<p><img src="https://cardinal-production-blog.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/card-view.png" alt="Card View Screenshot"></p>
<p>Today we're releasing a huge visual update to the card view. It exposes a lot more information, like sharing settings, at a glance and sets up future updates to the card view, especially relating to custom cards.</p>
<p>At the same time, we're updating how labels work. They're not only manageable from settings, and only by team administrators. That cements their role as a team-wide feature for card organization.</p>
<p>We're excited to show you how things fit together in the next few releases!</p>


Cardinal 0.20 features a refreshed card view.


New Card View

<p><img src="https://cardinal-production-blog.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/comments.png" alt="Comments Screenshot"></p>
<p>Over the past few weeks we've been improving the document commenting system. We launched with a system that worked well but was complex and a rough around the edges. The new system makes commenting much more consistent between desktop and mobile web, and also adds the ability to review resolved comments.</p>
<p>We also did a few more card list updates this past week. If you're on a wider screen you'll notice that the card list now displays as full width.</p>
<p>In general we're incredibly grateful for the feedback we've received during the preview, and can't wait to show you the next few updates we have in store!</p>


Cardinal 0.19 is out with a completely rewritten document comment system.


Comments!

<p>When we talk about how to be successful in the workplace, it doesn't matter if your team is remote or not.</p>
<p>This post started as a post about remote best practices. Then we realized that a lot of the best practices we identified for success in remote work are also applicable to non-remote work.  </p>
<p>Clearly, there are things that are amazing about remote work (<a href="/blog/2021-04-05-remote-work">see our previous post on the pros and cons</a>). But at the end of the day, the key behaviors that make you successful in a remote work environment are the same in-person. </p>
<h2>Mise en Place</h2>
<p>Good cooks will set the stage for the meal they are about to prepare. They make sure they know where everything is, and that as much prep work as possible is done in advance. The tools they will need to prepare the meal are clean and readily accessible. </p>
<p>For work, making sure your desk setup is dialed-in makes a big difference to your productivity. Disorganized and cluttered spaces aren't inspiring. Even if you aren't onboard with that, they do make it harder to find things.  </p>
<p>On-site workplaces that are well designed for focused work are better than spaces full of distractions. We're starting to hear more and more about people moving away from having ping pong tables in the office for that very reason. Indeed, some people are far more productive in a quiet home than a noisy office. The flip side is when you're at home and constantly getting interrupted by family or neighbors.</p>
<p>This might sound silly, but people seem to take office supplies for granted when in the office. Whether in person or remote, is your team prepared to handle someone's laptop dying? There's a lot of thought that goes into making sure the tools that people need are readily available. People who overlook this when working remotely will pay a price in productivity. So you have to make sure the tools you need to get the job done are prepped and accessible. </p>
<h2>Communication Agreements </h2>
<p>Communication is critical to any successful relationship. This is true for both remote and in-person work. When you're working remotely communication can seem harder because of time zones, schedule conflicts, and people being away from their desks. A best practice for ensuring good communication is to set clear deadlines and expectations.  </p>
<p>If you're a manager, make sure you discuss with your directs or colleagues what the expectations are around how people communicate. If there is a deadline, make sure it's clear and accepted. We also strongly recommend developing Communication Agreements. At Cardinal, this is what our company wide communication agreement looks like: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It's important to be clear and communicate with the appropriate level of urgency. When using email be concise. When receiving an email, respond within 1 business day, and at the very least acknowledging receipt, share what the next steps are, and/or drive to resolution. If something is urgent, we call or text by phone at any time. That shows it's urgent. If we send something outside of normal working hours, and it's not an urgent high priority project we've already discussed, we don't expect a response until normal working hours.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It's meant to be concise and does not cover everything that someone acting in bad faith may try to take advantage of. We think this communication agreement would be the same regardless of how we based our team. You'll need to tweak communication agreements for your own circumstances, but hopefully you see how this can be really useful. Communication is critical, and clearly setting expectations and boundaries will improve your relationships and productivity. </p>
<h2>Writing is Important</h2>
<p>There's a lot of Zoom fatigue going on. <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/04/jamie-dimon-fed-up-with-zoom-calls-and-remote-work-says-commuting-to-offices-will-make-a-comeback.html?utm_term=Autofeed&#x26;utm_medium=Social&#x26;utm_content=Main&#x26;utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1620138615">Just recently Jamie Dimon said he's going to cancel all of his Zoom meetings.</a> This is the unfortunate outcome of similar problems that non-remote teams experience: the meeting that could have been an email.</p>
<p>Writing skills are crucial to success in the workplace. It doesn't matter if you are remote or not. Your ability to share ideas, advocate for decisions, tell stories, and document lessons through written communications strengthens your ability to contribute on teams. People complain about colleagues who drop in all the time or want to jump on a call for everything, and rightfully so. We're all super busy. There are certainly circumstances where jumping on a video call makes a ton of sense, but leveraging good written communication can create efficiencies that can be leveraged in evergreen ways. </p>
<p>That is a central tenet of Cardinal. It's a platform where written documentation of core business knowledge can be easily organized, discovered and extended. </p>
<p>The behaviors that make you successful in the workplace are by and large the same whether you are remote or not. You need to create an environment where you can be productive and focus. You need to set clear expectations around how and when you communicate with co-workers. Cultivating your written communication skills will be extremely valuable to your long term success. There's of course nuance in all relationships, but keeping these best practices top of mind will take you a long way. </p>


