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Summary
Ask any DesignOps practitioner to name their “go-to” tool and you’re likely to hear them wax poetically of their love for spreadsheets. We get it – the spreadsheet is a reliable workhorse with a number of tricks up its sleeve. But, it’s not the only game in town. In fact, if you haven’t ventured outside of Excel lately, you may be surprised to learn that there are a number of nifty new tools in town, and we’ve got the perfect opportunity for you to get a taste of what they can do.
Key Insights
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Traditional tools like Excel and Confluence are inadequate for modern knowledge sharing due to lack of integration and collaboration.
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Notion and Coda represent the next generation of knowledge management tools that combine documents, relational databases, and integrations.
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Relational databases in these tools allow creating multiple synchronized views tailored to different teams, improving data accessibility and usability.
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Automations and templates enhance workflow efficiency, such as onboarding checklists that ensure consistent processes.
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Both Notion and Coda support embedding third-party tool data, e.g., syncing Jira issues and showing Figma previews within documents.
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Coda’s pricing model charges only document creators (makers), making it more scalable and affordable for large organizations compared to Notion’s per-editor pricing.
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The emergence of document architects as a role reflects the complexity and opportunity in designing interconnected knowledge systems in these tools.
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Community marketplaces enable users to both share and monetize custom automations, templates, and integrations.
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Integrating cloud tools with automations creates unified dashboards aggregating metrics across product, design, and engineering teams.
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Even non-engineers like Scott can build complex, connected systems using formulas, packs, and automations in these tools.
Notable Quotes
"Excel is a little bit outdated; more advanced cloud tools help us co-create and collaborate in real time."
"Notion really became a single source of truth where you can go for any context around the work."
"In Coda, you can create different views for the same data, like one for designers and another for engineers, and all stay synchronized."
"Coda doesn’t charge for editors, only for document makers, making it much more affordable to scale in large organizations."
"You can embed Jira issues into Notion databases and have them automatically synced, which is really handy for tracking sprint tasks."
"Automations and template buttons in Notion enabled us to build consistent onboarding workflows that are reusable and interactive."
"There is an emerging role of document architects who design how information is interconnected and triggers workflows in these platforms."
"You can connect tools like Zapier or Integromat to Coda packs to automate processes and integrate with external systems."
"Community-built packs and templates allow users to make money by sharing their automations and workflows."
"Even as a designer, I was able to learn how to build formulas and automations — the tools are quite accessible."
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