back both Andreas Huttenrauch (Globi Web Solutions, founder of GlobiFlowGlobiMailBetter Super Menu and ProcFu) and Andrew Cranston (CTO We Are Gamechangers) to the Podcast.

In excellent episode we dive into the more advanced world of ProcFu – the tool Andreas built to better extend the API capabilities of GlobiFlow and help non-coders do more advanced work. This is a great opportunity to learn more about ProcFu for those who haven’t played around with it, and both Andrew and Andreas give examples of great ways that ProcFu helps their day-to-day Podio lives!

We also dig into a new feature of ProcFu: MiniApps. We look at how mini-apps can be used to completely change your mobile experience of Podio, and can give you simple tools to extend Podio permission control and external user interactions.

For anyone who is serious about making their Podio system better, this episode will give you a great introduction to ProcFu and help you get started.

You can sign up for your free ProcFu account:

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Audio Transcription

Narrator:0:01Get ready for another episode of supercharged with Jordan Samuel Fleming, your weekly dive into the awesome impact workflow and automation you can have on your business when it’s powered by Podio, Join us each week, as we learn from the top Podio partners in the world as we investigate system integrations and add-ons and hear from real business owners who have implemented Podio into their business. Now, join your host, Jordan, Samuel Fleming’s CEO of game changers for this week’s episode.

Jordan: (00:44)
Hey everybody, and welcome to this episode of supercharged! I’m your host Jordan Samuel Fleming, here to talk all about the power of workflow and automation when your business is Powered by Podio. Today’s guests or guests, we’ve got two of them, is Andreas Huttenrauch from, Globi, you will know him as the guy behind GlobiFlow, which is now called something extraordinary from Citrix. I can’t remember Citrix automated workflow, whatever. Uh, can’t remember. They should’ve just called it Podio flow, right? I mean, like, that was not the original name. Yeah, yeah. Right? Like, what, why are we complicating this? Just call it fucking Podio flow. But anyway, so Andreas is here, a master from GlobiFlow, GlobiMail and ProcFu, but we are also joined, uh, I’m delighted to say by, uh, Andrew Cranston who’s the CTO of Gamechangers. Uh, one of my, uh, good friends and colleagues here, uh, he does a tremendous amount of work with ProcFu.

Jordan: (01:42)
So, and I don’t, so, uh, I thought it made more sense if we’re going to be talking about ProcFu, uh, to bring Andrew in. And for those of you who don’t know, and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll have them introduce themselves right now. But, uh, if you are working in Podio and you’re trying to do anything, uh, that’s a bit more advanced, ProcFu is a godsend tool for you. And we’ll dive a bit more into that today. Uh, and also talk about the a mini apps, uh, which is a new feature in ProcFu and what kind of usage that is. So Andreas, why don’t you start just to give a quick reminder who you are and then turn it over to Andrew. To do that as well.

Andreas: (02:20)
Hey, I am Andreas with Globi web solutions. Um, as you said, Jordan, the creator of GlobiFlow, GlobiMail and ProcFu. Um, I like to hack things.

Jordan: (02:31)
He likes to hack things. And Andrew,

Andrew: (02:33)
Hey, this is Andrew. As Jordan said, I’m a CTO of Gamechangers and, um, I must say that I have to bow, I have to genuflect at the feet of Andreas, uh, in terms of, um, uh, all the lovely conversations we’ve had and the fact that I’ve had an opportunity to do a lot of fun, cool testing with him and whatnot. And, uh, I am a ProcFu junkie, like, uh, like most other developers who have come to realize how amazing it is and how much time it can save.

Jordan: (03:03)
Well, chicken wings and beer go a long way. Uh, and then the grease there, the grease for, uh, for development from what I’ve seen so far. Um, so just, uh, cause I, I do want to make sure that this isn’t just a complete geek Fest, so yeah. Well, well yeah, your own fucking podcast then as so, no,

Jordan: (03:29)
you want to make sure that, you know, Procfu is obviously a very advanced tool. Um, but it’s an accessible events. Like it is a, in the same way that I think GlobiFlow brought an accessibility to workflow where, you know, the in, in the, in that it was a WYSIWYG drag and drop if then statement, you know, things that just the normal person could kind of work out. Right. I have no technical background. I was able to pick GlobiFlow flow up and do some pretty cool things back when I was building things in Podio. ProcFu, Whilst it is a step above is still a I in my, my view, it’s still a more accessible way of doing it then in any other way. Can you guys kind of talk a bit about how ProcFu from before we get into the real technical stuff, how do we, you know, people who maybe thinking about this, what should they know about ProcFu? How could they start?

