May 5, 2021 • 25 mins
In this week's episode we're delighted to welcome back one of our returning champions: Seth Helgeson from thatapp.io.
Long-time listeners of the podcast will have heard Seth a couple of times before, and Seth is well known in the Podio Partner community as a leading Podio expert. In this episode we focus on one of his core products: Sync. We talk about how Sync is, of course, an amazing tool to provide a real-time backup of all your Podio data (workspaces, apps, items, files, comments etc) but also how some of the more advanced parts of sync really make it an awesome tool to gather up and use your Podio data in other places.
This is a great opportunity to hear from one of the leading Podio partners (and our resident data scientist) and explore a real-time back up system!
Show Links:
Check out Seth's awesome backup tool at thatapp.io
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Watch it on Youtube: https://youtu.be/opdA-4ykwfg
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Narrator (00:00):
Welcome to powered by podio automation is everything.
supercharge your business withpodio. Get ready for another
episode of supercharged withJordan Samuel Fleming, your
weekly dive into the awesomeimpact workflow and automation
you can have on your businesswhen it's powered by podio. Join
(00:22):
us each week as we learn fromthe top podio partners in the
world as we investigate systemintegrations and add ons and
hear from real business ownerswho have implemented podio into
their business. Now, join yourhost Jordan Samuel Fleming, CEO
of Gamechangers for this week'sepisode.
Jordan Fleming (00:44):
Hey, everybody, welcome to this week's episode
of supercharged I'm your host,Jordan, Samuel Fleming, here to
talk all about the power ofworkflow and automation, when
your business is powered bypodio. Now, today's episode,
welcome back, an old friend ofmine, Seth helgeson, CEO of tech
ego, as well as thatapp.io.
Really someone who is a datascientist and really understands
(01:07):
the fundamentals about gooddatabase interaction of good
database creation, management,and about how systems should
work in your business. And wereally focus our conversation on
one of his products sync, whichis a backup tool on the face of
things. It's a way of backing upyour podio organisation, your
(01:29):
files, your comments, yourworkspaces, apps, all of those
things. But it's a lot more thanthat as well. And we dive into a
little bit about how sync isreally a tool that lets you play
your data out and use it. Inother instances, there's a lot
of technical jargon that I can'teven pretend I understand,
around, you know, Mongo,databases, and all these sorts
(01:52):
of things. But at the heart ofit, we focus in on how Of
course, sync is there to backupyour podio to take your data out
and to give you opportunities touse that data. And that's a
really fantastic part of thetool, I do recommend clicking on
the link taking a look at sync,it's a very easy process to log
in and sync via your podio andget everything backed up. And of
(02:16):
course, with his file vaultedition, every single one of
those files that you've gotuploaded into podio is there as
well. Check them out fantasticopportunity, he and I catch up
on a number of things aroundpodio and structures and, and
life itself. As we're bothwoodworkers and fans of
barbecues, it's a great chanceto catch up for he and I, but
(02:38):
also a way of bringing you guysa bit of insight into how his
tool sync can really get yourdata moving inside and outside
of podio. So let's dive rightin. So I will I will get to the
woodworking bits. But you know,but yeah, I mean, what I'm
really keen to really talkabout, I want to understand
(03:03):
about sink, I want to understandabout, obviously, from a podio
layman's point of view, whysinks gonna bring them something
good? Why, you know, I let'sreally kind of dig into this.
So, like, I've just started touse it, I don't know that much
about it. Give us you know,let's let's start the ball
(03:24):
rolling with what the hell issync?
Seth Helgeson (03:29):
Yeah, so while sync, I started out sync with
sync, GS, back in 2013, itstarted a backup for podio. And
it was MySQL, basicallyrebuilding my SQL database for,
for podio. And it was just itwas so laborious with trying to
get all this data to fit intoone system. And with that, we
(03:51):
decided, you know, afteraddress, one revision and
multiple other revisions, Isaid, Okay, we actually need a
big data database, and is backwhen MongoDB actually launched.
And we started looking at thesebig data and went to a couple
conferences, and we said, okay,this is the definitely the way
we need to start storing things.
And so, back then it used to bewhere people could just backup
(04:11):
the data, and then hold it inthe snapshot, right and just
basically download a snapshotonce a day, or once a week or
whatever. And we just take arolling snapshot once a day, or
whatever, they set it as once aday, once a week, once a month.
But then we said you know, wecan actually get this to be
live, given how fast MongoDB canactually take this data. So
(04:34):
let's go ahead and instal webhooks on on every single app and
workspace in org. And, andliterally as they fire as data
comes in, we just store it wejust take the the the JSON
array, we just store all thatdata into the to the MongoDB
database it's so each clientgets a MongoDB database is
(04:55):
completely encrypted andsecured. And then they're able
to backup all their org sort ofbackup and work for about $1 a
day.
Jordan Fleming (05:07):
So so I'm just just because there's a lot of
people who won't understand whatMongoDB is, and I don't want to
get into the technical weedshere. But really from a, you
know, we always hear backupsolutions, you know, like backup
once a day, etc, etc. really oneof the core differentiators that
I see here and one of the thingsthat maybe Mongo allows you to
(05:30):
do, but that's not the, itdoesn't really matter about the
Mongo part, except for the factthat it allows you to do it is
this ability to, in real timebackup data. So a better day I
create a new item in podio. It'sbacked up. Yep. Right. And so
does that also mean, if Iaccidentally delete it? I can
restore it? Or does it do bydeleting it? Do I delete it from
(05:52):
this Mongo database?