When we talk about how to be successful in the workplace, it doesn't matter if your team is remote or not.  


There's Nothing Special About Remote Work

<p>This week's work was focused on a smaller update that we still think will be quite helpful. We've added a help menu to the app. You can access it from the card list and from the settings pages, and future updates will get it onto the card views as well.</p>
<p><img src="https://cardinal-production-blog.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/help-menu.png" alt="Help Menu Screenshot"></p>
<p>Within the help menu you can click to get to our help documentation, product changelog, and send us feedback. We also added a nice new feedback form:</p>
<p><img src="https://cardinal-production-blog.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/feedback-modal.png" alt="Feedback Form Screenshot"></p>
<p>We've felt the need to be able to archive cards from the card list for a while, so we also went ahead and added a new overflow menu on the card list that will let you open less used operations. The first and currently only option in the menu is Archive, but there will likely be more in the future.</p>
<p><img src="https://cardinal-production-blog.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/card-overflow-menu-2.png" alt="Card List Overflow Menu Screenshot"></p>
<p>As always, we're excited to hear what you think, so feel free to use that new feedback form from the help menu to send us your thoughts.</p>


Cardinal 0.18 is out with a new help menu and the ability to archive from the card list.


Help Menu and Archive from Card List

<p>Over the past few weeks we've been building a new way to create cards. The new creation flow takes significantly fewer clicks than the old one did.</p>
<p><img src="https://cardinal-production-blog.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/new-create-modal.png" alt="Card Creation Screenshot"></p>
<p>In the process of building the new card creation flow we also made a lot of updates to general design elements in Cardinal. You'll notice that most elements feel a little more square and that we've simplified a few other interactions.</p>
<p>We hope you enjoy the updates!</p>


Cardinal 0.17 is out with a new and improved card creation flow and lots of design updates.