Andreas: (04:30)
Well, ProcFu started. Um, well it started, I started ProcFu through when Citrix took over GlobiFlow. And because GlobiFlow had no API whatsoever, uh, it was kind of difficult to add functionality that I wanted and that my users wanted. So I left the remote post option, which is built into GlobiFlow and ProcFu started as basically just the collection of scripts that you could then call from using the remote post in GlobiFlow and then new features got added from there. And I think I went a little bit too technical at times and I’m bringing it back now with the new mini app feature, which is again, drag and drop trick appointment plate, um, to allow anybody to experience the power of what ProcFu can do.

Jordan: (05:24)
Andrew was like, do you wanna elaborate a bit on what, what is the difference in power that ProcFu brings you over GlobiFlow?

Andrew: (05:31)
Well, I mean the, I dunno, am I allowed to get nerdy here? I’m just trying, I just want to know where my nerd level is. Just seeing as you drew the line when before we started here. Okay, good. So, um, so yeah. So, so I mean the, the remote post option I guess, you know, thinking back on it is really your only it thank God it was there in the first place. I mean thank God it was an option to use cause it is a good kind gateway, um, to, to doing this kind of stuff. And uh, I think that, I think that you’ve done a lot to try and um, to try and give people the opportunity for moving to that next level of understanding for people, people, developers who are actually like, I think I could go and build my own website but there’s so much to do and how can I just ease my way into it and do, do, do things that kind of small bits at a time.

Andrew: (06:26)
Um, and the PF UI class is a good example of that. I think it was a really good, um, opportunity for people to, um, use ProcFu in a way, um, to be able to like, you know, the natural evolution of what is the external URL in GlobiFlow taking shit from Podio and displaying it somewhere where people can see it. People could need to log in to see it or people just need to see it. Um, the whole concept of HTML widget. So I, I mean, I don’t know that you necessarily got too technical. I think it was more about, uh, you know, like cobbling together the end results and, and, and having to be, to reach that higher level of knowledge to really access it fully. Um, but I, you know, there’s lots of stuff in ProcFu that caters to the bottom wrong and that’s what locked me on originally.

Andrew: (07:18)
You know, when you’ve, when you originally brought it out, um, just this concept of being able to do stuff, you know, accessing the Podio API is not easy for somebody to do out of their own hand. You know, the concept of authenticating through an API and who am I and how to manage access tokens. Like all of that shit is easy for me. Yeah, no. Yeah, exactly. And, and you know, like there have been other people in the community who have tried to do this in who is it that did the OAUTH2 to pack a long time ago was Nick. Yes, Nick Simon. Simonson. Right. So that was, that was a good idea. That was like a like how can we solve this thing that GlobiFlow won’t let us do and kind of hack our way through it. Um, and that is, that is really it, you know, once you have, once you ProcFu, who has your access to your/my Podio account, then you know, and, and as it’s come and you know, those of you who are in the ProcFu forum everyday, it’s like, we know the Podio API can do this. Can I do it through GlobiFlow? I mean, I’m sure you would sit down and do everything, literally everything in the documentation, but you know, you’ve done with the majority of things as rolling out. And I think that’s actually been a really smart move because it’s engaged the community a lot. Um, and um, and it’s nice to see what people are actually looking for. You know it drives innovation thinking what people are actually looking for.

Jordan: (08:45)
Let me just one last non-Greek before you to go off on tangents on massive tangents cause I do want to let you to really go off on a tangent now, but we do just as a final nod to the non a non geek, um, what would you say? If I, uh, why if I am someone who’s using Podio and GlobiFlow – Why am I thinking, why is ProcFu a step for me? What is the driver? What is ProcFu bringing me as someone who’s proficient in GlobiFlow? Well, you know, that makes me go, Oh damn, I need this tool. Uh, you know what, what is that? Just so that people can understand? Because if you’re just listening to this for the first time, you may never have heard of ProcFu. Um, and you may, we, it’s probably good to be like, look, if you’re at this stage of GlobiFlow, here’s why you should check ProcFu out. what, what is that guys?

Andreas: (09:40)
Well, there’s a whole bunch of stuff that GlobiFlow can’t do. Um, and that’s again why ProcFucame into existence. For example, um, let’s say you have files on an item in Podio and you want your copy or move those files over to Google drive, like GlobiFlow cannot do this, but ProcFu can. So there’s a lot of functionality that comes by using ProcFu in addition to GlobiFlow.

