We're Bernat, Tim, and Rajiv, founders of Tandem (https://tandem.chat).
Tandem is a desktop app designed to give distributed teams the immediacy and flow of in-person communication. You can see who's online this second and talk/video/screenshare in one click.
What's unique about us is you can see what app your colleagues are working in (e.g. VS Code, Google Docs, Figma), which gives you a surprisingly clear sense of whether you can interrupt them or not. In fact, we've found it makes you feel like you're sitting around a table, without being overly invasive.
We started building Tandem when two of us had kids and started working from home more. We tried a bunch of different tools - Zoom, Discord, Slack, Hangouts, etc. - but hated the friction in all of them.
We felt slower, less collaborative, and more alone when we worked remotely. We built a one-click calling prototype, added video and screenshare, and this eventually became Tandem.
Some details on how instant calls work: - You can click on someone and talk immediately, but they will be on mute until they accept. - All calls start as voice, but can be upgraded to video and screenshare. - Customizable rooms are a nice way to invite teammates to talk when they're free.
Some details on app presence: - Your teammates will be able to see which work app you're currently in (only for a select set of integrated apps) - this gives everyone a sense of being together, and helps you know when a teammate is interruptible. - You can go into Focus Mode if you don't want to be bothered, in which case your app will not be shown.
Pricing: 14 day free trial, then $10 / active user / month
We are doing a beta program where, if you can hop on a short feedback call every-other week, we extend the free trial indefinitely! This has helped us stay in touch with the people using it, and constantly improve.
We are constantly improving the app, so tell us what you think. With your help, we can make remote work more collaborative and social!
-Bernat, Rajiv, and Tim
As a remote worker the thing I treasure most is the opportunity to organise my schedule to spend the majority of my time doing deep work. Frequently communicating and getting feedback on my work asychronously rather than constantly being interrupted and dragged into synchronous interactions as in an open plan office.
The thought of allowing anyone to contact me at any time, at the push of a button feels like a huge step back.
There are lots of challenges around communication in a remote company, however I don't think the solution is recreating an open office online.
It was especially useful when onboarding a dev onto a new section of code that they had never touched before, and also when unblocking someone who was having trouble learning to use the IDE.
Think of it as push-to-talk, 2.0, with a richer sense of presence (seeing what work app, so you know if you're interrupting anything).
NetMeeting did this way back when. It has been annoying watching things regress and then slowly work back to what NetMeeting used to be able to do.
In retrospect NetMeeting was way ahead of its time, the largest issue it had was that NATs become super popular around the same time, back NAT breakthrough tech wasn't there yet, so using it involved lots of firewall bypass rules on the switch/router.
I believe easy screen sharing is important part of remote work, thought I think it should be in other way, i.e. I want to share a part of my screen (static pic or video) with a comment/question. There is a need for that almost every day.
Short walkie-talkie like conversation as you have are really great for remote teams, it can improve work and communications. Basically I want to say "good morning" to others, without really interrupting them, but letting them know I'm available now.
I guess I'll be your customer with my next project :)
The good morning use case is awesome. We have some teams that have a room called "Good Morning". You can join there if you're the first one to start the day, and other can join you as they get connected.
I see few use cases here: one part is about a code you're working now. Like "what the heck is this?". or getting feedback on show some progress on the work you're doing, to show colleagues when you've finished a screen, mockup, or even slide for a deck, etc. I believe it's important for a remote team to have such moments, it gives extra motivation for both sharer and viewer, an improves feeling of a team work.
Also please consider making a mobile app for recording messages. Laptop is often used for a some heavy work, may be connected to an external display w/o any camera, so it becomes inconvenient to record messages from it. But an cell phone can do the job.
PS I will be glad to give more feedback. As you noticed, after having almost 20 years of work in remote teams I've put a lot of thoughts in a product like this, so will happy to give some help, you can reach me by igor@artamonov.ru
1) What do you mean by "a select set of integrated apps"?
2) Can the user tailor which app names are shared vs. those they prefer to keep private?
3) Did earlier prototypes try a generic approach for ID, e.g. capturing hWND of the focused window and querying
it's class, title, executable name, etc? Do Mac/Linux have analogous facilities for window identification?