New Creation Flow and General Design Updates

<p>Remote work has been a particularly hot topic since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Large companies like Microsoft have switched to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlypage/2020/10/09/microsoft-will-let-employees-work-from-home-permanently/?sh=62d9e231172a">permanently remote friendly policies</a>, while others like <a href="https://product.costar.com/home/news/shared/190621044?utm_source=newsletter&#x26;utm_medium=email&#x26;utm_campaign=personalized&#x26;utm_content=p1">Amazon have stated their plan is to stay office-centric</a>. Either way, it does appear that we have entered a new era that is generally more open to remote work than previously. Even before the pandemic started, remote work was an often discussed subject that seemed particularly trendy among technology companies. Historically commentators on remote work typically fall into two different, highly opinionated camps. Some are extremely skeptical (and remain so), others are dogmatic champions.</p>
<p>Here at Cardinal, we default to remote friendly. Now that that's clear up front, we do want to dive into a deeper examination of why. We get questions about this all the time based on our decades of experience learned leading remote, hybrid, and in-person teams. Many management teams have been dealing with for the first time, and in the middle of a pandemic. It hasn't been easy, and from recent conversations many people are still struggling.</p>
<p>Before we get started we do want to acknowledge explicitly that for some jobs, and in some industries remote just simply is not possible. Many service industry jobs are like this. You have to be there in person to do the work. There are also some jobs that people imagine one day to be remote friendly, like surgeons, but we're still a way off. Lastly, there are always going to be trade-offs with any decision relating to how teams work, so you will ultimately have to make an assessment for yourself and your team. With that out of the way, let's jump in.</p>
<hr>
<h2>The Positives</h2>
<h3>1. No Commute</h3>
<p>The general assumption is that people who are remote work from home. That's not always the case, but for team members who do work from home there are numerous benefits to avoiding a commute to work. Obviously, there is the time saved both ways getting to and from your office. Depending on your salary, how often you go to the office, and other factors, this can easily add up to thousands of dollars in value. That is before taking into account the value you get out of reallocating that "recaptured" commute time. Do you work out more? Spend more time with family? </p>
<p>In addition, there are other savings beyond time. Car insurance companies like Geico will factor in how often you commute to your insurance costs. You will save money on fuel, parking and maintenance costs. You might not even need a vehicle anymore! Those savings aren't just good for the worker, they are also good for the employer since your worker will have increased income to use. At Cardinal, we strongly believe that a happier team makes for better customer experiences.  </p>
<p>When lots of people work remotely, the strains on our transportation infrastructure are drastically diminished. This was made quite clear at the beginning of the pandemic with mandatory shelter-in-place orders in markets like Seattle and San Francisco. Less cars on the road mean faster commutes for people that don't have an option to work remotely. There are also fewer accidents, which has follow on benefits for law enforcement, healthcare and more. Finally, there is also a clear positive impact on our environment. </p>
<h3>2. Inclusivity</h3>
<p>There are many people who have valuable skills who cannot commit to an in-person, 9 to 5 job. The classic example are parents who have to take care of children and manage their schedules accordingly. There are other situations, though. Think of people who have to be caretakers for sick relatives. That is often a very demanding situation that doesn't allow them to work the conventional, in-office gig. In a similar vein, perhaps someone has a disability, and needs to stay inside the house or close to home (for example, a person with a compromised immune system). By allowing people to work remotely you can open doors to additional segments of the population that otherwise would be excluded from your team. </p>
