Why do businesses create documents?

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The decision by Coda and Grammarly to join forces is generating a lot of passionate interest.

Since the root of Cod a is to allow us to create a doc, I would like to reflect on why businesses create docs in the first place. Regardless of whether they are slideshows, spreadsheets, word processing docs, BI dashboards, Notion or Coda docs, or anything else - a document in a business environment is created to influence decisions. If not, it does not add value, and should not be created.

Communication involves three steps

  • The message sent by the sender
  • The medium through which the message is delivered
  • The message as it is received by the receiver(s)

This is a major subject of study, and there are major industries devoted to improving communication and getting messages across.

A common question is what do Grammarly and Coda have in common? The answer is that they are part of the medium we can use to communicate. Grammarly originated as a tool to improve grammar and the language tone that people use, embedded in existing writing surfaces. Coda started as a tool that allows us to collect information, and turn it into knowledge in many different ways. Coda, and other similar tools, are redefining what a writing surface is.

AI brings them together on the writing surface. In the past you searched the web, and your various corporate stores of information, compiled your thoughts, and then expressed your thoughts on a passive screen.

In the future you can have an active conversation with your “writing surface”, making use of Coda’s =, @, and / AI assistant. This gives you access to specific information you have in mind, but the AI assistant is context-aware and can provide prompts to relevant information, whether corporate (managed through your company’s access rules) or general. Imagine having a co-drafter of your message, going “Have you thought about this?”.

As you distill the message you want to send, Grammarly can assist with communication style, grammar, and corporation-specific journalistic standards.

In this way, the writing surface is no longer just the medium of sending the communication, but it assists the sender in crafting a complete and compelling message. Improving the quality of the sent message and the compelling expression of the message in the medium improves the probability that the receiver will understand the message you are sending, and take the correct actions to improve the business.

BUT, it’s just a ramble… :wink:
Rambling Pete

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But a well thought-out and well articulated ramble!

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Yeah, this if this is a ramble, I’m embarrassed about all my “well thought-out” posts!

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I can only speak to how I use Coda, but 100% of the communication I send is templated and all I have to do is insert data into those templates. This isn’t a limitation, because of the industry I work in, it needs to be that way, so the ability to generate text using AI is never used. The only situation where I would want AI to work in coda is in the formula panel to assist in writing formulas, which I don’t think it does right now.

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To stretch my analogy a little further - you can also ignore you colleague’s suggestions… :wink:

I have found neither Coda’s nor Grammarly’s AI buttons to be intrusive, other people seem to be quite bothered by them.