Releases

The latest from Pesto

Jan 6, 2022

Performance & Stability

We've implemented some recent fixes that have significantly improved performance and stability. We wanted to share what work we're doing in this area as we know many of you have experienced performance issues. Follow along at this blog post.

Cold Winter Is Back

Cold Winter, our seasonal team building game, is back for the next few months! You and your teammates are stuck in a bitter winter landscape where one of you is secretly the evil ice mage. Discover the ice mage before they freeze your entire team!

Win 100 points to unlock the magic ice wand. Learn how to play here.

Pesto's 2021 In Review

2021 was a huge year for Pesto! We grew from 2 to 8 people, launched mobile apps and new room types, brought our infrastructures in house, and rebranded to Pesto.

Read more about all the new features we added last year.

Thoughts & Tips

User Wish List Avatar Pack

Changelog

Cold Winter️
Significant improvement to in-app lagginess
Changed way data is sent to the client to dramatically reduce bandwidth usage
Fix periodic instability from API timeouts
Better deploy process without associated instability
2 Memory leak fixes
Fix unnecessary rendering causing lag
User wish list avatar items
21 unwelcome bugs and stability issues: Please keep the bug reports coming!

Dec 1, 2021

Pragli is now Pesto

Pragli is now Pesto, the digitally native, authentically human workplace.

Yes, it's like the pasta sauce. If you're curious, you can learn more about our rebrand here.

With the rebrand, we're changing the format of our newsletter - we'll now ship whenever we have a release. All releases are also available at pesto.app/releases.

Real time sync engine

We recently developed our own real-time sync engine to improve the scale, stability, and performance of our product. Learn more here.

Thoughts & Tips

Changelog

New static site
New in-app appearance
Winter avatar items ☃️
Fall avatar items 🍂
65 unwelcome 🐞🐛🐜 and stability issues: Please keep the bug reports coming!

Sep 23, 2021

Aug 27, 2021

Jul 22, 2021

Jun 24, 2021

May 4, 2021

Mar 22, 2021

Feb 18, 2021

Jan 28, 2021

Dec 10, 2020

Nov 10, 2020

Oct 6, 2020

Sep 2, 2020

Howdy!

Is it rainy outside? What about for your furry, 4-legged co-worker in Vancouver? Now, you can find out with the new Pragli weather integration!

Here's what it looks like:

You can enable this under "My user settings" => "Integrations". Learn more here.

Feature spotlight

We're excited to introduce the command palette to Pragli. Bring it up with CMD / CTRL + K, then use it to navigate Pragli with the keyboard only.

Use the palette to join a room, request a colleague, send a DM, or even mute/unmute (+ more).

Learn more here.

Content rundown

To keep up with the new Pragli memes, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn

Blog posts

Changelog (it's a big one...)

🌞 Weather integration (see above)

⌨️ Command Palette (see above)

👑 Referrals: you can use your referral URL to get credit towards the crown without inviting someone to your team

🚦 Connection quality indicator: in a room, if someone's internet connection is unstable, it now shows up above their avatar

🙋 Revamped support: replaced Intercom in-app with "Pragli team" - use it to give use feedback / request support

🤔 Rate your call: you may get prompted after a call; it's not required, but it is massively appreciated!

🔈 Speaking indicator: a subtle hint for those speaking in another room

🧢 Baseball caps!

👀 Anime eyes: for expressing confusion or suspicion

🤖 Monospace: in DMs or room chat, use ` or ``` to format code

📷 Mirror video option: under "My user settings" => "Audio and Video"

🖥️ Keep Pragli window on top option under "My user settings" => "Interface"

🍏 Big Sur support

#️⃣ Hotkeys: Many hotkeys now work in browser (not just desktop app)

#️⃣ Hotkeys: Global / local (in-app) setting

#️⃣ Hotkeys: CMD/Ctrl + , to open settings

🚪 Default door closed: this only affects new users

47 indefensible 🐛🦗🐜: Keep the bug reports coming!️

Aug 4, 2020

Jul 7, 2020

Jun 10, 2020

May 12, 2020

Howdy!

Please welcome the latest member of the Pragli team - Stella! Stella is a 9 week old labrador. Stella joins Pragli as a content specialist. She's already hard at work, seen here demonstrating Pragli's new open door / closed door feature. In her spare time, she likes to remove all plant life from the backyard.

Feature Spotlight #1

🚪 Open door, closed door

Two big updates this month, plus a lot of small ones (check the changelog).

The first is open door, closed door. This is a new mechanic designed to simplify the interface and provide a clear indication to users on how to manage their privacy.

If your door is open, you receive communication like a walkie-talkie and show presence in the form of a donut (10 minute idle timer).

If your door is closed, you receive communication like a phone call ("request") and do not show presence.

