nat-headshot

Nathalia Sandoval

In my first interview with Courier, when my now-boss was telling me about the company, he stopped and said, “I see your display name is not the same as the name on your application. Are there any other pronouns that I should be using?” It was a small gesture, but it made an impact on me. The moment hinted at a company culture built around treating people with respect and appreciating authenticity. Courier is still a very small company building the foundation of a diverse team, but even as we grow, I’m confident that this will remain a priority for us in the future. 

Encouraging employees to be their true selves in big and little ways is important because it’s the right thing to do—it also happens to be the best way to recruit a diverse team of employees. And increasing diversity improves many facets of an organization: Productivity, profits, employee retention, and even the ability to navigate conflict.

In honor of Pride month, let’s talk about the power of diversity and how tech companies should improve inclusion in their organizations.

## Diverse Teams Make More Money
It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about racial diversity, gender diversity, or other forms of diversity—people with different experiences often come up with different ideas from each other. Those unique insights drive innovation and better decision making, which, in turn, increases profits.

When looking at your demographics, it’s important to consider power and hierarchies. If most of your diversity is at the entry-level while management and leadership remain primarily white, cis, able-bodied, and male, you aren’t going to see the same results as companies with diversity at every level. [Organizations with above-average diversity in management see 19% higher innovation revenue](https://www.bcg.com/en-us/publications/2018/how-diverse-leadership-teams-boost-innovation) than companies with below-average diversity in management. The same study found that teams with above-average diversity in management also had [EBIT](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/ebit.asp) (Earnings Before Interest and Taxes) margins that were 9% higher than organizations with below-average diversity in management.

Studies that zero in on the results of increased diversity when it comes to specific demographics see interesting results too. A study that compared two genders (men and women) found that companies where [30% or more of their executives were women](https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters), outperform their peers. Unfortunately, the study didn’t acknowledge or account for other genders.
Available research indicates these results apply to LGBTQ+ diversity as well. A study of the LGBTQ+ inclusivity at 657 publicly-traded U.S. companies found strong evidence that “[more LGBT-friendly firms have higher profitability](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acfi.12787) and higher stock market valuations.” Diversity makes sound commercial sense.

## Differences Improve Collaboration and Innovation
Diversity also affects how teams collaborate and innovate in complex ways. Overall, the more diverse a team is, the more creative and innovative they’ll be. Mixed-gender teams can [better manage group conflict](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749597816302205) compared to homogenous teams and can better maximize creativity among team members.

But some situations can thwart the benefits diversity brings. For instance, [stress makes people in groups start leaning back into homogenous thinking](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/job.2630?af=R). In turn, this can discourage employees who belong to marginalized groups from speaking up. Because these insights are no longer being shared, the benefits of diversity are lost, while employees feel detached and alienated. 

It’s also important to remember that employees who experience oppression are more likely to burn out. Glassdoor reviewed 209,112 workplace reviews and found that [LGBTQ+ employees are 51% more likely to report burnout](https://www.glassdoor.com/research/pride-month-2022/) than their coworkers. A 2021 McKinsey report shared that LGBTQ+ women, disabled women, and Black women [experienced more microaggressions](https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace) than their peers and noted that, “Women who regularly experience microaggressions are…almost three times as likely to say that in the past few months they have struggled to concentrate at work as a result of stress.”

In other words, if you want to experience the benefits of diversity, you must create a place where people can genuinely let their guard down and be themselves. That means increasing diversity in your team so employees don’t feel tokenized. This also means making your workplace a safe place to be a marginalized person. How do you do that? By making it an unsafe place for discrimination and harassment. For instance, leadership and management need to step in and say something when they see a microaggression happening. They need to make it an uncomfortable place to foster exclusion and hate.

Harvard Business Review and Glassdoor partnered up for a series of [studies on diversity in the workplace](https://hbr.org/2020/01/the-new-analytics-of-culture) and published an article on their findings in 2021. The author recommends “encouraging diverse cultural ideas while fostering agreement among employees about the importance of a common set of organizational norms and beliefs.” 

## Inclusivity is a Major Factor in Employee Retention
Organizations looking to reduce employee turnover should consider that the level of inclusion employees feel at work greatly influences their career decisions. Whether or not your employees decide to take another job could come down to how comfortable they feel at work.

A survey of 1,789 full-time U.S. employees and 2,000 live participant experiments found “high belonging was linked to a [whopping 56% increase in job performance](https://hbr.org/2019/12/the-value-of-belonging-at-work), a 50% drop in turnover risk, and a 75% reduction in sick days. For a 10,000-person company, this would result in annual savings of more than $52M.”

A 2020 Catalyst survey of 2,100 employees at large corporations found that [35% of an employee’s emotional engagement in their job](https://www.catalyst.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Getting-Real-About-Inclusive-Leadership-Report-2020update.pdf) and 20% of an employee’s decision to stay or leave their current organization is determined by inclusivity.

That’s not  surprising, given that feeling included at work is likely to make people happier, and happier employees are more likely to stay. What’s more interesting is that the retention benefits go beyond the demographics most affected. Workplaces with more gender diversity [may see lower turnover](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0170840619875480) in women and men. (Unfortunately, the research on inclusion didn’t include nonbinary employees.)

## 4 Tips for Increasing Employee Diversity 
To get these benefits, organizations need to clarify where they stand on diversity at every stage of the hiring process. Candidates who are most likely to improve the diversity of your organization will also be looking most carefully at how you talk about and approach diversity.

