The Coda Maker Community celebrates 10,000 Makers strong! 🥳

[steph]

We are approaching 10,000 registered members in this community! This is no small milestone. It’s a culmination of years of support and belief in Coda. There’s no community without you.

To kick off our celebration this week, we are publishing a series of topics around three themes: past, present, and recognition. These themes acknowledge the best of the Coda Maker Community.

I’d like us to reflect on the past: share your favorite moments and memories on what the community has offered you to help you champion Coda.

Inspirational prompts

• What was your first experience using Coda?
• What was your first formula you wrote?
• What did your first table look like?
• What was your first favorite feature you enjoyed from Coda?
• What was your first post on the Maker community?

Sharing examples

• You can share a favorite tweet from our Twitter account.
• You can share your first doc you ever made on Coda.
• @Mention the first Codan who made an impression on you through the community.

All Makers who respond to this topic starting Feb 8th through Feb 15th, 2022 with a reply post that shares a Coda memory will receive a one-time, unique badge for their community profile. Badges will appear on your profile after the celebration concludes.

[steph]

I’ll go first. My first memory of Coda was using it when I was on the community team at Zapier. I had no idea what I was doing and used it like a Google Doc. When I realized I could make tables, my world lit up.

[Bill_French]

It was Nov, 2019. COVID was skulking around China and Elon Musk had just unveiled Cybertruck. Oddly both are almost finished. LOL

But this post reminded me of a time when @Paul_Danyliuk, an absolutely brilliant work-a-rounder, was not a coder. In fact, he openly shared a bias against coding. Today - Coda (the no/low-code) platform has embraced him warmly to write code and he’s pretty darn good at it.

Live data from google sheets to Coda.io

Sidebar - @BenLee - your marketing team should consider inviting @Paul_Danyliuk and me to a webinar fashioned like SNL’s Point-Counterpoint so we can debate the benefits of code/no-code integration strategies.

[Phil_Parrish]

I have only used Coda for a month but It changed my world when I realized I could build an all-in-one training document for our team that included daily checklists, price tables, inventory managment and supply ordering all linked together in one login. Im sure it will do more, I just haven’t realized what else it is I need yet…

[Scott_Collier-Weir]

The first doc I ever built I spent an entire 200 hours on. Yes. Thats a ridiculous number. At the end of it I had learned so much about Coda, database design, doc optimization that I scrapped the entire doc and rebuilt a better version in 3 days.

I still look back on that original doc fondly though - So many silly mistakes and redundant formulas, but it is what launched me into the Coda world!

[Craig_Haynes]

My favourite Coda memory was doing the DOCtorate, and the Codan’s who made the biggest impressions on me would definitely be @maria for taking us through everything on the course with a smile, and @Paul_Danyliuk for being an absolute beast.

Looking forward to making even more powerful docs in future.

[jeo]

@steph

share a favorite tweet from our Twitter account.

1. “Once you see it, you can’t unsee it…” - Coda’s 2017-10-20 tweet
2. “Imagine if GoogleDrive, evernote and IFTTT had a baby” - @Alexandra_Samuel’s 2020-01-06 tweet
3. “Coda: It’s like Google docs on steroids.” - @lane’s 2020-01-07 tweet

---

@steph

@Mention the first Codan who made an impression on you through the community.

This seems an opportune moment to rekindle a 2019-11-01 thread

click to read the 2019-11-01 post

@jeo

I would like to express my gratitude for the humans behind the Coda curtain.

@shishir 's creating a culture that values user feedback (@ 25:30 to 27:25)

@alexdeneui a founder who stops by just to say “hello” (!)

mallika 's endless answers

@Al_Chen_Coda 's Coda YouTube channel that give context to doc templates

angad 's confidence in Coda , and improved doc speed

alden 's work on formula preview

Ankur_Bhatia 's building the Coda’s data analytics models

adamginzberg64 's work on Coda images

benlee 's leaving REI to become a Codan

BenDavis 's leaving intercom to check in on Coda users like me at opportune moments

betty 's taking time to pre-announce hiding documents

Charlotte_Espeland 's choosing Coda

@chris 's enthusiasm for functionality/ searchability of Coda docs store in Google Drive (even if Google Shared Drive’s aren’t supported… yet)

evan 's teaching me how to concatenate

Evan_Brooks 's work on the visual refresh

fortes 's achieving the pinnacle of location independence

gilgoldshlager41 's work on Coda packs

@Glenn_Jaume 's moving from England to bring us cross doc

harisiva 's troubleshooting the trickier situations

Helena_Jaramillo 's work on packs tables (& cross doc & spotify)

Himanshu 's bringing us the ability to remove “Sent via this doc”

@jaime 's comments on Coda pricing (@ 52:00 to 53:30)

Jason_Tamulonis 's work on formula chips

@jerols 's work on the Coda mobile app (a good reminder, this stuff is hard)

joe 's teaching me how to use the Slack pack

@John_Coda 's bringing Salesforce to the masses (without having to pay $5,000 to a dev for every change)

