Important Chrome extension update coming soon!

1 year ago
11 April 2023
7 replies
767 views

Userlevel 3

Omar Carrasco
Guru Product Team
22 replies

Hi Community! 👋 I wanted to share some updates that will be coming soon to the Chrome browser extension. You’ve probably noticed a lot of changes inside of Guru’s web app, and now we’re giving the extension some love. We believe that the browser extension is an important part of Guru’s promise to work where teams are already working, and we want to make the extension simpler, faster, and more effective to use.

Part of this project has been improving the accessibility of the extension. With this release, you will see improved keyboard and screen reader support within the extension.

This simplified extension also makes room for exciting feature updates we’re currently working on. First up on our priority list is reimagining Knowledge Triggers so it’s easier to push proactive knowledge to your teams over top of the apps they use everyday. More news on that as the work moves forward!

Coming in a couple of weeks, we’re updating the extension so users can focus on the actions they use most frequently:

Creating new cards
Search for cards
Seeing recently viewed cards, favorites, and new cards
Getting suggestions (Knowledge Triggers, pinned cards, AI Suggest Text)
Reading announcements

As part of the extension redesign process, we took a look at things we could clean up to reduce info overload. As a result, some actions will be removed from the extension. Don’t worry–you’ll still be able to do all of these things in the Guru web app! Here are the actions with very low engagement in the browser extension that will be removed:

"Collections" link and icon from the top nav
Ability to browse Collections in the extension
"My Tasks" link and icon from the top nav
Ability to look at and respond to tasks in the extension
"More" dropdown from the Cards menu
"Ask an Expert" button

I’ll post in the Product Updates section once the update is live, so subscribe to the Community to get notified when changes go live. We’ll also be alerting users of the upcoming change in the Guru app so they can be prepared.

Thanks for all of your feedback and we hope you love using the updated extension as much as we do!

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7 replies

Will Admins be able to see a demo of what proactively pushing announcements looks like before the feature is enabled? There are a few apps and tasks for my users that I would not want interrupted. Will we be able to select if the announcement is pushed or not based on the criticality and urgency of the information?

Userlevel 4

Hey @Omar Carrasco this is update is good to hear. Curious to know if you’ve tested the performance with the new extension update? I have several users who don’t use the extension because it makes their computer run very slow (especially with Chrome being the memory hog it is), so I’d appreciate confirming this, especially when you say “make the extension simpler, faster, and more effective to use.” Thanks!

Userlevel 1

I recently signed up and a big selling point for us was the ability to use the extension without having to go into the web app. With the removal of the items you listed, specifically the “Ask an Expert” and “Collections”, it sounds like this will require users to go into the web app instead of being able to do everything from the extension which seems counter productive.

We are truly enjoying Guru and it’s a breath of fresh air from other KB systems but removing those features really concerns me now that my team has been trained on exactly how I want them to use Guru.

Hi @Omar Carrasco , thank you for sharing this update ahead of time! Two comments—

I would like to highly request that we keep the You have 1 new announcement! banner in the extension once it’s updated. My team relies primarily on the extension for updates, so this headline feature is important to push them critical updates that can’t be ignored. If this is taken away (and relegated only to the 🛎️ > 📣 section of the extension, an Announcement can be easily missed.
- If this isn’t able to be kept, can you please let me know how users will be notified of a new announcement within the extension?
I would like to second Ashley’s request above of keeping Ask an Expert in the extension. Our team primarily works in the extension. It’s one extra step to go into the web app, but if we are keeping AAE only in the web app, I would like to request that it’s taken out of the Help dropdown, since it feels like a separate feature entirely, and can be easily missed.

Thank you so much for your help on this!

Userlevel 3

Omar Carrasco
Author
Guru Product Team
22 replies
1 year ago
21 April 2023

Hi @Ashley Radcliff
Welcome, we’re excited to have your team on board! Our goal with this Extension update is to simplify the experience and optimize the features within the extension that we see Guru customers using the most. Our data-driven approach included reviewing the usage of the entire extension and its features. Overwhelmingly, the two primary actions users take are centered around searching for Cards and viewing Cards.
We will continue to invest in this product area, this won’t be the last update you hear from us. In fact,@Brad Turner is currently researching this area and looking to connect with customers that use the “Ask an Expert” feature and what the future of this could look like. Brad will be reaching out directly via direct message in the community to coordinate time to chat.

@Mallory C Pendleton to address your question about the “You have 1 new announcements” - we plan to keep this banner in the Extension

The fact that you’ve removed Collections is astounding.

Does your own team even use Guru? It doesn’t seem like it. Instead of just using data, did you do any user surveys asking how essential each of these features was? I would bet $1 that a large majority of teams organize their knowledge into collections and then further into Boards. Now all of that organization is useless.