Andrew: (10:10)
Okay. I think, I think that, um, even more to even more specific than that, how you access ProcFu, like so, so stepping back, okay, so stepping outside of the, of the nerdy zone for a minute, and just stepping back for a minute. So if you’re in GlobiFlow, if you’re a GlobiFlow developer who has spent any time in there and you know you’ve clicked all the buttons, you see all the boxes, you might not necessarily know what everything does, but you, you have a general idea. So this concept of remote post get, Hey, what is that? So in an underlying, the entire internet, you’re using your browser nine times out of ten nine point nine times out of 10 to send requests to servers for information. And those types of requests normally come attached to these verbs. They don’t like the word verb, but I like the word verb.

Andrew: (11:03)
I think they call the methods. I think that’s the official post get. These are terms used for methods, you know in order to tell the server exactly what you’re looking for, every time you go to your browser and go to like you’re making a “GET” request to that server. It’s returning you HTML that your browser can read that. That’s the simple example of what’s happening there. So ProcFu you’re in GlobiFlow When you access ProcFu via remote post, you go to post, you fill in the URL and you fill in all the parameters. And if you have the very cool Chrome extension that I could not live my life without 90% of what you have to fill in gets filled in automatically. That was a beautiful, beautiful piece of work. Um, but what is a remote post? What does post mean?

Andrew: (11:50)
Well, I send a signal to a, an API of sorts, the ProcFu API, which in essence is they can, is a gateway to the Podio API, but not just the Podio API. You’ve got the OAUTH scripts, which allows you to access any OAUTH API or, you know, whatever. So that was formative for me personally as a developer because then I’m like, well, what else can I do with this remote post? Oh, okay, well how does that lead me down the path of using other APIs, APIs that can bring information, you know, trade information back and forth between Podio and other systems. So, um, ProcFu is important because it extends your ability to use GlobiFlow. Yes. But honestly, if you’re a developer who’s chomping at the bit to learn more, it’s just a great way to learn the core basics of the way servers talk to each other and taking that knowledge and applying it to other situations. That’s been, for me anyway.

Jordan: (12:43)
And Andreas, what have you seen, like in terms of how ProcFu is developed, um, and, and where, you know, where the sort of journey is taking you and where it’s going. Um, you know, what, what are, what have been, what has been the biggest, is it basically just things you wanted to do quicker or is it like, what have you seen the, the appetite for that is driving the scripts.

Andrew: (13:08)
beyond the GlobiFlow Can’t do this. Like we’ve obviously evolved well beyond that. So it’s curious to know what’s rolling around in your brain beyond the stuff that we’ve already delivered that’s not directly Podio. GlobiFlow related. You know,

Andreas: (13:23)
that’s a very interesting question. Um, I mean obviously, yes, there’s the GlobiFlow, can’t do this and people wanted, um, sometimes it’s, it’s me having a fantasy of wouldn’t it be cool if… and those are the things that I hack on a weekend and just try out and see what happens. Often it’s a real business case that people come to me with or that I have internally where this really has to happen. If GlobiFlow can’t do it, it’s not just that, wouldn’t it be cool? It’s if we need this. And I think that is the biggest part of the driving of ProcFu

Andrew: (14:02)
Um, it’s no secret that you’ve been interested in mobile lately a lot, you know, throughout the last sort of core, uh, development season. You know, you’ve brought up a lot of situations where you’re asking the community about how they use mobile and how you can expand mobile. So that’s obviously on your mind too.

Andreas: (14:20)
it is. That started off as a personal drive because the, the Podio mobile app is,

Andrew: (14:27)
Oh shit. Yeah, let’s, let’s not make words. Okay. It’s shit.

Andreas: (14:34)
Um, and it’s hard to use and it’s hard to see it. You can’t pinch and zoom in. My eyes are old. It really isn’t a great experience. So in order to make me more productive on the road, I’ve been hammering out different ideas and throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, just to, I dunno, make myself more productive and help other people be more productive on the run as well. We hate waiting till we get back to the office. That shit just piles up forever.

Andrew: (15:05)
Yup. Try trying to navigate a Podio, a window in the Chrome mobile browser and like zooming in and you know, like obviously, you know, time wasted. Right. And I guess mini apps is a big part of that too. Cause you know, it’s not necessarily just external facing, it’s not just building portals for your clients or customers, people who can’t get in Podio. Sometimes it’s about extending your own experience, um, to access data much quickly, much more quickly too.