JonathanGoldman 's choosing Coda (please build us GPS metadata functionality )

John_Li1 's choosing Coda

Kelsey_Chan 's choosing Coda and for keyboard shortcuts

kennymendes 's making sure the right Codans are on the bus

@Krunal_Sheth 's being the champion of the folding table

Josiah_Krutz 's work on embedding external content

justin 's teaching me how to use select lists to look up from other tables

lane 's teaching me about buttons

Laura_Tsunoda 's puzzle enthusiasm

@maria as the face of the most underrated channel on YouTube and for your comments on pricing (@ 53:30 to 55:50)

Matthew_Tebbs 's work on Coda links

matthudson 's defending Coda user’s on the “selling-of-data” frontier

Moriah 's choosing Coda

nagle 's being the Codan researcher

nathan 's bringing us charts and doc locking

nigel 's work on presentation mode

oleg on how Codans communicate with users , how Coda constantly gets better, & about security and privacy

preeyanka 's work on in doc templates

raechel 's growing the Coda team

sohan 's love of data (and avocados )

SpencerChang 's choosing Coda

Steve 's work on the new doc UI

Thomas_Hils 's work on the template to view task by day of the week

Tim_James 's candidness on dev decisions

tjeby 's teaching me how to slice URLs

These people are Coda’s best feature

and to all the Codan’s added since 2019 your efforts are appreciated too!

[Sabriel_Parker]

My team has used coda for 1.5 years as our CRM, task list, to manage support requests, and house all our project data. Creating a customized view of our CRM that our entire team love and use is one of my favorite memories!

Along with automating a regular task for one of our employees that includes 200+ rows with the touch of a button!

[Kolbi_Christianson2]

• What was your first experience using Coda?

I had been looking into codeless platforms to help solve production and business process issues for really my whole career, and when I found Coda (before the incredible new editor was launched), I saw the potential to FINALLY have all the parameters in my grasp to manage projects and communicate ideas in a centralized and customizable way. No other platform was doing this, or if it was, it would break the bank to do it. Coda put the tools at my fingertips using a simple language to do incredible things. Buttons were mind-blowing, and the way relationships of tables is structured has always been the most powerful part of the system. Having a place to suddenly generate all the notes I wanted to, but have those notes mean something to the whole project, and then to have the opportunity to view the same data in charts, graphs, timelines, etc. just transformed my view on typical word processing applications. I was no longer wasting time copying from one to the other, it was all together and could run any process I could imagine.

Bravo! THANKS FOR MAKING MY DREAMS COME TRUE! Through Coda, we took a previously completely idle project to replace our company ERP, and are tackling the whole project with just 3 individuals! That’s efficiency that is tangible! And all because we can finally organize our needs systematically.

@BenLee was one of the first Codan’s whose service on the maker community, and whose replies to my questions, really helped me feel supported in understanding the framework and best practices within Coda. I’ve also been helped by the work and activity @Paul_Danyliuk contributes to the community. And @steph has done an incredible job keeping me informed about Coda’s development. Just so impressed by the level of customer service and constant innovation that has been produced by this team. Thank you for the hard work!

[nicksimard]

I was aware of Coda since not long after it launched on Product Hunt. Didn’t get around to really trying it out until February of 2019, when I said this to my colleague:

I’ve been a fan ever since The thing I like most is that things work the way I’d expect them to. The interface gets out of my way and it allows me to be more intentional about how I organize things (unlike some similar tools out there).

Keep up the great work, Codans!

[Hendrik_TnB]

The most memorable for me is @maria , she pulls me into the world of Coda. I am particularly fond of her sharing on how database can be differently structured and most importantly, her enthusiasm!

Additionally, @Al_Chen_Coda also gave me a great tutorial on Apps Script and how to sync Coda with Google Sheets (It’s VERY important for our team).

Thanks to Coda, I manage to even design Postgres DB and develop low code and no code app for my company and clients even though I am in Finance role.

[Andrew_Stinger]

I loved reading this post where so many of our incredible Community Champions like @Pch shared their POV on getting started with Coda, and then watching @Paul_Danyliuk launch his Coda Trick’s YouTube channel.

Wondering about Coda

So, I’ve been exploring Coda for a short time now (2 or 3 weeks I think?) and there are a couple things that have me puzzled and very curious. Now that I’ve gone deeper and started building my own docs I find Coda to be exceptionally powerful and flexible, and that other apps I used before don’t even compare. There are a couple key features I’m hoping Coda will adopt, but even without those yet I’m blown away. I’m coming from the personal task and knowledge management side of things…

[Tom_Mohr]

My favorite coda moment was probably about around a year ago. I was at a friends place and some people that I hadn’t met before were there. I got to talking to them and found out one was in between start up jobs. They had most recently been with asana. I told him I had something I had to show him. It was coda.

In the middle of this gathering I found my wife’s computer and put it down on the table and gave him and his other friends a full coda walkthrough. He loved it! (Of course)

Since I found coda when it was in closed beta in 2017 or 2018 I knew it was going to be a product that took the world by storm and it hasn’t disappointed. I use it for everything!

