Building the Connections a Proper Digital Follow-Up Secretary Needs
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 all over the place
One might arrive through an email.
Another starts with a website enquiry.
A quote goes out through an accounting system.
An invoice is waiting for payment.
A supplier promises to respond.
A customer says they'll send something tomorrow.
Individually, they're simple.
Collectively, they're exactly how loose ends disappear.
That's why we're working through the connections DFU needs to become useful in the real world rather than just looking clever in a demo.
Email, forms, accounts and more
The connector work includes the sorts of systems businesses already use — email, website forms and accounting platforms.
That includes work involving systems such as Gmail, Outlook, Wix, Zoho, MYOB, Xero and QuickBooks, along with broader email connectivity and other professional integrations.
Not every connection is at the same stage, and we're deliberately not pretending otherwise.
Some are further along. Some are still being developed or tested. Some require cooperation or answers from the companies providing those systems.
And that's where we are this week: still acquiring and working through the multiple connections a proper digital follow-up secretary needs.
Why bother connecting all of them?
Because the promise behind DFU is deliberately simple.
It should help remember:
who you're waiting on, who is waiting on you, and when follow-up is due.
If doing that requires you to manually copy everything into yet another system every night, we've missed the point.
The longer-term goal is for DFU to pick up the useful follow-up signals from the places you already work and help make sure they don't quietly disappear.
And yes, we're waiting on people too
There's a certain irony in building a follow-up secretary while waiting for outside suppliers and connector providers to get back to us.
But it's also a pretty good demonstration of the problem.
We've asked.
We're waiting.
We need to know who owes the next response and when it's time to chase it.
That's exactly the sort of loose end DFU is being built to remember.
Development continues. No release date yet — we'd rather get the connections working properly than pretend they're finished.
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