<p>The operating assumption above is that you are hiring people who already have those life circumstances. That's great, but sometimes people who are already on your team are experience a life changing event. By offering remote friendly work, you are significantly increasing your ability to retain team members who are confronted with such realities in their personal life. Retaining good people is always positive for any company. Reducing complexity at work for people who are navigating change on the personal front is a win-win. </p>
<h3>3. Larger Talent Pool </h3>
<p>Recruiting and retaining talent is a very immediate challenge for most companies. When you require people to work from your office, and live within a commutable distance to said office, that is a limiting factor. The cliché example is a company trying to hire software developers in San Francisco. There is a war for that skill set in SF, and companies are paying through the roof to hire. Convincing people to move to San Francisco is not easy, because the cost of living is so much higher there than most other markets in the country. On the flip side is a company in a "undesirable" geography. We don't need to call any place out, but just imagine a company based in a place you'd never want to live. How hard is it for them to recruit talent if they require people to live there? </p>
<h3>4. Diversity</h3>
<p>At Cardinal we believe diversity is important. Diversity is often focused on race and gender, for understandable reasons. We think cultural diversity is also relevant. Being remote means that you are increasing the likelihood of having some cultural diversity. Anybody who has traveled around the US can likely relate. Life in Boston is different than it is in Austin. Chicago, New Orleans, Tulsa, Los Angeles, New York, Cheyenne, the list goes on and on. Of course there are many things that Americans share in common, but there is also beautiful variety to be found across the country. Having people who work remotely, across the country, means a higher likelihood that those perspectives will be included, and you won't encounter any potential geographic bias by being located in just one place. Of course, global remote teams are potentially even more culturally diverse. </p>
<p>Of course the fact is that different groups of people tend to cluster in different places. Remote work enables those groups to work within your team. Let's say your goal is to have your workforce match the diversity of the United States. Well, depending on what location your company is based, it's going to be exceedingly difficult to make that a reality if you're requiring everyone to work in-person in the office.</p>
<h3>5. Balance</h3>
<p>At Cardinal, our goal with our team members is that they are motivated, diligent, and happy people. We expect people to work hard, and take pride in what we do. That said, we also very much realize that a lot of happiness is driven by pursuits and relationships outside of the work place. We've already discussed how remote work frees up time for team members to do more of what they choose, and as a result lead a more balanced work life. We believe that remote friendly work adds an additional layer of balance to the employer/employee power dynamic. You're saying to your team members, "I'm fine with you picking where you live and work from." That is an inherently different relationship than the butts-in-seat dynamic. </p>
<h3>6. Focus</h3>
<p>Offices can be highly productive work environments, but they can also be very distracting. There are lots of example of start-ups with offices that sound more like a playground than a work environment: videos games, ping pong, and kegs. That aside, there are things that are often distracting in a more "normal" office environment. Let's name a few: colleagues popping in to ask questions, people talking loudly on sales calls, laughter in the conference room or around the water cooler, delivery services dropping stuff off, and phones ringing. Remote work gives people the option to dial in an environment that is optimized for their own productivity. </p>
<h3>7. Safety </h3>
<p>When your workforce is remote, it is much less likely that your team members will get each other sick. There won't be any lost time to people being anxious about whether or not they need to go into the office tomorrow. School closures don't automatically mean your team is going to have to scramble for childcare solutions. You also don't have to worry about an earthquake or other natural or man-made disaster significantly impacting your workforce because your team is more likely to be spread out. </p>
<h3>8. Overheads</h3>
