Xembly Reviews

Xembly was a promising tool, but the recent turn of events leaves a lot to be desired. Here's my breakdown:

What I Liked:
- Meeting Summaries: These were quite good, comparable to other meeting assistants, and definitely a helpful feature.
- Google Calendar Integration: Initially, I was skeptical about accessing everything through Google Calendar, but it turned out to be super convenient. No need to juggle multiple platforms for meeting summaries, recordings, and notes.
- Automated Task Creation: This was the standout feature for me. Xena not only summarized meetings but also created tasks and assigned them to the right people. It saved me from digging through meeting notes to find my to-dos, presenting them all in one place.
- Proactive Slack Interaction: Xena's ability to block time on my calendar when it noticed I was overwhelmed was a thoughtful touch. Its proactive approach to managing my schedule was impressive.

The Letdown:
However, all these positives are overshadowed by the abrupt cessation of services. As of June 1st, Xembly has shut down its customer-facing services, rendering the platform non-functional via Chrome Extension or Slack App/web. This sudden move, without prior warning or clear instructions on data retrieval, has left me frustrated.

- Access Denied: I can't log in anymore, despite having granted all necessary permissions in Google. My admin dashboard is locked, and I have no access to my previous data.
- No Warning: There was no advance notice about the shutdown. Users like me are left in the lurch, unable to retrieve our important data or understand the sudden change.
- Lifetime Subscription? More like lifetime frustration. What about those of us who invested in lifetime subscriptions? The abrupt halt without any compensation or transition plan makes it hard to trust this team in the future.

Final Verdict:
Xembly had the potential to be a game-changer, but their handling of the shutdown has been extremely disappointing. I’m giving it 1 taco due to the lack of communication, abrupt service termination, and leaving users stranded without access to their data or any form of recompense for lifetime subscriptions. This experience has eroded my trust in the team and their future endeavors.

tl;dr: awesome tool (yet not perfect) with really great capabilities and some unique behaviors that make it fully deserve 5 Tacos.

I was very intrigued when I saw some of Xembly's Xena's capabilities - specifically the ability to have the assistant reschedule meetings, copy it on Email Messages, etc - awesome features that you don't see with most other assistants.
I bought the Tier 3 license pretty much on the spot.
I've been using Xena for about a week now, and all I have to say is WOW.
After trying a good number of these types of assistants over the last year, here is why I think Xena is better:
1. Meeting summaries are great. This isn't necessarily unique, some meeting assistants are better at it than others, but most can do a decent job. These are good and I'm happy about that.
2. Interaction with Xena happens inside Google Calendar. I'll admit at first I thought it was a bit weird - but it's AWESOME to access all of your meeting summaries, recordings, notes, etc on the calendar, and not having to log into a different website to search them.
3. OK, here's the biggest one for me. With all of the meeting assistants that I've tried so far, the biggest miss for me was that while they can provide summaries and even to-dos, they are always just there in the meeting. Xena actually automatically creates Tasks from meetings, and (mostly) assigns them to the right person. You can then check them off or ask others for status. But the greatest thing is that you can look at all of your tasks across meetings in one place... I have so many meetings that it's impossible for me to go back to each meeting summary to check for my to-dos, and this simply solves it.
4. Interacting with Xena in Slack is awesome. I love how it proactively blocked time on my calendar since it noticed my calendar was packed and I may not have time to check slack and emails. It asked me questions proactively and didn't just wait for me ask it to do things.

Having said all that - is the tool perfect?
Of course not. It still has transcribing errors sometimes, and it creates tasks for things that aren't necessarily tasks (i.e. "if we wanted to do that, we'd have to reimplement the entire project from scratch" --> task created to 'Reimplement the entire project from scratch')

I also don't like that I need to use Google Forms to add users to my account...

But considering tools on AppSumo are always a little underbaked, this one is already doing awesome things for me and I can't wait to see where it will go from here!