Seth Helgeson (05:54):
No, it's, yeah, it's all stored in the database.
And so the second items updatedor even created, sorry, created
or updated. It's, it's in oursystem, as fast as putting a web
hook can return it. So. But oncewe have that, yeah, if you
delete that item, you can comeright into the system and find
(06:16):
it and then restore it. But itwasn't enough for us just to
build a sync, you know, the syncdatabase of just saying, Hey,
here's your stuff. And here's itall backed up, you had to put
the GDPR settings so that youcan actually set how long, you
want to store deleted items frompodio. Right? So it's up to six
months, you can set that in, oryou can just turn it off
completely. And then there'sother settings we wanted as
(06:39):
people actually be able toupdate items instead of sync. So
if they actually go into an itemand update it, it would update
podio. So the ability torestore, update, and then podio.
Without going down occasionally,we started looking at it saying,
why don't we just startextending this to make this of
if podio goes down, you canactually start working from your
(07:00):
backup copy. And you have theweb goes down or something like
that, then you're able to dothat. And with the addition of
our other products like Eva,we're now adding in other
platforms here and be able tostart to data bind or bind your
data together from other systemsactually start backing up your
data from other platforms aswell.
Jordan Fleming (07:18):
And I mean, from your day to day usability point
of view. I mean, I guess there'sthere's a couple things that
people use cases that peoplethink of, you know, the most,
but one of the things that youguys also backup is you backup
the files as well, right. So ifI've got a load of if I've got a
podio infrastructure where thereis quite a lot of file elements
(07:42):
being uploaded, or managed ortracked, all of those are safely
secured as well.
Seth Helgeson (07:49):
Yeah, so every single file, every comment,
every task, everything thatpodio creates and does is 100%
stored inside the system, allyour files are actually
encrypted as they aredownloaded, and stored in an
encrypted database as well. Andat that point, we can restore
(08:10):
files to systems as well. So ourfile Haven is a part of sync
file, haven allows you to backupall that data, but we're
extending that this year, toinclude being able to connect in
your other, let's say, MicrosoftOneDrive, and set up file
formats or, you know, folderformat. So that way, as your
(08:31):
data is being backed up, it willactually create the folder
structures you need, and thenplace those files into the
folders you want. So technicallywon't need to have it stored on
our system in the future. Butdepending on the right plan,
which is really nice, and a lotof admins and business owners,
even tech directors, we are ableto give them database access
(08:53):
with their higher plans, wherethey can then go into that data
in the database. And then theycan start to use it and manage
it more efficiently and actuallybypass the podio API because
they can actually pull datadirectly from the database
instead of pulling it frompodio.
Jordan Fleming (09:09):
So there's a there's a, you know, as I
understand it, and then I'm notthe technical part of anything,
but you know, you've got thesort of what I would classify as
the lower end use case of of it,which is just like, I want to
make sure my podio informationis backed up. Like, I want to
make sure I want to make sureit's safe from a business
(09:32):
continuity point of view. I'vegot to protect myself. And that
is bang. That is real time. It'snot once a day. It's not you
know, it's not like oh, by theway, your backups here, but
you're gonna miss everything.
But that was done after 9am thismorning, or last morning when we
did our
Seth Helgeson (09:51):
Google Sheet.
Yes, a spreadsheet of somewhere.
Jordan Fleming (09:54):
So that's the core of core but at a higher
level, you're saying that thereis technical capability of your
system which gives you more, Iwould almost classes data, more,
more database friendly tools topotentially extend and I know
we've done some bits of it. Butthis where, you know, you were,
(10:16):
we're inside of your system,we're grabbing a JSON feed,
which, which is then giving usall the data we need, and we're
not having to go anywhere elsefor it. Exactly,
Seth Helgeson (10:27):
yeah. And we wanted to extend podio is
functionality quite a bitbetter, the views that you have
stored in podio, they'll beavailable inside of our system
as well. And even taking it alittle bit further that you can
now create filters and pivottables on our data interactions,
when you actually look youthrough your data, you can start
(10:48):
to pivot on that data, createpivot tables, you load your
saved views, and actually beable to create your own saved
views with parameters that arenot available inside of podio,
for example, is not selectedinstead of you know, and a bunch
of others that are reallyfrustrating in there. So in that
respect, it's been, it's been afun journey. You know, we got a
(11:12):
little bit of competitivecompetition from momentum tools
there. But we've we're seeing abig influx of users coming in
that, you know, they bouncedbetween we've lost customers to
them as well. But at the sametime, it's just what customers
are really looking for. Right?
It's it's two good fits outthere, that depends on what they
want to be able to achieve withthe systems.
