Dazza's Blog

Building the secretary is one thing. Teaching it where all the loose ends live is another. This week's Dazza Follow-Up update isn't about announcing a release date. We're still developing DFU, and some of the work currently depends on answers and access from external providers. But that work highlights something important about what we're trying to build. A useful digital follow-up secretary can't live in one little box. The things you're waiting on don't. Follow-ups start al

As DFU gains more connections, the product still comes back to one simple promise: remember who you are waiting on, who is waiting on you, what the loose end is and when it needs attention.

Connected follow-up software can cause real friction if it chooses the wrong customer, duplicates a reminder or marks the wrong thing complete. DFU is being designed to fail safely and keep the person in control.

DFU has substantial connector work already built, but built is not the same as release-proven. The next job is proving the connections against real failures, duplicates, reconnects and wrong-account scenarios.

DFU is not being built as one more inbox. Connected information should be reduced to the follow-up obligation that matters, while the original email, form or accounting system stays where it belongs.

A Connect button is the easy part. A useful DFU connection has to know whose data it is, keep access secure, survive reconnects and produce the right follow-up without pretending uncertainty is certainty.

Follow-ups do not arrive in one neat queue. They hide across email, website forms, quotes, invoices, phone calls and notes — which is exactly why DFU is being built around connections.

There’s a big gap between “we built an app” and “we're ready to hand it to customers”. This week I've shown a bit more of what Dazza Follow-Up actually looks like. Not a mock-up. Not a sales page promising fifty features. The real product that is being worked on. So it is probably worth finishing the week with a straightforward progress report. The core secretary exists The main DFU experience has been built. You can create follow-ups. See who is waiting on whom. Set follow-u

The best follow-up system in the world won't help much if you have to remember to feed everything into it. This is probably the most important part of where Dazza Follow-Up is heading. DFU can already handle follow-ups created directly inside the app. That's useful. But businesses don't work inside one app. A new enquiry might arrive through a website. A quote might live in accounting software. A customer reply might arrive in email. Another loose end might begin somewhere el

There’s not much point being reminded about something when you can’t do anything about it. A reminder system can become annoying very quickly. Ping. Ping. Ping. Eventually you stop reading it. That is why Dazza Follow-Up isn't being designed around sending as many notifications as possible. The better question is: When do you actually want your secretary to put things back in front of you? Your day, your reminder times The current DFU build allows reminder times to be configu

“I thought I was waiting on them” has probably killed more follow-ups than most software bugs ever will. Follow-up gets messy when responsibility gets blurry. Take a quote. You send it Monday. Now you’re waiting on the customer. Easy. Wednesday morning they email back: Looks good. Can you confirm how soon you could start? The situation has changed. They aren’t holding the job up anymore. They’re waiting on you. That distinction is one of the core ideas behind Dazza Follow-Up.

If recording a follow-up is harder than remembering it yourself, the software has already lost. One of the traps with business software is that a five-second thought turns into a five-minute data-entry exercise. You think: Ring Steve Thursday about that quote. Simple. Then the software wants a customer record, opportunity type, sales stage, category, probability, project, tags and probably your mother’s maiden name. By then, writing “Steve Thursday” on the back of a Bunnings

Most small businesses don’t have a follow-up problem because nobody cares. They have one because everybody is busy. A quote goes out. A customer says they’ll get back to you. A supplier promises something Tuesday. You’re waiting on a subcontractor. Someone is waiting on you. None of those jobs are difficult by themselves. The problem is remembering all of them while you’re also quoting, driving, answering the phone, ordering materials and trying to get some actual work done.