I’m interested to see Fluid come to fruition, but if it’s like everything else Microsoft has tried to duplicate, it will be inferior to Coda and very limited.
History of Microsoft from my point of view.
They purchased Foxpro – the leading database program of it’s time and…KILLED IT why? To force people to use Access which is very slow and cumbersome compared to Foxpro and it’s Rushmore technology.
They purchased some To Do list I forget which one. Killed it to in order to push Microsoft To Do which STILL doesn’t have the capaibilities that the product they purchased had.
They decided to compete with Lotus Notes by developing Sharepoint which when it started was touted as a competitor to Lotus Notes. It STILL doesn’t compete with Notes and it’s STILL cumbersome, difficult, slow and ugly. You cannot easily link one item in one Sharepoint list to another item in another Sharepoint list. A very simple and very basic thing and yet they just now said it’s available but it’s still very limited.
They came out with their development app thing. I forget what it’s called. It’s ugly, cumbersome and SLOW.
They created Microsoft Flow, changed the name. Half my flows still fail for no reason.
Let’s not even talk about their “support”. I have a paid O365 education subscription and half the time I get people who cannot resolve simple issues. Now, they will dog me incessantly never responding properly. Example: Their form says how do you want to be contacted? Phone, email, etc. I choose EMAIL and my phone rings at 3 am in the morning with someone barely speaking English wanting to resolve my issue. I said EMAIL and I put in my time zone as well. Why would anyone call at 3 am? I will credit their Sharepoint customer help desk people. They have stuck with me and worked through some issues even at times offering some helpful solutions but for most of the other support issues it’s a lot of excuses. I still have a question about Windows 11 and something not working how Microsoft says it should. Since the issue is between two different Microsoft products all I get is one group blaming the other group and no one offering any solutions.
Back to Microsoft Flow or now as it’s called Power Automate. It works ok but it’s got some quirks. Dates are horrendous in it. If you’re working with two different systems writing flows one system uses one type of date and another system does it differently and converting those dates to get them to work in the system you’re putting data into is often a nightmare. There’s very little for documentation on Power Automate. Most of it is just trial and error and lots of google searching for other people who suffered the same problems you did. Despite having a paid plan Microsoft does very little to assist when things don’t work.
Now…compare that to Coda! Coda works. It’s constantly improving. It’s not old stuff they are trying to rebrand or reskin (Windows 11…really? A serious update? Looks like a new skin to me.)
Coda support is AMAZING! They are quick to respond, never make excuses. If they can’t get something to work I would be surprised. I’ve had issues with something that worked suddenly not working and they’ve always quickly found something to fix it.
Everyone I’ve ever interacted with at Coda makes me feel like they truly care about me and they aren’t just trying to empty the queue.
Coda support has even offered formulas to help me get something working that wasn’t working.
Their training courses are fantastic. Their documentation is great.
Coda is adding more and more ability to work with more and more systems. True they don’t work with Microsoft products but I expect that will happen one day. But their interface with Google is pretty well done. I’ve got so many other things that won’t play well with Microsoft so I already keep my calendar synced from Google to Microsoft so I just let Coda interact with Google and let my backend process sync MS to G.
So…I am curious to see what they come up with, but I’m truly expecting it to be extremely lacking in so many ways and seriously inferior to what Coda has to offer.
Now, Notion was a good contender but they just didn’t get their tables working as well and they don’t seem to have all the packs that Coda offers. If Microsoft would buy Notion then tweak it where it’s lacking, they could seriously compete with Coda. But if Microsoft did choose that route then I expect they’d buy it, kill it and try to build something inferior.
Now, if they make their product as a better interface for Sharepoint I could see some usability in it because Sharepoint is awful to work with.
So bottom line. I’m curious to see it, but not expecting much out of it based on my history with Microsoft over the last few decades. And I’ve been a Microsoft Partner for most of that time!