4) Was it a challenge to distinguish browser-based apps? (e.g. Chrome, vs. Docs)
5) Is there any attempt to consolidate contexts that involve switching between multiple apps? (e.g. while I'm
coding VS Code, I jump to a browser to search docs for an API).
6) Is there some lag/hysteresis, so if you switch briefly to a different app and back, it doesn't generate noise?
1) You can see the list here: https://tandem.chat/integrations We add new products by request, but we don't plan to add email and social networking sites :)
2) Long term, we'd like to let users customize what apps and sites are shown for their team, but we haven't built that yet. Right now, you can just turn on app, app + url, or nothing.
3) We use system APIs for capturing window titles & executable names across Windows, Linux, and Mac. There's actually a node package for that called "active-win"
4) Yes! We have plans to open-source our browser reading logic. And I still haven't figured out how to read URLs in a generic way from Linux yet.
5) Not yet, but we're thinking about how to indicate to your team that you're in "deep work" based on how active you are (e.g. typing or mousing a lot). I switch between terminal, VS Code, and localhost all the time, so I understand!
6) Yes, we only check your active app on an interval to reduce our performance hit.
Long-term pricing is $10/active user/month, where active user is someone who does at least an hour of calls. Of course, we want to make sure it's valuable for you and your team first.
I will say, the pricing feels like it will be a deal breaker. The product will need to add a ton of value to justify that price point. I’d honestly expect something like this to be closer to 4 or 5 dollars per month per person.
What’s the best way to share feedback with the team?
Would love to get your thoughts after you've tried it with your team.
One interesting feature they had was low-fi video (grainy black and white, very low framerate), with the same basic idea as knowing what app you are in: a chance to see whether you were at the computer, and maybe a little hint at your mental state, but maybe not too intrusive. But I don't know how it acted in practice. They had complete drop-in, but I like your one-sided-talk-first.
Another interesting feature might be something like a I'd-like-to-know-when-you-see-this-page. E.g., as a developer I might submit a PR, and I want to know when you start reviewing it. I'd "mark" the page somehow and it would be a little like having a watchword on Slack or IRC. It wouldn't have to be intrusive, as it could be as simple as a popup when the other person visits the page, telling them their coworker was interested when they started looking at it, and OK/cancel to inform them.
The "google alerts" for pages idea is interesting. We'll think on it.
My company internally built and then open-sourced Qube[1], which has a lot of similarities, but just integrates with Slack and Zoom. A lot less ambitious, I'd say, but we're very happy with it.
If you hit the Slack button it opens a link to that Slack chat. If you are in a room with a group it'll open a group DM to the other people present. (I personally rarely use the Slack button because any given DM or channel in Slack is only ever alt+tab and ctrl+k away, but that's just me.)
First time I heard about the pricing and seems a little bit high... but the extended trial in exchange for feedback calls is genius.
Edit: considering there's a chrome devtools menubar option exposed in the app I'm guessing my assumption is correct haha. After fiddling with it for ~5 minutes, it seems annoying that I'm unmuted every time I join a new room. Is this intentional? If not, I think an option to join muted by default would be pretty helpful.
You could try using CMD+SHIFT+m to mute yourself immediately after joining a room.
If there were a video, that would be really helpful.
I don't want just to add it to my Slack without knowing what's going to happen.
Also, you could try signing up with Google and create a personal team. Then, if you like it you can use Slack for your team.
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Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.There's a ton of choices out there, but if other teams are like ours, then there apparently aren't many options for this one wish-list item. If we had one more to choose from, then we might look at other features.
This seems like it could be invasive. Is it opt out?
Also you only see the video/audio selection dialog inside of an existing call or room. I think it would be easier if there was a top level way to configure those from the main preferences menu.
Thanks
Regarding the video/audio selection, all calls start as audio-only, and you can upgrade to video / screenshare. If you want to go straight into video you can do this via the tooltip on hover.
We are a heavy user of Zoom for meetings, but we found it to be too heavy for lightweight interactions.
It also indicates the matter is important enough for the original person to walk up and deliver a note.