Jordan Fleming (11:34):
Absolutely. And I mean, there's never, it's
probably a good thing thatthere's, you know, there's an
element of competition outthere. I mean, you want, you
want other systems out there tobe pushing you and, and to make
sure that the market, you know,it shows that there's a market
for, for the product and in abig bad way. Absolutely. Well,
Seth Helgeson (11:54):
yeah, a great product that they can get into
Google Docs, that's in GoogleSheets, that's something that we
just don't do. And so whencustomers do want that, it's,
it's a lot easier for us to say,and said, Oh, we'll build that
for you a lot easier to say,Hey, you know, we recommend, you
know, another system. But But,yeah, it's been, it's been a fun
journey. And we're excited forall the other things that we're
(12:17):
we've got going on, it's, we'vegot Iris, that's a part of this
system. Now that we have all ofyour data inside of your system,
you're able to start tearingthrough, we have audit, which
allows you to audit and seewho's making updates in your
system across the platform,because you're not going to
receive those notificationsinside of podio. Because you're
not subscribed to it. But thenyou can audit transactions, you
(12:40):
can audit who has access toworkspaces, and when they last
received that data. And thebeautiful part of it is when you
do sync that we also subscribeto the push notifications. So
those push notifications are howyour calculation fields are
updated. So one has, yeah,exactly. Or not. And, and in
(13:00):
that sense, what's reallycritical is right now, if you go
and do a backup, you know,chances are your calc fields are
gonna be wrong. And sincethere's so many, are, they're
gonna be out of date. Right?
pretty quick. So when you go todo index backup, it's, again out
of date. So every time an itemis updated, we get the freshest
copy of it. Sure. But if thatitems not updated, but there's
(13:21):
15, calcs, on that page thatupdated, we're catching those
calcs and then putting it backinto the JSON arrays. Really?
Jordan Fleming (13:30):
Yeah. And how does that work with the poor
performance of you know, I mean,I, there's not a day that goes
by where the podio calc fieldsaren't a just a, a joke, in
terms of, of display? Well, Imean, it's sorry, but it's just
like, Oh, my God. I mean,
Seth Helgeson (13:51):
you know, one thing we found actually, is that
the Cal fields will processfaster because they're they
they're storing, I'm actuallyprocessing on a different
server. But the, the API hasnothing to do with the calcs.
But the interface is actuallythe slowest part. So the
calculation fields will actuallycalculate faster than what the
(14:11):
interface will show. And you canthen get when we get a push
notification, it delivers theentire payload so we don't have
to go do a get item. It justsays okay, here's everything was
just updated. And it sends itsends us that payload will get
hammered with just, you know,1000s of calc updates. And we've
(14:32):
had to whittle that down tolet's just batch those per
customer, right? Let's justbatch that because somebody goes
and updates, you know, 50,000items, or let's see what's
globey flow capable of two itemsat once, right?
Unknown (14:46):
Just kidding. mean me.
It's only because
Seth Helgeson (14:54):
I know exactly. I was talking about the past. You
know, it's in the past now. ButWhen those items update, you
know, we'll get our system weget hit pretty, pretty hard. And
then at that point, we just,that's where Mongo DB, and that
big data database allows us tostore massive amounts of
transactions very, very rapidly.
So it's, it's been a really goodsetup, it's really smooth and,
(15:16):
and allowing customers to, youknow, ask for services that that
we haven't even thought of yetand start to build them into the
system. And so big it comes, youknow, it directors and and
higher ups that are looking atdata management, data security,
right, if they ever decide toleave podio, they can literally
just take everything out. Andthen we can push it to another
(15:38):
platform, or people that areleaving Salesforce, we can
connect into Salesforce backeverything up, and then
provision it into into podio.
And to a system that's alreadyexisting, so that sync, it used
to be called backup for podio.
But we've now turned it to seekbecause that's really what we're
Jordan Fleming (15:59):
getting to, it's a more accurate explanation. And
that's, that's, I mean, I, I'mnot gonna pretend I understand
the big database in the Mongobit, but that's I don't, but,
but I do. Well, you know, one ofthe things you've said there is,
I think, really interesting inthat one of the things that I've
been thinking deeper about moredeeper now than ever before,
(16:24):
probably because I've beendesigning more things in
smartphone. And I've beenthinking about other systems.
And I've been, you know, I'vebeen dreaming and kind of
experimenting, is let is wherethings are good, where things
should be allowed to shineversus trying to force something
that doesn't fit. And podio Ithink still, even now, even with
(16:50):
it's not stellar performance attimes, right now, floating up
still does some things as an outof the box solution capability.
Better than any system I know.
Oh, yeah. Um, but it can't doeverything. Yeah. And, and so,
you, given that, when youunderstand that you can think
(17:16):
about podio, as, hey, this iswhat podio is going to allow me
to do. It's, it's going to allowmy team to easily manage a
process and do this is not anautomate this great. That's what
podio kills that. But then allof that data that that
repository of information thatyou may want to use, you got to
pull you ain't good at that bit.
(17:41):
So that's where you've got tofind something else to connect
to. And it's always struck me aswe've started to look more at
your, you know, I mean, fulldisclosure, we have integrated
sync, we have integrated syncinto our platforms now from a
game changers point of view,where we've been, we're
migrating most of our supportcontracts over there, mainly
because of this extendibility.
Yep. It's it's not it's not eventhe Yeah, the minute to minute
(18:05):
second, by semi second backup isgreat. But most people's data is
not that like, like, it's great.
But it's like, yeah, like, it'sso rarely a problem. But it's
that ability to then pivotquickly and grab the data and do
something else with it. That Ithink is really what's what's
(18:26):
very interesting about that, Iknow, you've talked a bit about
Iris, can you like I obviouslysync is sync is like, sync is
the podio of this in that itgets the data in my opinion,
right? It's the hub. But you'vegot these other bits around and
you've got Eva, you've gotprint, you've got the iris and
(18:48):
this, um, from an iris point ofview, what what is that focused
on?
