Blog My Experience in Building a Ch...
Last Updated At: 05/03/2024

My Experience in Building a Chrome Plugin

Discover my experience on building a Chrome Plugin that integrates a Kanban Board with Google Workspace, enhancing task management and increasing the user experience.

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My Experience in Building a Chrome Plugin

For the past couple of months, I have been building an integrated Kanban Tasks Extension for Google Workspace. It will be launched soon. 

This extension goes beyond enhancing Gmail's functionality—it enhances task management and user experience through seamless Kanban Board integration. It helps Google Workspace power users to effortlessly view, manage, and collaborate on Google Tasks with multiple boards without navigating away from their Google ecosystem. 

After verifying the relevance of my idea in my own network with various companies who I know are active users of Google Workspace and doing a thorough competitor analysis, I have decided the features and functionalities of my extension as follows:

Must-Have Features

Google Task API Integration: Implement seamless integration with Google's Task API for CRUD (creating, reading, updating, and deleting) operations around tasks, managing due dates, assignments, etc.

UI/UX Consistency with Google Workspace: Ensure that the user interface and experience align closely with Google Workspace for a seamless transition and familiar environment for those users. Offering a seamless integration will decrease the cognitive load of switching tasks.

Kanban View: Offer users the option to switch between a traditional list view and a Kanban board view for organizing tasks in a more visual manner. A kanban board has long been proven as one of the most efficient ways of aligning work for both solo users and for collaboration in teams.

Google Spaces Task Handling: Address the challenge of managing tasks created within Google Spaces, which are not accessible through Google's Task API. Implement functionality to either extract data from Google Spaces through scraping or provide clear redirection to Taskboard for a unified task management experience.

Desirable Additional Features and Future Enhancements

  • Advanced Task Management: Enhance task management capabilities by enabling users to upload attachments and share tasks (via a supplementary database), thereby enriching collaboration and file management within the platform.

  • Progressive Web App (PWA) Support: Ensure future readiness and accessibility by making the application PWA-compatible, allowing users to seamlessly access and use the platform across various devices and platforms, even when not using desktop Google Chrome.

  • Plugin Expansion: Extend the reach and accessibility of the application by developing and supporting plugins for other popular browsers, such as Safari, providing users with a consistent experience across different browser environments.

All the foundational features for my MVP product, Kanban Tasks, are now in place! The journey has been challenging but rewarding, and the product is currently in the private beta testing stage. 

If you're a Google Workspace user eager to explore this tool, let me know! Your feedback is invaluable. 

I'm building this in public! So you can view my updates at my Twitter

Kanban Tasks
Shared Kanban Boards with your Team
Start using Kanban Tasks for free. No credit card required. Just sign up with your Google Account and start managing your tasks in a Kanban Board directly in your Google Workspace.
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