Loading Profile...
Office or Skype Integration
I create extensions for Outlook and Excel, and sometimes Skype. I'm posting this here in case someone else ever says "gee, I wish I could click a button and have Balsamiq launch from this Office app or Skype chat..." I'd like to know what you'd want to do there.
This might be an example, you're collaborating with people on a design and using email to discuss it. Heck, this could be an effort conducted through Google Groups where you get your feed via email. Rather than passing the BMML around in email you just have a reference ID in your emails, something like "Mockup#123". When Outlook sees that it puts a button in your toolbar that says "Open Mockup" or "View Mockup" (just for the PNG). The BMML itself can be centralized to avoid having a different version in everyone's mailbox archive. The mechanism can be coded to only allow edit access to authorized people, and everyone else just gets a PNG reference - or maybe people can get read-only access to specific files.
For Excel, maybe you're tracking projects in a spreadsheet and you want to see the spec for one of them. Select the project number cell, click the Open Mockup button in the toolbar, and Balsamiq opens.
Another idea from the "why would you want to do that?" department might be integration with Skype. Examples:
- Launch Balsamiq from text in Skype chat.
- Push BMML or PNG through Skype file transfer into the system of someone who has the same plugin/extension.
- Setup a Skype bot that allows people to request a mockup just by entering its name in chat.
I don't know how you guys collaborate but you might be using these tools on a daily basis and have no idea that you can exchange files like this. If you don't like the ideas, cool, I'm not fond of them either, but maybe this will get the creativity flowing for something more useful. Post ideas here and let's see where it goes.
For Peldi and the Balsamiq Studios crew - I'm thinking the above would be done via the command line interface. If there is a better way to drive the software, please point me to some documentation.
Ciao!
This might be an example, you're collaborating with people on a design and using email to discuss it. Heck, this could be an effort conducted through Google Groups where you get your feed via email. Rather than passing the BMML around in email you just have a reference ID in your emails, something like "Mockup#123". When Outlook sees that it puts a button in your toolbar that says "Open Mockup" or "View Mockup" (just for the PNG). The BMML itself can be centralized to avoid having a different version in everyone's mailbox archive. The mechanism can be coded to only allow edit access to authorized people, and everyone else just gets a PNG reference - or maybe people can get read-only access to specific files.
For Excel, maybe you're tracking projects in a spreadsheet and you want to see the spec for one of them. Select the project number cell, click the Open Mockup button in the toolbar, and Balsamiq opens.
Another idea from the "why would you want to do that?" department might be integration with Skype. Examples:
- Launch Balsamiq from text in Skype chat.
- Push BMML or PNG through Skype file transfer into the system of someone who has the same plugin/extension.
- Setup a Skype bot that allows people to request a mockup just by entering its name in chat.
I don't know how you guys collaborate but you might be using these tools on a daily basis and have no idea that you can exchange files like this. If you don't like the ideas, cool, I'm not fond of them either, but maybe this will get the creativity flowing for something more useful. Post ideas here and let's see where it goes.
For Peldi and the Balsamiq Studios crew - I'm thinking the above would be done via the command line interface. If there is a better way to drive the software, please point me to some documentation.
Ciao!
I’m never sure if people will understand my wacky ideas.
3
people like this idea
I like this idea!
Tell me when this idea gets some attention.
The more people who like this idea, the more it gets noticed.
The more people who like this idea, the more it gets noticed.
The company has this under consideration.
-
Inappropriate?Starbuck, I really like your vision, thanks so much for sharing your ideas, which are not at all wacky! In fact, they are great!
The way I see this coming to life is through the APIs that I am planning on offering to the online version of Mockups, which is due to come out of alpha soon. It will take care of storing the BMML files and provide access control as well.
Once we have the online storage in the cloud in place and APIs to access it, the Office and Skype plugins you envision should be fairly easy to create. I don't know if you do this kind of work, but I'd love to chat with you about possibly hiring you to do the development, if you're interested.
I’m excited and thankful
-
Inappropriate?This would be awesome. The best part of a mock up tool is to be able to collaborate on the design of an application. To be able to collaborate and brainstorm on something with people in different parts of the building, different states, heck, different countries. I can DEFINITELY see a benefit!
EMPLOYEE