This replaces all forms of presence detection. For those of you looking for "Facial recognition mode", we still support it inside a room as "video avatar" (hover over video, then select "video avatar"). We believe it's more private than full-on video on.

Feature Spotlight #2

👩‍🦱 More avatar options

If you're like us, shelter-in-place orders have forced you to grow out your hair a bit. Show off your quarantine doo with these new hair styles. Many more options have also been added, and more are on the way!

Changelog

🚪 Open door, closed door (see spotlight #1)

👩‍🦱 More avatar options (see spotlight #2)

🙏 Rooms: Both "channels" and "direct conversations" are now "rooms" (for simplicity)

🏢 Introducing the "Main office": where you are when you're online and not otherwise in a room, added to clarify that you don't need to always be in a room

📅 Hide calendar event button: in case an event is showing you as busy, when you're really not

🔽 Team header dropdown: moved a bunch of somewhat common operations into a new dropdown; hover over your team name to activate

🔀 Team switcher: Removed the team switcher when there's only one team. Shrunk it. Moved signout and add team to the team header dropdown. Simplified new user experience.

↔️ Smarter layout: does a better job (still not perfect) of resizing avatar windows

💵 Save money: made some changes to reduce our infra bills. Figured we'd keep you in the loop 🤷

34 unfavorable 🐛🦗🐜: Keep the bug reports coming!️

Apr 14, 2020

Mar 5, 2020

Feb 11, 2020

Howdy!

To make Friday more fun, we remotely worked from the top of a U-Haul for the day.

We wouldn't recommend it. It turns out the top of a U-Haul is quite flimsy! Also, the ergonomics aren't great up there.

We'll have more lessons learned and a v2 of this remote work experiment coming soon...

Feature Spotlight

Presence Rework

🍩Donuts

The top left icon is now always a donut.

You no longer turn orange due to idleness. Instead, the donut gradually transforms from a full circle to a thin ring.
In Live Avatar - Keyboard/Mouse and Photo Mode, the full circle becomes a ring over 3 min of inactivity.
In Live Avatar - Keyboard/Mouse, the avatar grays out only after the full 3 min have elapsed (as opposed to old 15s).
In Live Avatar - Facial Recognition, Pragli shows a full circle if you are detected and a ring if you are not.

🚥Colors

Your status indicator now turns orange only if you:

Are in a conversation / channel
Set a manual status with "warn" behavior
Automatically get a status via a calendar event with "warn" behavior

Your status indicator turns red if you:

Set a manual status with "block" behavior
Automatically get a status via a calendar event with "block" behavior

Your status indicator turns black if you're offline.

Results

Simplicity - reduces 5 disparate symbols (green dot, orange dot, yellow triangle, red cross circle, black dot) to 4 similar symbols (green, orange, red, black, all donuts)
Less Overbearing - you stay green even if idle. In keyboard/mouse mode, your avatar doesn't gray out until 3 minutes have elapsed (vs 15s before)
"Chance of Response" signal - the donut still gives a sense if the person may have just stepped away momentarily, so you know that you might not reach them if you start a conversation

We want to know what you think! Share your feedbajck with us via the blue chat bubble in the bottom right of Pragli.

Content Rundown

(Graphic from 6 categories of remote teams)

Blog Posts

Social Signals #3: Using Google or Outlook Calendar to signal availability
Getting Started with Pragli
FAQ
How to authenticate with Google Oauth in Electron
Firebase as a React Hook - as featured on Hacker News, discussed by @Firebase, featured in Firebase Weekly
How we hired a part-time QA Tester for $40 / session
Building a walkie-talkie for remote work - as featured on Hacker News
The 6 categories of remote teams
Social Signals #4: Using audio channels to signal status

Other

We worked from the top of a U-Haul last Friday
New logo! Thanks for filling out our survey last time.

Changelog

🍩Presence Rework: presence is simpler and less overbearing. See spotlight.

📅Calendar Rework: calendar events are simpler and more clear

😊Logo: the homepage, blog, and product now show the new logo

🖥Size Memory: Pragli remembers its size and location across boots

🛑Better Updates: future updates will never start while you're in a conversation or channel

🧐Debuggability: we made some big internal improvements to our ability to diagnose bugs and crashes

17 contemptible 🐛🦗🐜: Keep the bug reports coming!️

Jan 7, 2020

Dec 3, 2019

Howdy!

For those of you in the US - hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

Sorry for being a few days late... our backlog was a little "stuffed" 😉

Feature Spotlight

Have you ever had someone start a conversation with you while in a Zoom or Google Hangouts meeting?

Introducing Pragli's new Google calendar integration. Pragli will now alert your teammates when you're in a meeting and prevent them from starting conversations with you.

