An Open Letter to Flic.io Team

robert.j.erickson

I backed the Flic 2 on Kickstarter and received the product a few weeks ago. I'm happy with the product, but disappointed in the support.

I originally came to the website to look for documentation for http requests. I couldn't find any. I also was excited to see Android TV and a bunch of other functions in https://flic.io/all-functions . I can't seem to find Android TV anywhere in my android application. Also, there isn't any documentation on how to use most of these services with flic. I also couldn't find any logging for when execution fails. I know that my http request isn't working, but I have no idea why.

There are going to be a large cross section of customers who use the basic functions of flic and are happy enough. These are the people who will account for one, and only one sale.

As a business owner, I often look at the work of João Dias the main developer of tasker. As the leader of the project, he has not simply made people like tasker enough to purchase. He has made a small group of raving fans. All over automation threads on social media, there are tasker enthusiasts recommanding it over and over. One raving fan might bring in 10 more customers over time. If I were part of the Flic team, I would be looking at what he is doing and how it could be implemented. Some things I've noticed or would like to see:

The hub is sleek looking and seems to work well
The button press makes the button feel well made
On some threads there are over a thousand views with no Flic response
Response time on other threads is in the days to weeks range - this frustrates the people you could turn into raving fans
Documentation and logging is seriously lacking
Most people using http request will know curl - show examples of translations to flic
Android webUI looks professional - but could benefit from 'hints'/'tips'
Apps that are not available yet, should be noted or removed from functions webpage

At the end of the day, this is your company. I really want to see this succeed. I'm not taking the time to write this out of malice. I'm hoping that you all read this as 'constructive criticism'. I also understand that your team is small and presumably 'have a lot of other things on their plates'.

Having someone from the team, once a day, check the forums and acknowledge question would be a good start. For every hundred views a forum thread gets, you can imagine hundreds more that gave up and think poorly of the product. If you can help out the superusers, you might have people like me frequent this forum and be able to help out new users. You see this a lot on https://www.reddit.com/r/tasker where customers who understand the product freely donate their time to help new users.

Thanks for your time, and best of luck.

anton

@robert-j-erickson Yes, we know. I am trying to delete this when I see it, but I agree that it is just way too much.
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robert.j.erickson

This forum has a big SPAM problem, too. I stopped reporting after about 50 of them. Not sure how that can be mitigated, but it makes the site look unprofessional.

packersinnoida

This post is deleted!

robert.j.erickson

Thanks for the prompt response. I'm going to try to keep this thread on the topic of forum/site/company issues and improvements. I've posted a new thread regarding HTTP requests here: https://community.flic.io/topic/17761/translate-curl-command-for-flic/2

Emil

Thanks for the feedback!
Yes we are a quite small team and don't have time to do everything we would want.

Android TV is available if you search for it in the app, but since it doesn't work as perfect/stable as we would like, we removed it from the list in the app in order to not promote it.

What doesn't work with your http request? The first row (GET, POST) etc. directly translates to the verb. URL is the URL you try to reach and Headers (Key, Values) are normal HTTP headers.

For example, in the Flic app, these settings:
POST
URL: http://www.example.com/something/here
Headers:
Key: ExampleKey, Value (STRING): ExampleValue (then press ADD)
Body: example_body
Content Type: application/text
Timeout: (enter the timeout in seconds)

would translate into the following HTTP request:

POST /something/here HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
ExampleKey: ExampleValue
Content-Type: application/text
Content-Length: 12

example_body

and it will be sent to the TCP host www.example.com at port 80. (TLS is used if the URL has https:// as prefix, and defaults to port 443).