#505 – Castles of Sand

This week we were reminded of the impermanence of internet software, and dropped everything to fix our Google Meet transcription feature, when we noticed that Google had changed its API, breaking our SaaS dependencies.

SaaS software isn’t anything like an old Nintendo Entertainment System cartridge game. It isn’t self-contained software runs on a fixed hardware system. SaaS software is a point in time, with SaaS dependencies that can break at any time.

Over the years I’ve reminded my team that one reason we publish these Friday Ships the Parabol the product will eventually cease to exist. Given that Parabol’s software itself depends on other software and APIs in order to make it run, In the far-off future should I wish to run a Parabol retrospective for nostalgia, it’ll be unlikely I’ll be able to run Parabol at all. So much for being able to revisit the product I spent a significant portion of my life building.

I’m never more in touch with this notion than when an external service breaks.

Just 14 weeks ago we released transcription for Google Meet into production. This week when we ran our Check-In Meeting, I noticed that the meeting transcription wasn’t being added to the automatically-generated meeting summary. Investigating the root causeGoogle had changed their API breaking our SaaS dependencies. The feature needed re-implemention.

Looking into our system logs, it was clear that users were trying to use this feature and failing. I made the call to change priorities and fix the feature. As I write this, this fix is pending release after final review and testing.

It was a good reminder that SaaS is but a moment in time.

A slight increase in meeting ran this week over the week previous. We don’t expect to see growth again until September.

⁠…took Zoom meeting transcripts to GA. The Zoom integration finally cleared Zoom’s review, so we’re pulling down the “Coming soon” button and letting any team send Zoom transcripts straight into their meetings.

…kept refactoring our internal integrations and their API. We decoupled HubSpot from the core app, stood up a new BigQuery integration, and laid down the platform contracts and registries the rest of our integrations will sit on. Unglamorous plumbing, but it’s what makes the next wave of integrations fast to build.

…cleaned up a stack of smaller things — fixed how votes reveal in retros, taught our Slack install to accept private channels, sorted out attachments and inline images in our transactional emails, and fixed a light-mode tooltip in the Activity Library.

⁠…start week 4 of 6 of Shape Up Cycle 15, staying heads-down on the Team Health work.

…ship a fix for Google Meet transcription and personally reach out to the handful of users who hit the rough edges so they can give it another go.

…start gathering design feedback on our upcoming Organizational Health features from the customers who lean on Team Health the most.