<p>One of the biggest, locked-in fixed costs for companies are their office leases. If you are remote friendly, then you won't need as much office space for your team. You might not even need an office depending on the needs of your business. There isn't just rent savings, there are also savings in equipment, reduced tenancy improvement, utilities, and insurance costs. </p>
<hr>
<h2>The Negatives</h2>
<h3>1. Lack of Face Time </h3>
<p>This is a regular challenge for people who are working remote, feeling isolated from their colleagues. It's tough to get to know people on a personal level when you're not able to eat lunch with them on a daily basis, or grab coffee. For many personality types, particularly those who are more people oriented than task oriented, this lack of face time can be really challenging. There are lots of creative things remote companies can do to try and overcome this, but ultimately face time is face time. </p>
<h3>2. Cost of Compliance </h3>
<p>Having team members in remote locations can materially impact compliance burdens. These costs are often statutory. Every team member you have in a different state usually creates a tax nexus. This means that not only are you potentially making your business subject to sales tax in those jurisdictions, you are also potentially creating nexus for personal property and income tax. Aside from the actual cost of paying tax, there is also the cost of preparing and filing returns. Tax laws are complicated, and vary widely state to state, and country to country. </p>
<p>In addition to tax, there are additional compliance costs to consider. What about data privacy? If you're a company based in Texas and you hire a team member in California, how does that impact your requirements to comply with California privacy laws? What about GDPR? We're not here to provide tax and legal advice, but the chief point here is that by offering remote friendly work, you are potentially opening up additional compliance costs to manage. This might be something you have to get in-front of when you set up any conditions on what type of remote work you are able to offer. </p>
<h3>3. Communication</h3>
<p>Communication is always hard, in any human relationship. Opportunities for miscommunication or misinterpretation increase the further removed you are from face to face. The general rule is that face to face is the most effective, then video, then voice, then long form text, then short form. Working remotely means that team members have to be more diligent about communication and documentation. Working remotely effectively isn't something that comes naturally to people, so companies need to be proactive about training and on-boarding team members on how to communicate effectively in remote environments. This is hard. Providing an amazing solution to these challenges is part of the reason we are creating Cardinal.  </p>
<h3>4. Early Career </h3>
<p>For many people early in their career, learning from colleagues in-person is an important part of development. We learned a lot of valuable skills from mentors in the office, who not only taught us lessons explicitly, but also through observing how they worked. We have seen how it is challenging for a person early on in their career to get the direction and guidance they need in a remote environment. They don't feel as comfortable asking questions. It's not as immediately obvious to colleagues that they need help. Think of your early jobs, assuming it was theoretically possible to do them remotely, would that have been good or bad for you? Think about the less experienced people on your team today? Would being remote be good or bad for them? </p>
<h3>5. Time Zones</h3>
<p>A negative or potentially positive depending on how you look at it is being spread across time zones. That can make collaboration more difficult because you have to wait to hear back from someone on the other side of the planet. Perhaps you have to regularly or occasionally work odd hours to attend a meeting with a colleague. That can be annoying. The flip side is that by having people in different geographies you can provide better support coverage to your customers, and be more responsive to changes in the market.</p>
<hr>
<p>As you can see, there are many things to weigh and manage when it comes to remote work. To be fair, that's also the case when you have an in-person team. Coming up with policies and procedures that make your team the most productive they can be is what matters most at the end of the day. </p>
<p>It is absolutely true that some jobs just don't work remote. That said, many jobs do, and at Cardinal we think that whenever possible, remote friendly work is the way to go. We've built our platform to foster a productive, pleasurable work experience regardless of what setup you choose.</p>