Andreas: (15:34)
Absolutely. Um, I, the first few apps I built were for my own use, uh, like ProcFu tickets so I can handle tickets on the run easily and effectively. Um, there’s a new feature which is in development right now, which will introduce spreadsheets into mini apps, which would just like the sheet view that super menu offers, it would allow you to create many apps of Podio, views, apps, etc. But a lot better than what the super menu is doing with the select to type dropdowns, look ups or reference fields, contacts, et cetera.

Jordan: (16:13)
So, so explain it. So mini-apps. I mean, I, I do have a sense of what these are, but what, but so the, you know, people understand what they’re about and why they should really get a ProcFu account and try them out. Um, what I’ve seen is it’s basically you’re, you’re able to, you know, select a, uh, an an app, right? A, an app, one of your apps and Podio, and you correct me if I’m wrong, um, select your app, select and then basically create a, a browser based version of, of certain fields of that app, um, that you can access that like kind of like a, uh, a, well, a mini version. Ha. Um, but, but uh, but so that I could have for instance, given that the Podio app is such an convoluted user experience, I could have like here’s my task mini-app and I open it up and there’s a list of all my tasks due today and I can open up, I can interact it with certain fits of things. Not everything but certain bits of things and, and it’s a, it’s a more streamlined experience of interacting on in a mobile environment. Is that a good synopsis?

Andreas: (17:21)
Yes. That’s a very good one. Those are the main use cases that I’ve found so far are one to create a simplified view of data like you just said. Two is to create a simplified, usable interface on mobile. That’s a good experience there. Um, three is to get around some of the built in Podio authentication issues. For example, if you have employees which are not part of a workspace, but you want them to be able interact with certain data in that workspace, you can accomplish that with mini apps. And then the big use case is for non-employee or users like your external customers and clients. Let them interact with their data in Podio

Jordan: (18:05)
and, and so it almost like a mini portal or you know, a, a sort of a way of being able to say, Hey, this is, you know, let me let them, you know, see their stuff, uh, interact with it. Can they make changes and have it push in? Is this,

Andreas: (18:23)
it’s totally up to you. That zero code is required. It’s all configured with point and click. Um, like you said, you choose the fields are what you choose the app, then you choose the fields that you want to make available for each field. You choose whether or not it’s going to be hidden, read only editable whether or not users will be able to create new items. And where you can also choose the authentication mechanism that users will use where they will be authentication via Podio, which means they have to be a Podio user. Um, you can have them authenticate via a dedicated app in Podio so that they can have a username and password or you can send them a link by email or they can authenticate with Google.

Jordan: (19:07)
So let me give you a use case, Andrew. My head, we’ve got like, Oh, so one of the products that Gamechangers does is called BoostPM, which is a property management system, a property management software, which we’re actually now making version 2.0 to really go to the market as a full fledged solution. And one of the things is like inspections, inspections are a pain because there tends to be lots of fields and lots of things happen. And the Podio app means you’d have to go open the Podio app, find the like go get the a, you know, easy. It’s click, click, click, click, click, click, click to find the thing you’re trying to work on. Right. It’s, it’s kind of a ball ache is, is my, in my view, what we could do here then is you could have a mini app for the inspections, um, app, which allows people to just log in.

Jordan: (19:57)
If there are employees by Podio or if they’re a contractor or a third party person who does inspections login via a username and password, open up the inspection they’re doing, interact with it, put in their notes. I presume that, can you do things like add attachments?

Andreas: (20:16)
Yes, you can.

Jordan: (20:17)
Okay. So you could upload photos as well and do that. The same kind of functionality, but instead of having to Dick around with the Podio app, they’ve got a dedicated, Hey man, this is your inspections app. You opened up, here’s the list of inspections, got a complete open one up, finish it, boom. It disappears from your list of ones to do in the next ones you can, you can access. Is that a use case? That makes sense for a Mini-app?

Andreas: (20:40)
It sounds like it. Yes.

Jordan: (20:43)
Hold on. That got me excited. So,

Andrew: (20:48)
so not to put you on the spot or anything, but I’m just, just curious like what, what your, what your thoughts are or what your plans, your future plans. So the mini apps are great. I mean, like I said, it, it really does solve a lot of issues. Um, and, uh, and creates a lot of possibilities. Now there are, there are definitely people out there, clients who, who are um, who are, when it comes to things that are external facing, even even internal facing stuff too, but, but you know, specifically the stuff that their clients might see having a bit more control in terms of how it looks, how things are kind of laid out. Do you see it naturally involving that way too beyond these, these, these screens that we have, you know, the view screen, the edit screen and all of that stuff. Having, having more of like a widgetized area where people can come and drag and drop their own kind of page experiences. Do you have plans to do things like that?