Seth Helgeson (18:54):
So we started out with, with Iris, inside of sync,
because when we started workingwith poty organisations to tear
apart their business processes,we needed to be able to see a
snapshot and a proof of conceptof this is how bad or inner lack
of connectivity your, your, youractual organisation has with
each other. Right? And back inthe back in the day when polio
(19:16):
was just beginning out, youknow, starting out, you know,
people were just building textfields everywhere, right? They
don't even know really what isscrewed number fields, you don't
believe we can do everything intext fields. And there was no
automation systems back then.
And so we started looking atlet's start streamlining these
things. So the way that we've wetake Iris is we'll pull in a
(19:36):
brand new organisation that hascome to us and we'll take a
snapshot basically backup theirentire org. And then we can load
Iris up and we can see theconnectivity of basically how
their brain looks right now Irisis like the brain of your
organisation. And we can see howall of your data connects
together and where it flows.
(20:00):
through the system. So, and whenwe then start to revamp and re
re structure your entireorganisation, you end up with a,
a system that is highlyconnected and fluid and
communicates with all otherpieces of data within your
system. So you are able to seeit as a, an allen interconnected
(20:23):
brain of circuitry of how thesystem works together. So, when
we look at it, and we're doingthis first assessment, we say,
Well, look, you've got fivedifferent workspaces here that
aren't connected to anythingelse. And you're talking about
supply chain issues, let'sactually consult about how we
can bring these processes intogether and start connecting
(20:44):
the data together. So it startedout was really just a consulting
to get an insight really quickfor us, of what can we do to
help this customer be able towork faster, more efficiently?
and Iris? Was that answer?
Jordan Fleming (21:00):
Hmm. I have not really played I've not. I've not
had much of an experiment withit. But I think I I'm, I'm
fascinated to continue to seewhere, you know, where, where
sync continues to allow theexternalisation and manipulation
(21:20):
of data? I mean, I think I thinkthat's gonna be a really
interesting thing. And I agree,you know, when you say, you
know, the change from the theeven just the name the bow, you
know, backup for podio versussync, it does make a great deal
of sense in that, for that.
What, what do you find, I mean,right now, from a sync point of
view, if I'm a lay person, and Ijust kind of, I'm just getting
(21:46):
into this, so chances are, I maynot be able to dive straight
into like, you know, nutsocapabilities, right? I mean, I
may not have that quite thatmuch. But what, what do you see
as the the first good steps froma sync point of view.
Seth Helgeson (22:07):
So the first steps are just going to be
coming in and securing the databy backing up coming in, logging
in and backing up your org, andright now, it's completely free.
Because we're revenge, revampingeverything, it's our prices
gonna be $1 a day for one org.
And, and then let's say a buck50 a day for, you know, files,
(22:27):
to include files for anorganisation. So it's not going
to be horribly cheap, orhorribly expensive, sorry. But
as we get into, you know, justbacking up the data, boom,
that's all you have to do issecure, and login, you know,
once a once a month, or to makesure your your access
credentials, don't, your, yourpodio API credentials don't fail
(22:52):
on us. But all your data isgoing to be backed up non stop,
and you're good to go off theraces. But if you want to get
more into let's say, I want tobuild a custom portal, and I
want to feed data into it, ifyou want to do data science and
data management, or if you wantto do really anything more about
leveraging that data, or gettingaccess to a data lake or us
building a data lake for youfrom you know, 15 or 20
(23:18):
different connected platforms.
That's just taking a phone calland then building your strategy
and say, Okay, let's, let's thisis how we're going to put it
together. And then, you know,setting up the plan and, and
making sure that we're helpingyou get that in place. There's
been a couple companies thathave done it before on on other
systems. They actually wereusing MongoDB themselves, but
(23:41):
they came to us and said, Look,you've got all the connections
to the platforms through Eva,you've got all the ability to
know how can we just have youbuild all this for us? And then,
you know, create theseaggregation pipelines out
systems and answers. Absolutely.
That's what we're really herefor to to help leverage it to
help customers get what theyneed done.
Jordan Fleming (23:59):
And, and how do people obviously we're gonna put
the links into the podcast page,podcast description, how do
people go out and find this? Howdo people get started? You said
it was free to get going rightnow. The price is gonna come
into it. How do people getstarted? Where do they go?
Seth Helgeson (24:15):
That app.io so sync dot dat app.io and pretty
ambiguous name, but it's printdot that up.io eva dot that
app.io so it's just that app.ioand you can authorise with your
podio and you can kick off withprint sync or Eva.
Jordan Fleming (24:39):
Excellent. Well, Seth, thanks so much for coming
on. I'm gonna put the link toall the products down on the
page. So people who have a oneclick to them, although of
course you can just go to thatapp.io io. I do encourage
everyone to take a look at it gohead over and connect your podio
and see what it can do becauseit really is pretty amazing.
(24:59):
Pretty The impressive and youknow, the ability to actually
see some of the data and andmanipulate it in that ways is if
you are more development,developer inclined, I think it
opens up a huge amount ofcapabilities.
Seth Helgeson (25:15):
Yeah, I really do. Thank you so much for having
me. All right. Well,
Jordan Fleming (25:19):
thanks for myself and have a great week.