We hear about remote work constantly. We've been building great remote teams for a while and wanted to share some positives and negatives for working remotely.  


Remote Work

<p>Over the past couple of weeks we have been hard at work on some big user interface updates based on everyone's feedback. We still have a lot of work to go on those updates, so we decided to switch gears for a bit and ship a small new feature we've wanted for a while.</p>
<h2>Workspace Switcher</h2>
<p>The Workspace Switcher makes it easier for people with multiple workspaces to access all of them. Each time you sign in we note what teams you know about, and then once you know about more than one team we show a handy workspace switcher in the Account menu:</p>
<img alt="Workspace Switcher" src="https://cardinal-production-blog.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/workspace-switcher.png" />
<h2>Bugfixes</h2>
<p>This release also includes bugfixes for an issue where the delete button for saved searches wasn't hiding and displaying on hover for some browsers, and we made some style changes to make the default state for avatars nicer to look at.</p>


Today we're releasing Cardinal v0.16.1, with the new workspace switcher and some bug fixes.


Workspace Switcher

<p>Saved searches are finally here! We've been refining the saved searches design for a while and were finally ready to finalize it all and ship it!</p>
<h2>Saved Searches</h2>
<p>With the flexibility around defining custom cards and search that Cardinal has, we've always known that saving a search for later would be important. Our first iteration of saved searches was simply making sure that search URLs were consistent so that we could bookmark searches and then re-use those bookmarks with the latest data. We used that technique as we worked toward launch a few weeks ago to manage lists of release issues and other launch details.</p>
<p>We think creating saved searches is about as simple as it could be. Simply refine a feed with the search bar, enter a name in the sidebar, and hit enter to save the search. Saved searches make it so that you can always come back to a perfectly refined list of cards for ongoing work.</p>
<video autoplay loop>
  <source src="https://cardinal-production-blog.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/saved-searches.webm" type="video/webm" />
  <source src="https://cardinal-production-blog.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/saved-searches.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
</video>
<h2>Bugfixes</h2>
<p>This release also includes bugfixes for an issue where the color selector in the label edit modal would lose focus on change, and an issue where attachment file downloads were downloading with our internal ids as the filename, rather than the original filename.</p>


Cardinal v0.16.0 is out, with saved searches and some bug fixes.


Saved Searches

<p>We've been working since the preview launch two weeks ago to set up some UI
improvements and bugfixes, and prepare the way for the upcoming saved searches
release.</p>
<h2>Card List UI Updates</h2>
<p>In preparation for saved searches and some other improvements we have planned,
and to generally improve the card list user interface, we've moved the create
button to a more prominent position and made the account menu more obvious.</p>
<img src="/blog/new-card-list.png" alt="Card List UI Updates Screenshot" width="297" height="596" />
<h2>Data Loading Improvements</h2>
<p>We noticed some small improvements we could make around data loading with the
card list and general session info, so we rolled that out. It should yield
smoother interactions in the app, especially when first logging in or starting
a new session, and they should make our lives easier while building Cardinal.</p>


Cardinal v0.15.0 is out, with an updated card list design and data loading
improvements.


Card List Updates

<p>We published this letter as an open letter about why we were building Cardinal
before our preview launch. We're sharing it here primarily for historical
purposes.</p>
<hr>
<p>Hi there!</p>
<p>As you know, communication and collaboration at work have become harder than
they should be.</p>
<p>First, "software is eating the world," and it feels like it's devouring all of
us in the process. There are apps for everything we can imagine, but we're
forced to dive in and out of each of them every day.</p>
<p>The engineers on your team want to use JIRA, GitHub Issues, or Clubhouse for
project management and issue tracking, but your marketing team prefers Asana.
Your sales team wants to use Salesforce as the CRM, but marketing likes
HubSpot. Your product team would prefer to keep documentation in Drive, but the
developers want to use a GitHub repository. It goes on forever.</p>
<p>Deciding on tools is a political battle, even on the most well-intentioned
teams. We're having these battles over and over.</p>
<p>Secondly, we've got too much information to keep track of. We're creating more
and more information, but the constant firehose contributes a lot of
unnecessary noise and makes it impossible to focus. It is no wonder we are
seeing more anxiety and stress at work.</p>
<p>Slack is great in many ways, but as teams grow the cost of being a good Slack
citizen becomes unbearable. It's practically impossible to do your job and
keep track of all the conversations and channel updates. How do you know
what's important and what can be ignored? If it can be ignored, why are you
even being notified about it? It's overwhelming!</p>
<p>Lastly, there is the black hole. We are being bombarded with information and
tools, but often can't find what we need when we want it. That post mortem
from two years ago? I can't find it in Drive. Those design mockups we made a
few months ago? I'm pretty sure they've just disappeared. Remember when we
talked about the hiring plan in Teams? Well Teams doesn't seem to remember.
I can't find it anywhere. It's easy to put information in, but so hard to
get it back out or keep it organized.</p>
<p>We've had these problems on our minds for years now, and we know there has to
be a better way, so we're building Cardinal.</p>
<p>We want technology to empower teams, not hinder them. We want people to enjoy
interacting with our software, not dread opening it. We're excited to help
teams move more deliberately, communicate better, and ultimately work happier.</p>
<p><strong>- Cardinal</strong></p>


We published this letter as an open letter about why we were building
Cardinal before our preview launch. We're sharing it here primarily for
historical purposes.