Andreas: (21:42)
I’m pretty sure that’s going to happen down the road. Um, in the meantime with any mini app you can inject your custom HTML into, into the app itself. So you can use Java script and put in whatever you want. I mean, they are fully customizable. It’s just not that easy right now.

Andrew: (22:00)

Jordan: (22:02)
But, but, but I’m again taking it back from a mini app perspective. If, if I’m a a Podio user, if I’ve got to put the organization where I’ve got like a field team who has to fill in. Uh, cause that’s another great example of, of where the Podio app mobile app I think falls down is where we’ve got clients who are a field operational and they’ve got things to fill out on site using the Podio app is just a bal ache. Um, so this would be a good example of Hey, you’re a field operation and you use Podio, check prop for mini apps out because you could be creating a mini app for each type of field form you’ve got to fill in or whatever. And, and then your guys in the field have a very simplified, um, experience to make it much easier for them to fill things in.

Andreas: (22:52)
Absolutely. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m working on the spreadsheet view right now. Um, because even with the mini app, which makes using multiple items much, much easier than the Podio native app, sometimes you really want to be able to edit a handful of items on the same screen at the same time. Even like a simple example, like a time sheet.

Andrew: (23:17)
Yeah, totally. We have lots of examples. We’ve got, we’ve got clients who do targets, entity targets for the whole year, so they open up an entity and then there should be a set of targets that they can all edit at once through. We’ve gotten multiple examples of clients using invoicing and I’m quoting apps with line items and being able to open all of them up and edit them all at once as well. Actually, we just finished a project that kind of solved that issue and we kind of had to, we were, we were batting through the, through the jungle in order to try to build a UI that kind of makes sense to them and work with us. But you know, and that’s, that’s, that’s another example of, of getting, um, experience in the way servers talk to each other, you know, sending information to things like ProcFu code blocks or other places, and then catching downstream through globiFlow web hooks. Um, and there’s a lot of opportunity there as well. So that is good news. I mean, I can see an immediate use case for a multitude of different scenarios to have that baked right into the experience. You know.

Andreas: (24:16)
Cool. Well beta should be out next week. Oh, if not tomorrow.

Andrew: (24:20)
What…why so long?

Andreas: (24:23)
Maybe tomorrow I’m writing a new shit now that I said that. Um,

Jordan: (24:31)
so, but well that, but interesting. I mean the, the, you know, I know how quickly Andres can build things. Um, in terms of, uh, you know, in terms of, uh, the, the mini apps, how difficult is it? Like you said, it’s just drag and drop, uh, set up. Um, you know, I’m, I’m not that, I’m not technical, like I’ve not bothered, I’ve not learned any coding and I’m never going to, it’s not gonna happen. Um, so this is purely just like select some options, make your choices and, and you’re on your way.

Andreas: (25:07)
It’s point and click. And I’m sure that after you’ve made like two or three of them, your average time for creating a new many app will be less than 60 seconds per app. Nice.

Jordan: (25:18)
And, and which level of ProcFu do they need,

Andreas: (25:22)
uh, that will be silver and up because it doesn’t really make sense on a lower plan.

Jordan: (25:26)
No, no, no. Which is the silver is that 25?

Andreas: (25:29)

Andrew: (25:30)
And you kind of need like the same kind of custom code block level, right? That’s where things kind of began. And, and, uh,

Andreas: (25:37)
No you don’t, this is one level before, uh,

Andreas: (25:42)
Oh, you’re right. It is okay.

Jordan: (25:45)
I mean it’s 25 bucks a month. Come on. Like what are we talking about guys?

Andrew: (25:52)
the value that you get back. You know what I mean? Um, it’s a no, I mean, I’ll say it again, like ProcFu specifically was an awakening for me. Um, trying to learn how to access an API and then, you know, the whole OAUTH2 script functions that, uh, that got built in and, uh, and, and all, all of the stuff that helps you, like ProcFu is a tool. And if there’s anybody out there listening who is not super familiar with Podio, or GlobiFlow specifically, but you know, there, there is a lot of value in ProcFu that doesn’t, that, that transcends Podio entirely. But the whole concept of OAuth2 and, and fashioning, uh, connections through APIs, I, I see use in that, in a, in a dedicated server environment, uh, not having to, you know, if you’re a PHP developer, then you have to figure out, you know, how you’re going to maintain those OAUTH2 connections. Um, and it’s not always easy and ProcFu can actually speed that up along to it. There’s a lot of value there for a multitude of different types of developments, not just necessarily Podio.