Narrator (25:23):
You've been listening to supercharged with Jordan
Samuel Fleming. Subscribe todayon iTunes, Google Play, or
Spotify for your weekly diveinto how you can supercharge
your business by making itpowered by podio. Be sure to
check out our website we aregame changers.com where you can
learn more and arrange a 30minute call with Jordan daleview
(25:45):
understand how podiosupercharges you
Welcome to powered by podio automation is everything.
supercharge your business withpodio. Get ready for another
episode of supercharged withJordan Samuel Fleming, your
weekly dive into the awesomeimpact workflow and automation
you can have on your businesswhen it's powered by podio. Join
(00:22):
us each week as we learn fromthe top podio partners in the
world as we investigate systemintegrations and add ons and
hear from real business ownerswho have implemented podio into
their business. Now, join yourhost Jordan Samuel Fleming, CEO
of Gamechangers for this week'sepisode.
Jordan Fleming (00:44):
Hey, everybody, welcome to this week's episode
of supercharged I'm your host,Jordan, Samuel Fleming, here to
talk all about the power ofworkflow and automation, when
your business is powered bypodio. Now, today's episode,
welcome back, an old friend ofmine, Seth helgeson, CEO of tech
ego, as well as thatapp.io.
Really someone who is a datascientist and really understands
(01:07):
the fundamentals about gooddatabase interaction of good
database creation, management,and about how systems should
work in your business. And wereally focus our conversation on
one of his products sync, whichis a backup tool on the face of
things. It's a way of backing upyour podio organisation, your
(01:29):
files, your comments, yourworkspaces, apps, all of those
things. But it's a lot more thanthat as well. And we dive into a
little bit about how sync isreally a tool that lets you play
your data out and use it. Inother instances, there's a lot
of technical jargon that I can'teven pretend I understand,
around, you know, Mongo,databases, and all these sorts
(01:52):
of things. But at the heart ofit, we focus in on how Of
course, sync is there to backupyour podio to take your data out
and to give you opportunities touse that data. And that's a
really fantastic part of thetool, I do recommend clicking on
the link taking a look at sync,it's a very easy process to log
in and sync via your podio andget everything backed up. And of
(02:16):
course, with his file vaultedition, every single one of
those files that you've gotuploaded into podio is there as
well. Check them out fantasticopportunity, he and I catch up
on a number of things aroundpodio and structures and, and
life itself. As we're bothwoodworkers and fans of
barbecues, it's a great chanceto catch up for he and I, but
(02:38):
also a way of bringing you guysa bit of insight into how his
tool sync can really get yourdata moving inside and outside
of podio. So let's dive rightin. So I will I will get to the
woodworking bits. But you know,but yeah, I mean, what I'm
really keen to really talkabout, I want to understand
(03:03):
about sink, I want to understandabout, obviously, from a podio
layman's point of view, whysinks gonna bring them something
good? Why, you know, I let'sreally kind of dig into this.
So, like, I've just started touse it, I don't know that much
about it. Give us you know,let's let's start the ball
(03:24):
rolling with what the hell issync?
Seth Helgeson (03:29):
Yeah, so while sync, I started out sync with
sync, GS, back in 2013, itstarted a backup for podio. And
it was MySQL, basicallyrebuilding my SQL database for,
for podio. And it was just itwas so laborious with trying to
get all this data to fit intoone system. And with that, we
(03:51):
decided, you know, afteraddress, one revision and
multiple other revisions, Isaid, Okay, we actually need a
big data database, and is backwhen MongoDB actually launched.
And we started looking at thesebig data and went to a couple
conferences, and we said, okay,this is the definitely the way
we need to start storing things.
And so, back then it used to bewhere people could just backup
(04:11):
the data, and then hold it inthe snapshot, right and just
basically download a snapshotonce a day, or once a week or
whatever. And we just take arolling snapshot once a day, or
whatever, they set it as once aday, once a week, once a month.
But then we said you know, wecan actually get this to be
live, given how fast MongoDB canactually take this data. So
(04:34):
let's go ahead and instal webhooks on on every single app and
workspace in org. And, andliterally as they fire as data
comes in, we just store it wejust take the the the JSON
array, we just store all thatdata into the to the MongoDB
database it's so each clientgets a MongoDB database is
(04:55):
completely encrypted andsecured. And then they're able
to backup all their org sort ofbackup and work for about $1 a
day.
Jordan Fleming (05:07):
So so I'm just just because there's a lot of
people who won't understand whatMongoDB is, and I don't want to
get into the technical weedshere. But really from a, you
know, we always hear backupsolutions, you know, like backup
once a day, etc, etc. really oneof the core differentiators that
I see here and one of the thingsthat maybe Mongo allows you to
(05:30):
do, but that's not the, itdoesn't really matter about the
Mongo part, except for the factthat it allows you to do it is
this ability to, in real timebackup data. So a better day I
create a new item in podio. It'sbacked up. Yep. Right. And so
does that also mean, if Iaccidentally delete it? I can
restore it? Or does it do bydeleting it? Do I delete it from
(05:52):
this Mongo database?
Seth Helgeson (05:54):
No, it's, yeah, it's all stored in the database.
