Two awesome things are going on at Flowdock today. Number one, we are about to launch a new front page with a new no-BS message: Flowdock – Team Inbox With Chat. The other thing is the Flowdock API. Flowdock thrives on integrations to other tools that the team is using. That’s why we are now launching the Flowdock API.

Version 1!

In the first version we start with a simple API enabling posting new items to Flowdock’s Team Inbox (previously called Influx).
» See the API Docs

We’ve also wrapped up a Ruby Gem to get you going in just seconds if Ruby is your choice of language.
» Check out the Ruby Gem and install it

Example 1: Custom Feedback Form

Here’s a quick example to get you going. Getting user feedback directly to Flowdock is great. You can talk it over quickly with your team and decide what to do.

This Sinatra app shows a feedback form and sends the feedback to your Flowdock flow using the Flowdock API Ruby Gem.

The view:

The Sinatra controller:

Example 2: FogBugz integration (no coding required!)

The Flowdock Influx API is perfect for use with any service which has web hook / url trigger functionality, such as FogBugz.

Simply by configuring the URL Triggers plugin in Fogbugz (means filling out one form), you can get nicely formatted notifications to Flowdock. We’ve created example instructions for FogBugz Cases, but you can get notifications from wiki changes etc by adding small modifications and creating new triggers.

» Check out the instructions

Example 3: Deployment notifications

Check out our new awesome deployment notification scripts using the Flowdock API.

If you implement an integration using the Flowdock API, let us know, and we’ll spread the good word!

Version 2?

What would you like to see in the Flowdock API? Here’s a few initial ideas:

* bots! (Check out the awesome Flowdock bot implementation by the guys at MyNewsDesk).
* fetching messages by tag – slideshow of latest #sketches ?
* Fetching influx messages
* Jabber integration to use Flowdock with other chat clients (See this idea/discussion in our UserVoice)

Let us know what you think via UserVoice or in the comments.

Our planned schedule and features held! Rails API documentation with versions support! Full search! OpenId support! Gravatarrrrs! Check it out!

Or install the Firefox Search plugin rrrright here and fire up that cracker!

Seriously though, the deployment was delayed by a small surge of bugs found right before the intended deployment window, so we are about 20 hours late. It took about four hours because of all the version-specific documentation generation. We are sorry for any inconveniences you may have experienced and we hope you’ll enjoy this installment of Rails-doc.

As of right now Rails-doc.org website is opened. There isn’t much content yet, but a lot of promises, including the first release which is scheduled for next week, current target being Thursday, June 19th. Rails-doc is a community powered Ruby on Rails documentation app. It is open and social. It features an intelligent keyword search that is almost as fast as the native search in your browser. We have two clear goals, the second depending on the first:

1. To provide a highly usable interface for perusing Rails documentation and for contributing with notes and examples and to thus collect a good amount of additional Rails documentation.
2. To expand the actual documentation of Rails by providing tools to active members of the Rails-doc community for incorporating the notes into creating an extended unified improved documentation.

The first release will be the fruit of three sprints’ work from our core Rails-doc development team consisting of three active members and a few of much less active ones. Rails-doc.org is also the pilot project for APIdock, Nodeta’s new social software documentation app.

Many others have tried to develop a Rails documentation app, but none have succeeded. Regardless of that, I know that…

…we indeed can do it!

Check it out!