Andreas: (26:58)
Yeah. And with the OAUTH2 library and ProcFu means basically you can interact with any API in the world that uses OAUTH2

Andrew: (27:07)
Hmm. It’s, um, it’s, it’s definitely something that is, that opens up the ability to integrate GlobiFlow with, like you said, any other API on the market. A lot of different things that bring, you know, added value into Podio being your home base for everything, which is always what we try to endeavor to do.

Jordan: (27:27)
So. So let me, uh, let me again, I’m going to take it away from geek. Uh, even though you’re not really gone [inaudible] you’ve not gone geeky this, this approach. I try, which I appreciate. Um, no, but, but yeah, I want to ask you both the same question and, and hopefully you’ll have different answers. Um, Andreas you start, um, what are the top three things that you use ProcFu, like the top three things that are like the biggest time savers. Ah, yes. Amazing things that you use ProcFu for. Just so people can get these, a bit of breadth of how people are using it. What are your top three to five? And then Andrew, I’m gonna get you to say yours.

Andreas: (28:09)
Ooh, I wasn’t prepared for that question.

Jordan: (28:11)
Andrew, do you want to go first? Come on on basic,

Andreas: (28:14)
One of the main ones is I use the web hook feature a lot to trigger things at five minute increment increments instead of the hour one which will GlobIFlow provides. Um, I use code blocks extensively to parse text. Um, cause with, with HTML widgets, they not just HTML widgets that you trigger from a browser. You can also trigger them by email. So you can send an email to ProcFu and then write code, tear the body apart and figure out what fields you really have there and then send it back to GlobiFlow so that GlobiFlow only gets the fields that you’re interested in. Um, and the third case I guess would be mini apps.

Jordan: (28:59)
Okay, that’s fair. And Andrew, what are your like you gotta have five cause I won’t Accept anything is descripts here and I’m like five, five, five.

Andrew: (29:10)
Well, I listen, I’ll, I’ll answer the question slightly differently or, well, I’ll answer your original question, but I’ll also kind of include my recommendations for scripts that you should really know about or, or things that might entice you to, to bring you on to ProcFu. Um, one of them is, um, and it’s, it’s, it’s my, it’s one of my favorites actually, but it’s kind of like an unsung hero and that is the ability to from anywhere in the system that you can access ProcFu from like from any flow set, a global variable that contains some data in it and then anywhere else in the system later on down the road, grab that same global variable. Um, I have found great use in this. Um, one of the main ways we’re using it right now is every single, we have a lot of automated communications in all of our systems, these automated communications have to go out and they merge data and like the person’s name, you know, things like billing, addresses, whatnot.

Andrew: (30:08)
And we started out doing all of this merging from all over the place. But we have one central location now where that’s responsible for basically accepting a request of sending this email to this person with this template, all of the shit that had needs to be merged in, merge it all together and then send it off to one of our two apps that send out the communication, whether it’s email or SMS. Um, and I, I spend a lot of time thinking about like how do I store the result? And multi text fields don’t work cause they add a lot of their own weird shit, their own HTML and whatnot. And it’s, it’s a perfect fit. It’s just one example. Another example I’ve, I’ve given, uh, as suggestions to people is collecting data as a variable over time. Like JSON for example, collecting related data for reporting purposes.

Andrew: (30:51)
And then at report time report runtime, all you have to do is grab the variable and you’re, you’re, you got your report in an instant. That’s one of my favorites. Um, another one that might entice you, pull, pull you into GlobiFlow or to ProcFu is your email, um, script, which is, which is a simple nice little thing, but being able to supply all of the information that runtime, the SMTP server, the login details, the password, cause it was, as we all know, GlobiFlow really only let you have one address at a time and we’ve found solutions for that on an enterprise level. But for entry level people who would just have like one or two or three addresses and want to manipulate it, um, being able to do that is, um, is really good too. Um, you know, we couldn’t live without the base 64 in code script.

Andrew: (31:37)
Any time you’re working with JSON and GlobiFlow, there’s an opportunity where that script comes in handy, um, escaping extra characters and whatnot. So GlobiFlow, uh, can read it properly. I mean, I have any ProcFu script, I’d probably use that one more than anything, uh, because it, it becomes a necessary, uh, unnecessary part of the world. But I mean for me the top of the list is still the OAUTH scripts. I have to say, you know, uh, QuickBooks and things like Dropbox and uh, and a lot of other APIs that require this OAUTH2 connection. Um, you know, this handshake that has to occur. It’s, it’s impossible to manage it on your own in GlobiFlow if you want to connect to other, I have a whole list of them by the way, and the ProcFu, um, the, the ProcFu user’s workspace and I’ve just been trying to add to them every time I come across one, like what are the URLs trying to add to that list so that people can access that data much more quickly. Um, you know, all of those API’s you would not be able to otherwise access with GlobiFlow. But ProcFu just makes it easy to open that stuff up. Right. That’s definitely what I think is one of the biggest values one could possibly get out of profit.

