quotana

Quotana

Uses Asana as a repository for capturing quotes of various types.

Setting up

1. Make a Quotana app
2. Make a configuration file
3. Put the secret in the environment (or config file)
4. Run listener, it will output a refresh token
5. Put the refresh token in the environment (or config file)

Config file

TBD

Quoticorn

The Quoticorn account will examine each quote added. He will also re-examine quotes after they change. If a quote is being changed, he will wait some amount of time for you to stop changing it, and which point he'll assume you're done and examine it. If you want him to examine it right away, you can assign the quote to him.

Quote Format

Quotes come in two flavors: "simple" quotes which have only a single speaker, and "multi-speaker" quotes which may have more than one participant. Each project containing quotes interprets all of its quotes as a specific type.

Simple Quotes

Simple quotes have a simple structure. Here's where each bit of information should go.

Speaker: The full name of the task is used as the name of the speaker.

Content: The full content of the task description is used as the content of the quote, unless it has a date line at the bottom. Quotes are supposed to be short, so pare it down to just the essential part. Newlines and extra whitespace will be collapsed into a single space.

Date: The creation date of the task will be used as the date of the quote, unless a date line is the last line of the task description. A date line is always of the form YYYY-MM-DD to indicate the date, e.g. 2015-02-23. With some work the system could be more flexible in interpreting dates but for now this is the only way it will figure it out correctly.

Example 1

Name: Nina Tomaro

Description:

If I have to recommend one app that has helped me become more productive
and stay organized it is Asana.

Example 2

Name: unknown

Description:

Asana rocks my world! Super user friendly, anyone can learn the
platform easily as it's pretty intuitive. Great work!
2015-01-01

Multi-Speaker Quotes

Multi-speaker quotes are made up of one or more lines plus a bit of contextual information. A line consists of two parts: the speaker and the content. Like writing a screenplay, the format is speaker: content. It is optional to put quotes around the content (unless the line appears in the task name, see below).

Tips:

• Keep the quotes short!
  • More than a few hundred characters and it won't fit on the dashboard and no one will be able to read it.
  • Pare it down to just what's essential (while retaining the impact or humor).
  • For Asanas, prefer usernames instead of full names.
  • Newlines and extra whitespace will be collapsed into a single space.
• Like a screenplay, put one speaking line per line in the notes, e.g. greg: hello!. Don't separate the speaker and their line with newlines.
• If the date is different than the date you created it, add it at the end on its own line in the format YYYY-MM-DD.
• If you have actions in the speaking lines, put them as part of the spoken content, not the speaker name, e.g. greg: "[surprised] huh?" instead of greg [surprised]: "huh?".
• If you want to add some color/context, fit it on a single line on its own. If it's long, put it after a line of just --- so the dashboard will ignore it but it can stay in the task.

Sorry for the rules (we'd like to keep this simple!) but please remember a robot has to understand these to put them on the dashboard nicely, and robot unicorns are dumb. Here are some examples you can look at if you're still scratching your head.

Example 1

Single speaker in notes, dated as of task creation.

Name: phips on aors

Description:

phips: "One night I taught Hannah about AoRs and all of the sudden I
had the laundry AoR and the dirty dishes AoR"

Example 2

Two speakers in notes, explicitly dated.

Name: sri and bella on v-day

Description:

sri: I am going to be oncall for Valentine's day 
bella: Don't break hearts!
2015-01-07

Example 3

One speaker in name, no context

Name: manoj: "So, horse masks, yea or neigh?"

Description:

(empty)

Example 4

One speaker in name with date, context in description

Name: 2015-02-12 bella: "In Russian we have a saying: 'Thank you is too much, but three dollars will do just fine.'"

Description:

on whether peer recognition should be monetary

Example 5

Two speakers in name, no context

Name: Vanessa: "[to stephanie] Do you usually intervene in other people's conversations?" Marcos: "I do."

Description:

(empty)

Format Details

Quotana interprets a multi-speaker quote the following way:

Lines: Will read them from either the task name or the description, whichever appears to contain them. If the name consist of lines then the description will be interpreted as the context. If the description consists of lines then the name will be ignored and serves just to identify the quote in for Asana users.

Date: The creation date of the task will be used as the date of the quote, unless the date is included on its own line in the task description OR at the beginning of the name. A date line is always of the form YYYY-MM-DD, e.g. 2015-02-23. With some work the system could be more flexible in interpreting dates but for now this is the only way it will figure it out correctly.

Context: Multi-speaker quotes have a context, or explanation of what was going on at the time. For proper display, this is usually written as if completing the sentence "This was said _____". If the quote lines are in the task name, then the description is used as context. Otherwise the context is whatever follows the lines of a quote and doesn't look like a speaker line or date line.

Extra Stuff: Sometimes people like to add extra color to the quote, maybe a lengthier context or description of something. This can't be incorporated in a clean display in Quotana, but it can still be included in the task as long as it follows a line containing multiple dashes (---). Everything after that line will be ignored by the system.

How It Works

Quotana is made up of two parts - a web server and a listener.

Web Server

The web server presents a nice UI for rotating through quotes which may be stored in various projects.

To run the server:

gulp build-web
PORT=5678 QUOTANA_CONFIG=/path/to/config.json node lib/web/server.js

Listener

The listener loads quotes from their projects and listens to changes so it can parse and validate them, ensuring they're in a format that the web server can consume for display.

To run the listener:

QUOTANA_CONFIG=/path/to/config.json gulp lib/listener/listener.js