Cheers!

[Johan_Bertin]

I have to follow up projects across different companies and sites and people were usually doing it through spreadsheets which ended up being a huge constraint. I was trying to facilitate my work and make sure that the legacy approach was maintain when I found in the forum this document

It changed my day to day work where I was able to merge all my work whithin one doc ! Thank you @Al_Chen_Coda

[Mario]

For me is when @Krunal_Sheth presented me the concept of canvas formula, i thought i knew everything on coda but at the time i had never used them

Launched: Publishing with Coda

@Mario - you can create another named formula named CurrentUser which is set to =if(User().Email.IsNotBlank(), User(), @defaultUser) - and then everywhere you use user - use your new CurrentUser formula. something like this [image]

---

Worth noticing is also when @maria , i think in the first lessons of the doctorate, showed my doc’s intro gif

---

for me this maker community is problem solving and solution building made together, the most beautiful part of being here is finding people who worked hard on their ideas but got stuck in some “tricky” aspects.
Sometimes you’ve passed similar situations in other contexts, so then you can propose solutions that most of the times are more about tricking coda than something really new, and each of us have developed a different way to use coda, so at the end we end up with 3 ways to hack the system that all works, amazing

In relationship to that, i have to admit that without @Paul_Danyliuk and his revolutionizing posts (and i’m referring to the beta period eh!) i wouldn’t probably ever seen coda as the magical tool that i see today, paul way of thinking out of the box totally inspired mine, so thanks for shaping this

Last, at this point i feel like i have to mention @Federico_Stefanato (the old profile 'cause at that point he was still on this side ) that have been the first Italian guy i had found on the community, companion of laughter and tears (mostly complaining about some coda directives lol), and my favourite Community Champion

[Nina_Ledid]

Oh, I love this thread! Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to hear how much everyone loves Coda

I first stumbled across Coda in the fall of 2020 in an article on the “500 most innovative companies” in the magazine Fast Company. Looked it up online, loved the “Enough of this sheet” intro and thought: “This really has potential, I’ll look into that when I have a moment”. Well, in what might be the most surprising twist ever, that free time never fell from the sky. So I dabbled a little here and there in Coda, kept telling everyone about it, but never actually exploring it in depth.

That is, until the Doctorate in the fall of 2021. Led by the brilliant @maria and @Rocky_Moon, and with guest lectures from So.Many.Amazing.Codans, such as @BenLee , @noah , @Federico.Stefanato who all shared their Coda expertise with such passion for the product. The fact that @shishir then took the time to not only meet with us for an hour but to actually respond to every question we asked him - in writing, after the lecture ended, completely blew my mind.

Every single person I have since interacted with regards to Coda, be it Codans (the recent hackathon comes to mind, thanks for allowing us to attend as judges!), be it Community members (I’ve learnt a ton from the postings of @Scott_Collier-Weir, @Connor_McCormick1 , @Paul_Danyliuk , @Pch , just to name a few) is an absolute delight.

It amazes me to no end to search for a certain issue on the topic, and to stumble across topics that are merely one year old, where members share work-around and hacks to get something to work, and now, there’s already a native formula for that (isnotblank() and withname() come to mind

And yet, it’s still such early days for Coda. Truly, the sky is the limit. I love the product with a fierce passion, I build everything in it, I love how it enables me to empower my clients to design anything they way they want it to (not the way a pre-defined tool wants them to), in short: Thank you, Coda. And thank you, Codans, for your zeal, your drive and your never-ending launch of exciting and I-was-just-thinking-how-awesome-this-would-be-and-here-it-is features!

Thanks for reading All the best from Austria, Nina

Update: Had to remove a bunch of references to Codans and community members, because apparently the rule is that each posting can only mention 10 other users. So if you’re not listed, just assume I meant you too!

[Lars_Hofstetter]

Meeting @Christiaan_Huizer on this community

[joost_mineur]

For me, Coda has changed…

• how I do my planning
• how I organize things
• how I run my business

I don’t remember where I first heard about Coda, but what really triggered me were the statements about replacing spreadsheets. And even though a spreadsheet still has it’s own merits, most spreadsheet work can be done better in Coda. Nowadays weeks go by without even opening one spreadheet.

The no-code attracted me and even though most of my projects in Coda are low-code rather then no-code, I get things done faster and better than ever before.

This is a good moment to thank the wonderful people in this community that got me started and who are a constant source of inspiration, tips and tricks. I could not have done without them!

I hope Coda will be around forever.

[Pieter-Jan_Ardies]

In search for digital efficiency and coming from Evernote I was greatly enthusiastic when I discovered Notion. I loved it and used and learned it for about a year.
Then last year Coda came into my life, presented by Maria as you guessed.
Yet another leap forward.
This is a tool of the future.
6 months later there are still features I miss from both Evernote an Notion, but Coda improves and the formulas make Coda just a different game. A higher league.
Thanks!!!