Jordan: (32:47)
And I think going back to something that Andreas said, and this may be, this isn’t really on your list, is top big, you know, but I’ll bet you one of the things that people find frustrating on is moving files. I’ll bet you like if I’m just a normal Podio user and I’ve got a system built up via the, or being able to move files easily between apps is actually a massive ball ache…

Andrew: (33:15)
comments to do and comments that have files attached and ProcFu has answers to all of that. And that’s another huge…

Jordan: (33:23)
I’ll bet you that’s something that would resonate. That resonates because it would resonate with me because this, I mean, I remember back in the day when I was building systems, having to design a weird work around of, you know, backwards, get this to be able to grab this because you couldn’t attach a file except in the rear. look back to attach it and do this and blah blah blah. And you could, I was, Oh my God, it was a nightmare. Um, and so, and I’ll bet you that moving files around is one of the things that a lot of people, um, find frustrating. So that could, that’s probably a, a really, you know, easy one for people to, that can resonate with a lot of people who aren’t necessarily thinking of like the bigger picture yet, you know, who aren’t necessarily thinking of, Oh my God, I’ll be able to OAUTH2 to this API over here. Um, that requires you to know what OAUTH2 is. Um, and I’ll, and I’ll bet you, I bet you a number of people don’t. Um, so without question, um, Andreas, in terms of ProcFu’s um, you know, in terms of, uh, I guess the, you were saying the beta for X will be out soon. Um, I mean, where do you see, uh, where do you see sort of exciting things like where, where, where are your things that are really exciting? You right now, aside from like mini-apps?

Andrew: (34:43)
Yeah, give away all your secrets please.

Jordan: (34:46)
Just what’s, what’s exciting, what’s exciting? Cause I mean, Hey, like we, you know, this is about wetting people’s appetites. ,

Andreas: (34:56)
well as I said right now it’s many apps and specifically it’s sheets or spreadsheets inside of many apps. Um, most of my ideas I kind of just wake up with them and if they sound cool the next day I’ll try to run with them and see what happens. I’ve been thinking about maybe many apps should be offered offline capable. That would be a super cool feature. Um,

Jordan: (35:18)
yes, I’ll just say that right now because honestly guys, if you can solve that bit, um, because for like it’s always a problem with onsite people. Where is it is this ability to be able to, to do they have to be connected to the website, to the web in order to use some of input and get it into Podio. Um, offline, offline access for that. Um, I think would be something that would excite a number of people cause people are already paying plugins to do that. Like, don’t, don’t forget there’s, I can’t remember which, which plugin it is, but, but the, the, you know, the, that there’s already plugins that people can, can buy, can get, which will allow them to do that. Remember what it’s called? Yeah. Yeah.

various: (36:06)
No, there’s, there’s one out there. Sh I can’t remember what it’s bloody Podio forms magic or something. Magic forms. Anyway, it’s good that we’re not saying the whole thing cause obviously, you know, the, the…

Andrew: (36:20)
the argument is obviously that, um, that the more that you can pull under the same banner, you know, the more you can learn to do with GlobiFlow and cast off these other things that you need, right. The more you can do it with Podio and bring things under the one roof and cast off the things that you don’t need. I think there’s still a lot of benefits there. And, uh, and no doubt mini-apps could have that natural evolution to moving to, to an offline kind of deal. Um, you know, the other thing I wanted to say to that too, as far as wetting people’s appetites and this stuff is still kinda over my head even. Um, cause I haven’t had a lot of time to really dig into it. But the scripts that you have to actually create flows in GlobiFlow. Like I’m not even sure that might even be one of the best kept secrets in the whole community is that you do have the GlobiFlow kind of does have an API of sorts or an API that you hacked. You know, it’s this kind of fake AI that you kind of hacked your way into. Um,

Andreas: (37:13)
Oh it’s, it’s not an API, it’s a headless Chrome instance running on the server with a blind piece of software behind it. Mimicking the same key strokes that you’d be doing on the real website

Andrew: (37:23)
Is that what it is really wow. Oh man, that is wild. That is wild.Do you think GlobiFlow will ever get an API you think they’ll ever make that you ever, you think that will ever happen?