Some features of the calendar integration:

You can add as many calendars as you want, and you can label them as work or personal
You can set each calendar's privacy level (public or private)
Pragli automatically unfurls most video conference links (Zoom, Webex, etc)
During meetings, choose whether teammates can start a conversation with you, are blocked, or can click through with a warning (as above)

Configure the integration by clicking on your avatar in the top left, and then going to "Integrations." Once you've added the integration, you'll be able to mess with its settings.

Outlook integration coming soon.

Content Rundown

We pushed out our first "Pragli" GIF ever. Hopefully you didn't drive through LA last week...

Blog Posts

Changelog

📅 Calendar Integration: it's finally here! Check out the spotlight above.

#️⃣Slack Window Management (Mac desktop only): hit CMD+Shift+U to automatically resize Slack and Pragli together. Customize the resize under "Configure User" => "Interface", and customize the hotkey under "Configure User" => "Hotkeys"

🚪Sign in with Microsoft: sign in... using Microsoft...

#️⃣Invite by Slack: now has type to search

🎧Status Hotkey: Hit Cmd/Ctrl+S while in Pragli to set or unset your status - customizable under "Configure User" => "Hotkeys"

8 unpleasant 🐛🦗🐜: Keep the bug reports coming!️

Up Next

🚀Performance Overhaul: we've been working on a number of performance improvements for the last week or so. They'll (hopefully) be shipping this weekend.

Happy Holidays!

We won't be sending another newsletter until 2020. Hope you have a wonderful holiday season!

Oct 31, 2019

👻 Boo!

Happy Halloween!

While we've squashed some spooky 🐛🦗🐜 in Pragli, there's still some ugly bugs running around in there. Please continue to keep us posted as you run into either outright bugs or behaviors you didn't expect.

Feature Spotlight

Have you ever had a teammate enter #water-cooler, and you would've joined, but you just didn't notice they were there?

Notifications let you know when your teammates want to hang out or speak with you.

We've added two kinds of notifications:

Channel Notifications - get notified whenever someone enters the channels of your choice
Meeting Start Notifications - get notified whenever someone pulls you into a channel or direct conversation

Notifications can be annoying, so we've taken the following steps to make this as configurable and low-key as possible.

1) Configurability - you choose which channels you are subscribed to. Unsubscribe from any channel by clicking the bell next to it.

2) Throttling - we won't show channel notifications more than once every 20 seconds

3) Silence - Pragli notifications don't have sounds

4) No history - Pragli notifications do not go into your OS history

If you still hate these notifications, please let us know, and then turn off all notifications under your user settings under "Notifications."

We hope you like them. Vivek and I have found them useful for encouraging us to converse more, on both work and non-work topics.

Content Rundown

Mini-Products

Leaderboard for Product Hunt, a filterable list of the top 1,000 products on Product Hunt

Blog Posts

Changelog

🤫Auto "Do Not Disturb": during screen share, Pragli will automatically put your computer into DND (Mac only)

💬Notifications: get notified when someone starts a conversation with you, or when teammates enter and leave different channels

👥Team Management: remove teammates from your team in Team Settings => Members

#️⃣Channel Preferences: delete channels in Team Settings => Channels

14 gross 🐛🦗🐜: including an issue on Macbook Pros where the screen would start flashing red and potentially crash. Keep the bug reports coming!️

Up Next

📅 Calendar Integration: it's finally happening! We've actually budgeted time for a full calendar integration. So it'll get done in November... probably...

📹 Zoom Integration: so that people won't click on you if you're in a Zoom call. We might not be able to figure this out, since Zoom doesn't provide APIs for telling if a given user is currently in a meeting (only if they are host). We're trying to get creative by looking at running processes / file system events. Let me know if you have any ideas on how we can make this work.

Sep 25, 2019

Howdy!

The #1 complaint from y'all has been the lack of polish and general bugginess of the product.

In response, we've been focusing on stability and polish as much as possible. We will continue to make this our top priority for the time being.

We're looking for more help with bugs. If you've run into a bug in Pragli, please report it via the chat bubble in the bottom right hand corner of Pragli. If possible, we would love to solve it with you immediately. Alternatively, shoot me an email at [email protected]

Feature Spotlight

Picture in picture allows you to share video and screen share at the same time.

Also, Pragli no longer disconnects audio briefly while starting the screen share.

Pro tip: after entering full screen, click the arrows in the top right to swap between the video and screen share.

