Community Packs Quality, Version Control and Gallery Organization

[Kevin_Donath]

Hi Coda Team,

I have some questions that have come up for me in the process of thinking through creating and working with packs:

How will Coda ensure the quality and especially the security of community made packs?
I imagine coda to be used by many business users who work with sensitive data so community made packs that work with APIs and such might be a security concern.
On top of that data integrity might be an important issue for many users. How can we be sure some of these packs’ functions will not endanger this integrity? The more complex the functions become the smaller might be the chance of detecting bugs right away which might elicit unexpected behavior and data changes.
Have you thought about these issues? And what are your plans to minimize them?

What about version control? What if I use a community based pack that the owner is changing? Will I be forced to adopt these changes? Will I be able to?

Also: are you working on a system of finding and rating / commenting on packs & templates in the coda gallery?
Right now it is hard to find what is tried and tested / differentiate the good from the bad other than the “Trending” and “recommended” sections.

Thanks for all you do. I have only recently stumbled on your product and am already a huge fan.

Best wishes
Kevin

[Eric_Koleda]

Hi @Kevin_Donath - Thanks for reaching out with your questions! Replying to them inline below.

How will Coda ensure the quality and especially the security of community made packs?

Currently Packs can be published to the gallery by anyone, without prior review or approval. We reserve the right to take down Packs that violate our terms or service.

When it comes to security of Packs, the limitations of the platform itself are the strongest factor. For example, Packs don’t have elevated permissions in a doc and they are constrained to only making requests to a single domain. You can read more about Pack security in the help center.

We also recently introduced a blue checkmark to Packs in the gallery that have been “Coda Certified”.

Currently only Coda-made Packs can obtain this certification, but we may expand the program in the future to include those made by partners and the community.

What about version control? What if I use a community based pack that the owner is changing? Will I be forced to adopt these changes? Will I be able to?

When a Pack maker makes a new release of their Pack it starts rolling out to all docs that use it. This can take some time for popular Packs, but usually no more than a few hours at the most. Users of the Pack currently don’t have the ability to prevent this update.

Also: are you working on a system of finding and rating / commenting on packs & templates in the coda gallery?

That is something we have discussed, as we think that as more Packs are being created, especially for the same service, it will be necessary for users to make informed decisions. However I wouldn’t expect to see this feature in the short term.

Thanks for all you do. I have only recently stumbled on your product and am already a huge fan.

That’s great to hear! Please continue to ask questions and give us feedback about how the product and these decisions are working for you.