Introducing isBusy: A Free Personal Status Page for Remote Work

Mark Thomas — Wed, 01 Jul 2020 16:37:19 +0000

I wanted to write a little post to announce a side project/fledgling app to the world: isBusy. With all that's been going on in the world these last few months, a lot has changed. Very little of our lives seems to have been left untouched by the Covid-19 pandemic. One area that has been changed dramatically for many people is their work life and situation. Tragically, many people have lost their jobs or face the challenge of a radically different work environment, remote or otherwise.

I've found myself adjusting to working from home and now working from home on a permanent basis. And it's been...interesting. Some parts of it have been really, really good. I find myself having more time for the most important parts in life: family, friends, and being outside in nature. But there have also been some harder parts, too. My family has had to adjust to me being home all the time and I had to adjust my working habits to a new rhythm. I found it harder at times to focus because of everything on my mind and

"Hey! Are you free? Oh sorry 🏃‍♂️💨"

I wanted to make things a little bit easier for my family and myself with all the adjustments happening, so I started on a little nights & weekends project: isBusy. The idea is simple: come up with an easy way for my family to understand if I'm busy and have it automatically sync with all my work and personal calendars. I've had more than a few "oops sorry" as different family members made their way into my office (accidentally or not). It's honestly a welcome addition to the day every time, but I also know it can disrupt my day in subtler ways. I also know that my situation is pretty close to idea (I have a space I can go to, a door I can close, etc.) and that this is not the case for everyone.

So I thought about setting up a "flag" system outside my office door but that would invariably get out of date fast and be annoying to update constantly. I want a way for my family to easily see if I'm busy and know the nuances between "Mark is working" and "Mark is on a call and absoultely cannot be interrupted except for emergencies."

I'm also planning to make isBusy free for everyone and forever. I've set up a Patreon if people want to donate to reduce costs. But fundamentally I want to make sure I can keep making tools like these for folks to help them thrive, especially in these hard times.

Some quick looks at the app:

Features

This was a side project worked on over the last few weeks, so the feature list isn't too crazy:

isBusy is launching with calendar support for Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook. If there are more calendars people want, I'll add those in, too.
users get a personal status link they can easily share with family or others so they can easily see whether you are busy or available.
You can set up "working hours" so people can more easily understand what your schedule looks like
change your display name
automatically display in your local timezone
profile management (reset password etc.)

Hoping to add more if there's demand!

Fin

I'm launching this on Product Hunt and a few other places to get the word out. Give it a spin at https://isbusy.app. Let me know if you have any feedback on Twitter 🤗

DEV Community: Mark Thomas

Introducing isBusy: A Free Personal Status Page for Remote Work

"Hey! Are you free? Oh sorry 🏃‍♂️💨"

Features

Fin