Content Rundown

Mini-Products

Revitalize, a set of mental health resource for remote workers

Blog Posts

Changelog

🖼️Picture in picture: share video and screen share at the same time

🎉Celebrate: click on the celebrate icon to share confetti with everyone in the meeting!️

🎵Deeper Spotify Integration: mouse over someone's playing music to see what they're playing, then click to give it a listen yourself; also, auto-pause music during conversations

👥/pragli in Slack: use /pragli from Slack to make a meeting link that anyone in the Slack channel can use

↪️️Browser => Desktop Redirects: opening a Pragli link in the browser will now cause the desktop app to open (if installed)

💬Chat Indicator: if you've hidden chat, Pragli will now show an indicator if you have unread chats

🖥Revamped Screen Share Picker: in the desktop app only, Pragli has a new screen share picker

🤫Silent Room: now, you will join #silent-room muted by default

🔗Channel Links: it's easier to create guest mode links to channels with the inline channel link button

#️⃣Channel Colors: choose a color for your channel by clicking on the hashtag

🐞Bug Fixes: fixed a lot of issues with random disconnects, as well as other things - more incoming!

Aug 27, 2019

Jul 24, 2019

Howdy!

Welcome to the Pragli Newsletter!

This publication will be used to infrequently (maybe once a month?) send you the latest on Pragli.

You are on this list because we spoke with you about Pragli or you gave the product a try, and we figured you would be interested.
If we were mistaken, feel free to click "unsubscribe" at the bottom of the page.

We want to know if this is useful / what we can do better. Please share your feedback with us by replying to this email.

Survey of the Day

A number of you have told us that you don't exactly love the name "Pragli"...

We also think we can do better, but we are having trouble coming up with something great.

If you have ideas, please submit them here.

Feature Spotlight

Channels are like persistent meeting rooms. We include two for you by default:

#water-cooler: Socialize with your teammates. No one in there? Join to signal to your teammates that you are free to chat
#silent-room: Mute yourself when you join! This is a place to feel present with your teammates while you crank through your work

Some channel ideas to try:

#standup: Where your team meets at 9am sharp to do the daily standup
#war-room: Your product is down? Bad publicity? Office on fire? Jump into #war-room and pull in your colleagues to figure it out, now!

Two Spotlights!?

We had some catching up to do...

The team switcher allows you to quickly switch between teams and easily be online in multiple teams at once.

Importantly, anyone can start a conversation with you from any team in which you are online.

Want to only be online in one team, but want access to others? Just click the "set status" button underneath each team to set how you show up.

You can customize your team logo by clicking the ⚙️under the team name.

Changelog

#️⃣Channels: persistent meeting rooms

🏘️Team Switcher: switch easily between teams and be online in several at once

⚙️Settings Rework: settings have been split into user and team settings. Click on your avatar in the top left to mess with user settings, and click on the ⚙️ below the team name to access team preferences

👶New User Experience Rework: no more setup panes! New users drop straight into their team, where they will be gently prompted to learn about certain features

🎧Timed Focus Mode: click the 🎧below your avatar in the top left and select an amount of time. Your teammates will be shown how much longer in your focus session, and will be cautioned against interrupting you until it is over

📷Photo Mode: instead of a live avatar, Pragli takes photos of you periodically

Up Next

📅Scheduled Meetings: integrate your calendar to automatically import and start meetings in Pragli

👻Guest Mode: create a meeting link that anonymous guests can use (without accessing your entire team)

The latest from Pesto

Performance & Stability

Cold Winter Is Back

Pesto's 2021 In Review

Thoughts & Tips

Changelog

Pragli is now Pesto

Real time sync engine

Thoughts & Tips

Changelog

Pragli Newsletter

Howdy!

🪅 Hispanic Heritage Month

💬 New Content

Changelog

Pragli Newsletter

Howdy!

🪐 Spatial Rooms 🛸

☀️ Special Avatar Items 🌊

Hiring Update

New Content

Changelog

Pragli Newsletter

Howdy!

Pragli Community

Special Avatar Items

Hiring update

New Content

Changelog

Pragli Newsletter

Howdy!

Feature spotlight: Lofi Rooms

Android App Beta

Hiring update

Changelog

Pragli Newsletter

Howdy!

Feature spotlight

Hiring update

Changelog

Pragli Newsletter

Stop Asian Hate

Feature spotlight

Hiring update

Changelog

Pragli Newsletter

Howdy!

Feature spotlight

Changelog

Pragli Newsletter

Howdy!

Feature spotlight

Request for A/V beta users

Changelog

Pragli Newsletter

Howdy!

Feature spotlight

Request for iPhone beta users

Changelog

Pragli Newsletter

Howdy!

Feature spotlight #1

Feature spotlight #2

Battle islands update

Changelog

Pragli Newsletter

Howdy!

Feature spotlight

Pricing update

Content rundown

Changelog

Pragli Newsletter

Howdy!

Feature spotlight

Content rundown

Changelog (it's a big one...)

Pragli Newsletter

Howdy!

Feature spotlight

Changelog