This is a fork of Craig Silverstein's Snippets project, with various UI tweaks.
More info on Google's Snippets here: http://blog.idonethis.com/google-snippets-internal-tool/
This server supports writing and reading weekly snippets -- status updates -- for a group of people.
When I joined Khan Academy, my first project was to write a version of the weekly-snippet server I had worked with at Google. Years later, with the help of many other intrepid Khan Academy employees, it's ready for the world!
While there are many snippet systems out there, this one is optimized for simplicity (also, free-ness). For instance, it prefers single webpages with lots of info over paging, queries, or fancy javascript. Filling out a snippet involves writing into a textbox: no fields or text editors or other barriers to productivity. (Markdown is available for those who want nice formatting.) This makes it easy to learn and easy to program with.
A weekly snippet is an (ideally) brief description of what you did the last week. To give an idea of 'brief': the snippet-entry textbox is sized for 4 bullet-point entries, each 80 characters or less.
Your snippets are visible to everyone else on your email domain. (So
my snippets are visible to everyone who logs in to KA snippet server
with a @khanacademy.org email address.) Depending on your
configuration options, they may also be visible to everyone else on
your server.
Different people might have different purposes for weekly snippets:
- Instead of a weekly standup or other meeting where everyone shares what they've done in the last week, they can just read (and write) snippets.
- Managers can read snippets of their direct reports to make better use of 1-on-1 meetings.
- You can look over your own snippets when writing a self-evaluation or applying for a promotion, or when you have any other need to remind yourself what you've worked on.
I've found this last reason is particularly compelling. I also use snippets as a simple "time and motion" study: when I have too many things to put into snippets one week, I know I'm being spread too thin!
Another benefit of snippets is serendipidous helping: by reading someone's snippet, you may discover a task or problem they're working on that you can help with, that otherwise you would never have known about.
Some people go into a snippet system with unrealistic expectations and are disappointed.
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Snippets do not work well for large groups, say over 100 people. If you have 1000 people using your snippet server, it is neither practical nor useful to read through everyone's snippets every week.
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Snippets are, by design, a low level tool: they show you trees but not the forest. The snippet system does not support "rolling up" groups of snippets or having team-based snippets (though certain individuals could certainly choose to have their own snippets refer to a team's progress).
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Snippets do not provide context. If you don't already know what someone is working on, their snippet may well be more confusing than enlightening.
At Khan Academy, the entire company uses one snippet server. The snippets are divided into various categories, some functional, some project-based. I like to skim over the snippets for people in unrelated categories such as "facilities" or "recruiting." I read more closely the snippets in projects I'm interested in but not working on, such as "mobile." And I read most closely the snippets of people in my own project or closely related projects.