And so the second items updatedor even created, sorry, created
or updated. It's, it's in oursystem, as fast as putting a web
hook can return it. So. But oncewe have that, yeah, if you
delete that item, you can comeright into the system and find
(06:16):
it and then restore it. But itwasn't enough for us just to
build a sync, you know, the syncdatabase of just saying, Hey,
here's your stuff. And here's itall backed up, you had to put
the GDPR settings so that youcan actually set how long, you
want to store deleted items frompodio. Right? So it's up to six
months, you can set that in, oryou can just turn it off
completely. And then there'sother settings we wanted as
(06:39):
people actually be able toupdate items instead of sync. So
if they actually go into an itemand update it, it would update
podio. So the ability torestore, update, and then podio.
Without going down occasionally,we started looking at it saying,
why don't we just startextending this to make this of
if podio goes down, you canactually start working from your
(07:00):
backup copy. And you have theweb goes down or something like
that, then you're able to dothat. And with the addition of
our other products like Eva,we're now adding in other
platforms here and be able tostart to data bind or bind your
data together from other systemsactually start backing up your
data from other platforms aswell.
Jordan Fleming (07:18):
And I mean, from your day to day usability point
of view. I mean, I guess there'sthere's a couple things that
people use cases that peoplethink of, you know, the most,
but one of the things that youguys also backup is you backup
the files as well, right. So ifI've got a load of if I've got a
podio infrastructure where thereis quite a lot of file elements
(07:42):
being uploaded, or managed ortracked, all of those are safely
secured as well.
Seth Helgeson (07:49):
Yeah, so every single file, every comment,
every task, everything thatpodio creates and does is 100%
stored inside the system, allyour files are actually
encrypted as they aredownloaded, and stored in an
encrypted database as well. Andat that point, we can restore
(08:10):
files to systems as well. So ourfile Haven is a part of sync
file, haven allows you to backupall that data, but we're
extending that this year, toinclude being able to connect in
your other, let's say, MicrosoftOneDrive, and set up file
formats or, you know, folderformat. So that way, as your
(08:31):
data is being backed up, it willactually create the folder
structures you need, and thenplace those files into the
folders you want. So technicallywon't need to have it stored on
our system in the future. Butdepending on the right plan,
which is really nice, and a lotof admins and business owners,
even tech directors, we are ableto give them database access
(08:53):
with their higher plans, wherethey can then go into that data
in the database. And then theycan start to use it and manage
it more efficiently and actuallybypass the podio API because
they can actually pull datadirectly from the database
instead of pulling it frompodio.
Jordan Fleming (09:09):
So there's a there's a, you know, as I
understand it, and then I'm notthe technical part of anything,
but you know, you've got thesort of what I would classify as
the lower end use case of of it,which is just like, I want to
make sure my podio informationis backed up. Like, I want to
make sure I want to make sureit's safe from a business
(09:32):
continuity point of view. I'vegot to protect myself. And that
is bang. That is real time. It'snot once a day. It's not you
know, it's not like oh, by theway, your backups here, but
you're gonna miss everything.
But that was done after 9am thismorning, or last morning when we
did our
Seth Helgeson (09:51):
Google Sheet.
Yes, a spreadsheet of somewhere.
Jordan Fleming (09:54):
So that's the core of core but at a higher
level, you're saying that thereis technical capability of your
system which gives you more, Iwould almost classes data, more,
more database friendly tools topotentially extend and I know
we've done some bits of it. Butthis where, you know, you were,
(10:16):
we're inside of your system,we're grabbing a JSON feed,
which, which is then giving usall the data we need, and we're
not having to go anywhere elsefor it. Exactly,
Seth Helgeson (10:27):
yeah. And we wanted to extend podio is
functionality quite a bitbetter, the views that you have
stored in podio, they'll beavailable inside of our system
as well. And even taking it alittle bit further that you can
now create filters and pivottables on our data interactions,
when you actually look youthrough your data, you can start
(10:48):
to pivot on that data, createpivot tables, you load your
saved views, and actually beable to create your own saved
views with parameters that arenot available inside of podio,
for example, is not selectedinstead of you know, and a bunch
of others that are reallyfrustrating in there. So in that
respect, it's been, it's been afun journey. You know, we got a
(11:12):
little bit of competitivecompetition from momentum tools
there. But we've we're seeing abig influx of users coming in
that, you know, they bouncedbetween we've lost customers to
them as well. But at the sametime, it's just what customers
are really looking for. Right?
It's it's two good fits outthere, that depends on what they
want to be able to achieve withthe systems.
Jordan Fleming (11:34):
Absolutely. And I mean, there's never, it's
probably a good thing thatthere's, you know, there's an
element of competition outthere. I mean, you want, you
want other systems out there tobe pushing you and, and to make
sure that the market, you know,it shows that there's a market
for, for the product and in abig bad way. Absolutely. Well,
Seth Helgeson (11:54):
yeah, a great product that they can get into
Google Docs, that's in GoogleSheets, that's something that we
just don't do. And so whencustomers do want that, it's,
it's a lot easier for us to say,and said, Oh, we'll build that
for you a lot easier to say,Hey, you know, we recommend, you
know, another system. But But,yeah, it's been, it's been a fun
journey. And we're excited forall the other things that we're
(12:17):
we've got going on, it's, we'vegot Iris, that's a part of this
system. Now that we have all ofyour data inside of your system,
you're able to start tearingthrough, we have audit, which
allows you to audit and seewho's making updates in your
system across the platform,because you're not going to
receive those notificationsinside of podio. Because you're
not subscribed to it. But thenyou can audit transactions, you
(12:40):
can audit who has access toworkspaces, and when they last
received that data. And thebeautiful part of it is when you
do sync that we also subscribeto the push notifications. So
those push notifications are howyour calculation fields are
updated. So one has, yeah,exactly. Or not. And, and in
(13:00):
that sense, what's reallycritical is right now, if you go
and do a backup, you know,chances are your calc fields are
gonna be wrong. And sincethere's so many, are, they're
gonna be out of date. Right?