Andreas: (37:38)
I wouldn’t say never, but I think their development list is so long at the moment that, you know, given, given the rate of, of new features, it would take a long time before that happens.

Jordan: (37:49)
Yeah. Pray to God one of these days. Who knows, I’ll take stability, uh, and performance over new features right now. I say the same thing about Podio for people who are always like, you know, and, and I mean Andreas and I were both in Copenhagen together, uh, a month or so ago where we, we talked and we spoke, we had a lot of um, uh, behind NDA discussions with Citrix around things they’re doing, which we won’t go diving into. But I think all of the partners who are in that room would agree that performance and performance and reliability to me trumps everything right now because Podio is so powerful that, okay, you could tweak some things here and add some cool things here and whatever, but performance and is what we need.

Andreas: (38:37)
Absolutely. And from a technical part partner perspective, we don’t want Podio to add too many features because that’s how we make our stuff.

Andrew: (38:47)
Right? Absolutely. Yeah.

Jordan: (38:49)
Yeah. And I, I, without question, and, and I mean, I guess you know that you’re, you’re, you right now you’ve got a, obviously GlobiMail is yours. And I mean, we, we, uh, we use that extensively with our customer base, um, and in fact use it extensively on our own, in our own company. Everybody, you know, that’s how we run our entire email. Um, and then, and then ProcFu obviously is as your two sort of big, uh, it’s right now, I’m not missing any of them am I?

Andreas: (39:19)
a Better Super Menu ane poodle sync. So

Jordan: (39:27)
Is Poodle Sync yours?

Andreas: (39:29)

Jordan: (39:31)
I don’t even know what the hell that is.

Andreas: (39:33)
It’s just a sync adapter, which synchronizes your toodledo to do account with your Podio to do tasks. That’s just a tiny little thing.

Jordan: (39:45)
I didn’t even know that existed, so I don’t, I don’t even know. Um, well, listen, I, I mean, I think the Mini-apps thing is really exciting. I think if you’re, if you’re, you know, the, the two take-aways for me on this are number one, there’s a number, you know, there is, there are easy ways of you getting into ProcFul if you’ve never tried it before. And I would recommend you go over to and, and try it out. Um, number two, the mini-apps thing has enormous potential from a, you know, from a streamlining, uh, you know, a streamlining user experience mobile wise and also, uh, easily bringing external people in to see little bits and bobs, uh, you know, to see data and not, you know, build a massive thing. Um, I think those are two really big takeaways for me. Andrew, anything closing thoughts from either you two guys?

Andrew: (40:43)
Not to sound like a broken record. I mean it just ProcFu is a natural evolutionary step to people who have been working in GlobiFlow for a long time and are looking to learn that next level. Um, it’s a great baby step. Um, because that, because once you, once you reach out into the world of coding, you certainly, you soon learn that there are a hundred different ways to do the same thing and you’ve got a hundred different angry people in forums who will defend their way to the death. Um, and it is a, it’s overwhelming sometimes. Like, how do I do this? What is the right way to do this? Um, and there’s lots of stuff in ProcFu that can help you make those decisions and help you weave your way through. So it’s a, it’s a great learning tool as well as a business, um, extension tool as well.

Jordan: (41:34)
Uh, Andreas any last thoughts from you as the master of ProcFu?

Andreas: (41:40)
Thanks for using my products I look forward to beer and wings, What? In two weeks,

Jordan: (41:47)
two or three weeks? I gotta I gotta work it out. I gotta get down to Toronto. My, my sister just had a new baby, so I want to, uh, I want to have a chance to go see her. So I will be there within the next a few weeks. I’ll let you know. Um, thank you both for coming on today. Uh, anybody listening to this, please do, uh, give us a like, um, uh, give us a, a review on iTunes or whatever platform we’re using it. Uh, give us a rating. It really does help increase it. Uh, and hopefully get the word out about the podcast. I will be putting in the And, Uh, websites into both the podcast description and the a web page. I do encourage everybody to check it out. Um, it is, uh, there are, there are, um, you know, I think the base plan and proc flu is $9 a month.

Andreas: (42:35)
and there’s a free plan as well.

Jordan: (42:37)
with Jordan Dow. You understand how Podio supercharges you.

Narrator: You’ve been listening to a supercharged with Jordan Samuel Fleming. Subscribe today on Itunes, Google play or spotify for your weekly dive into how you can supercharge your business by making it powered by Podio. Be sure to check out our website. where you can learn more and arrange a 30 minute call with Jordan to help you understand how Podio supercharges you.