pretty quick. So when you go todo index backup, it's, again out
of date. So every time an itemis updated, we get the freshest
copy of it. Sure. But if thatitems not updated, but there's
(13:21):
15, calcs, on that page thatupdated, we're catching those
calcs and then putting it backinto the JSON arrays. Really?
Jordan Fleming (13:30):
Yeah. And how does that work with the poor
performance of you know, I mean,I, there's not a day that goes
by where the podio calc fieldsaren't a just a, a joke, in
terms of, of display? Well, Imean, it's sorry, but it's just
like, Oh, my God. I mean,
Seth Helgeson (13:51):
you know, one thing we found actually, is that
the Cal fields will processfaster because they're they
they're storing, I'm actuallyprocessing on a different
server. But the, the API hasnothing to do with the calcs.
But the interface is actuallythe slowest part. So the
calculation fields will actuallycalculate faster than what the
(14:11):
interface will show. And you canthen get when we get a push
notification, it delivers theentire payload so we don't have
to go do a get item. It justsays okay, here's everything was
just updated. And it sends itsends us that payload will get
hammered with just, you know,1000s of calc updates. And we've
(14:32):
had to whittle that down tolet's just batch those per
customer, right? Let's justbatch that because somebody goes
and updates, you know, 50,000items, or let's see what's
globey flow capable of two itemsat once, right?
Unknown (14:46):
Just kidding. mean me.
It's only because
Seth Helgeson (14:54):
I know exactly. I was talking about the past. You
know, it's in the past now. ButWhen those items update, you
know, we'll get our system weget hit pretty, pretty hard. And
then at that point, we just,that's where Mongo DB, and that
big data database allows us tostore massive amounts of
transactions very, very rapidly.
So it's, it's been a really goodsetup, it's really smooth and,
(15:16):
and allowing customers to, youknow, ask for services that that
we haven't even thought of yetand start to build them into the
system. And so big it comes, youknow, it directors and and
higher ups that are looking atdata management, data security,
right, if they ever decide toleave podio, they can literally
just take everything out. Andthen we can push it to another
(15:38):
platform, or people that areleaving Salesforce, we can
connect into Salesforce backeverything up, and then
provision it into into podio.
And to a system that's alreadyexisting, so that sync, it used
to be called backup for podio.
But we've now turned it to seekbecause that's really what we're
Jordan Fleming (15:59):
getting to, it's a more accurate explanation. And
that's, that's, I mean, I, I'mnot gonna pretend I understand
the big database in the Mongobit, but that's I don't, but,
but I do. Well, you know, one ofthe things you've said there is,
I think, really interesting inthat one of the things that I've
been thinking deeper about moredeeper now than ever before,
(16:24):
probably because I've beendesigning more things in
smartphone. And I've beenthinking about other systems.
And I've been, you know, I'vebeen dreaming and kind of
experimenting, is let is wherethings are good, where things
should be allowed to shineversus trying to force something
that doesn't fit. And podio Ithink still, even now, even with
(16:50):
it's not stellar performance attimes, right now, floating up
still does some things as an outof the box solution capability.
Better than any system I know.
Oh, yeah. Um, but it can't doeverything. Yeah. And, and so,
you, given that, when youunderstand that you can think
(17:16):
about podio, as, hey, this iswhat podio is going to allow me
to do. It's, it's going to allowmy team to easily manage a
process and do this is not anautomate this great. That's what
podio kills that. But then allof that data that that
repository of information thatyou may want to use, you got to
pull you ain't good at that bit.
(17:41):
So that's where you've got tofind something else to connect
to. And it's always struck me aswe've started to look more at
your, you know, I mean, fulldisclosure, we have integrated
sync, we have integrated syncinto our platforms now from a
game changers point of view,where we've been, we're
migrating most of our supportcontracts over there, mainly
because of this extendibility.
Yep. It's it's not it's not eventhe Yeah, the minute to minute
(18:05):
second, by semi second backup isgreat. But most people's data is
not that like, like, it's great.
But it's like, yeah, like, it'sso rarely a problem. But it's
that ability to then pivotquickly and grab the data and do
something else with it. That Ithink is really what's what's
(18:26):
very interesting about that, Iknow, you've talked a bit about
Iris, can you like I obviouslysync is sync is like, sync is
the podio of this in that itgets the data in my opinion,
right? It's the hub. But you'vegot these other bits around and
you've got Eva, you've gotprint, you've got the iris and
(18:48):
this, um, from an iris point ofview, what what is that focused
on?
Seth Helgeson (18:54):
So we started out with, with Iris, inside of sync,
because when we started workingwith poty organisations to tear
apart their business processes,we needed to be able to see a
snapshot and a proof of conceptof this is how bad or inner lack
of connectivity your, your, youractual organisation has with
each other. Right? And back inthe back in the day when polio
(19:16):
was just beginning out, youknow, starting out, you know,
people were just building textfields everywhere, right? They
don't even know really what isscrewed number fields, you don't
believe we can do everything intext fields. And there was no
automation systems back then.
And so we started looking atlet's start streamlining these
things. So the way that we've wetake Iris is we'll pull in a
(19:36):
brand new organisation that hascome to us and we'll take a
snapshot basically backup theirentire org. And then we can load
Iris up and we can see theconnectivity of basically how
their brain looks right now Irisis like the brain of your
organisation. And we can see howall of your data connects
together and where it flows.
(20:00):
through the system. So, and whenwe then start to revamp and re
re structure your entireorganisation, you end up with a,
a system that is highlyconnected and fluid and
communicates with all otherpieces of data within your
system. So you are able to seeit as a, an allen interconnected
(20:23):
brain of circuitry of how thesystem works together. So, when
we look at it, and we're doingthis first assessment, we say,
Well, look, you've got fivedifferent workspaces here that
aren't connected to anythingelse. And you're talking about
supply chain issues, let'sactually consult about how we
can bring these processes intogether and start connecting
(20:44):
the data together. So it startedout was really just a consulting
to get an insight really quickfor us, of what can we do to
help this customer be able towork faster, more efficiently?
and Iris? Was that answer?
Jordan Fleming (21:00):
Hmm. I have not really played I've not. I've not
had much of an experiment withit. But I think I I'm, I'm
fascinated to continue to seewhere, you know, where, where
sync continues to allow theexternalisation and manipulation
(21:20):
of data? I mean, I think I thinkthat's gonna be a really
interesting thing. And I agree,you know, when you say, you
know, the change from the theeven just the name the bow, you
know, backup for podio versussync, it does make a great deal
of sense in that, for that.
What, what do you find, I mean,right now, from a sync point of
view, if I'm a lay person, and Ijust kind of, I'm just getting
(21:46):
into this, so chances are, I maynot be able to dive straight
into like, you know, nutsocapabilities, right? I mean, I
may not have that quite thatmuch. But what, what do you see
as the the first good steps froma sync point of view.
Seth Helgeson (22:07):
So the first steps are just going to be
coming in and securing the databy backing up coming in, logging
in and backing up your org, andright now, it's completely free.
Because we're revenge, revampingeverything, it's our prices
gonna be $1 a day for one org.
And, and then let's say a buck50 a day for, you know, files,
(22:27):
to include files for anorganisation. So it's not going
to be horribly cheap, orhorribly expensive, sorry. But
as we get into, you know, justbacking up the data, boom,
that's all you have to do issecure, and login, you know,
once a once a month, or to makesure your your access
credentials, don't, your, yourpodio API credentials don't fail
(22:52):
on us. But all your data isgoing to be backed up non stop,
and you're good to go off theraces. But if you want to get
more into let's say, I want tobuild a custom portal, and I
want to feed data into it, ifyou want to do data science and
data management, or if you wantto do really anything more about
leveraging that data, or gettingaccess to a data lake or us
building a data lake for youfrom you know, 15 or 20
(23:18):
different connected platforms.
That's just taking a phone calland then building your strategy
and say, Okay, let's, let's thisis how we're going to put it
together. And then, you know,setting up the plan and, and
making sure that we're helpingyou get that in place. There's
been a couple companies thathave done it before on on other
systems. They actually wereusing MongoDB themselves, but
(23:41):
they came to us and said, Look,you've got all the connections
to the platforms through Eva,you've got all the ability to
know how can we just have youbuild all this for us? And then,
you know, create theseaggregation pipelines out
systems and answers. Absolutely.
That's what we're really herefor to to help leverage it to
help customers get what theyneed done.
Jordan Fleming (23:59):
And, and how do people obviously we're gonna put
the links into the podcast page,podcast description, how do
people go out and find this? Howdo people get started? You said
it was free to get going rightnow. The price is gonna come
into it. How do people getstarted? Where do they go?
Seth Helgeson (24:15):
That app.io so sync dot dat app.io and pretty
ambiguous name, but it's printdot that up.io eva dot that
app.io so it's just that app.ioand you can authorise with your
podio and you can kick off withprint sync or Eva.
Jordan Fleming (24:39):
Excellent. Well, Seth, thanks so much for coming
on. I'm gonna put the link toall the products down on the
page. So people who have a oneclick to them, although of
course you can just go to thatapp.io io. I do encourage
everyone to take a look at it gohead over and connect your podio
and see what it can do becauseit really is pretty amazing.
(24:59):
Pretty The impressive and youknow, the ability to actually
see some of the data and andmanipulate it in that ways is if
you are more development,developer inclined, I think it
opens up a huge amount ofcapabilities.
Seth Helgeson (25:15):
Yeah, I really do. Thank you so much for having
me. All right. Well,
Jordan Fleming (25:19):
thanks for myself and have a great week.
Narrator (25:23):
You've been listening to supercharged with Jordan
Samuel Fleming. Subscribe todayon iTunes, Google Play, or
Spotify for your weekly diveinto how you can supercharge
your business by making itpowered by podio. Be sure to
check out our website we aregame changers.com where you can
learn more and arrange a 30minute call with Jordan daleview
(25:45):
understand how podiosupercharges you
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