### 1. Assume many of your LGBTQ+ employees aren’t out at work
The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law surveyed 935 adults who identified as “LGBT” in May 2021. They reported that [50% of LGBT employees aren’t out to their supervisor](https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/lgbt-workplace-discrimination/), and 25% aren’t out to anyone at work. That’s likely because 45% of LGBT employees have already experienced unfair treatment at work at some point in their lives. Keep in mind that many employees will be reluctant to be themselves due to past experiences.

It’s your job to make your organization's culture so welcoming and authentic that employees feel comfortable enough to be themselves. Have leadership and management start putting pronouns in their bios. Don’t invest in anti-LGBTQ+ companies or donate money to anti-LGBTQ+ politicians. Bring in diversity and inclusion educators from the communities they teach about. Never stop actively working to improve your organization’s diversity and inclusion.

### 2. Understand no marginalized communities are a monolith
 Oppression and inclusivity are not simple things. Especially at work. A Catalyst report on inclusivity put it well: “[Employees' work lives are often affected by their experiences as people with intersectional identities](https://www.catalyst.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Getting-Real-About-Inclusive-Leadership-Report-2020update.pdf) such as gender, race, ethnicity, religion, age, LGBTQ+ identity, etc. More granular views of employee experiences of inclusion are needed to truly make an impact.” The report advises organizations to avoid tokenizing employees and build inclusivity into the company culture so it goes beyond policies.
Review your diversity and inclusion strategy and tactics. How is intersectionality addressed in the way you approach diversity and inclusion? If you don’t know the answer, bring in a dedicated diversity and inclusion educator to help you learn more and build intersectionality into your approach.

### 3. Don’t justify why diversity is vital to your organization
Organizations that trip over themselves to explain they’re inclusive because it’s good for business risk alienating potential employees. Research shows employees are more likely to view an organization favorably if they make it clear to potential employees that [honoring diversity is at the core of the business](https://hbr.org/2022/06/stop-making-the-business-case-for-diversity) and avoid any urge to explain why. For example, instead of saying. “We value diversity because it benefits us as well as our employees,” you could say something like, “Honoring and respecting employee diversity is and will continue to be a core value here.”

### 4. Take action
To impact future and current employees, you need to do more than learn and communicate; you’ll also need to take action. Think in big and small ways, such as ensuring health insurance covers gender-affirming care and encouraging employees to add pronouns to bios and email signatures. Ultimately each decision adds up to a culture that either helps employees thrive or holds them (and you) back.

You should prioritize diversity for your organization because it’s the right thing to do. If you can build an inclusive environment where employees like me can be their real selves, every part of the business will benefit, too.
All this is not to say that Courier has mastered building a diverse LGBTQ+ team (or will be able to do so in the near future), but we’re definitely taking a whack at it and I feel confident that we’ll get pretty close. To be a part of this mission, come [join the team](https://jobs.lever.co/trycourier)!


Mother duck swimming with her pride colorful babies in a pond surrounded by tall grass and a setting sun

pride-hiring-2022-header

In honor of Pride month, let’s talk about the power of queer diversity and how tech companies should improve inclusion in their organizations.

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How LGBTQ+ Diversity Builds Better Companies

Troy's Avatar

Troy Goode

We’re excited to announce that we’ve raised $35M to provide engineering teams with fantastic notification infrastructure! The round was led by GV with participation from our existing investors at Bessemer Venture Partners and Matrix Partners.

*“Courier is building the future of notification infrastructure. The company has a fast-growing set of customers with a need to provide the best possible notification experience. GV is thrilled to lead Courier's Series B and partner with Troy Goode and the entire executive team as they deliver on an unparalleled approach to software notifications."* - Sangeen Zeb, GV

Courier’s vision is to be a single source of truth of all of the end-user’s notifications. We aim to bring together all notifications, whether they may be from mobile, email, Slack, or any other channel, to a single point of easy access to lift the burden of improving the notification experience from the end-user. 

The next incremental step on this road is to begin to improve mobile notifications. According to a Courier survey of 157 notification recipients, respondents are more likely to engage with a smartphone notification than a text, email, push, or in-app notification. Our first goal for our Series B, therefore, is to improve the user experience of mobile notifications and we are starting down this path today by announcing new advanced mobile notification capabilities for our platform.  Check out the video below to learn more about our new mobile offerings!

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tPB2wFI7u0I" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

## A new category of software: Notification Infrastructure
Every piece of software in the world sends notifications, and just about every software team has had to build the infrastructure needed to deliver those notifications in-house. This ubiquitous need for notification infrastructure demands its own category of software, which gives developers the option to use a third party API instead of building an entirely new notification system from scratch. 

As a former engineer and engineering executive, I’ve experienced the pain involved with building and scaling notification infrastructure too many times. Every time I was tasked with building a new notification system for a new product, I wished there was a service I could reach for to free up my engineering team and avoid the future headache that I knew would follow.

The lack of this type of solution is what drove me to found Courier. 

Courier delivers notification infrastructure to our customers as SaaS. At the center of our product is an API designed for engineering teams. This API allows developers to send notifications across any channel as well as manage user data, preferences, notification workflows, and more. In addition to the API, we provide a web Studio that allows our customers to easily design omni-channel notifications, view logs across notification channels, and providers, as well as visually build out notification workflows.  

We’ve come a long way over the last three years, both as a company and a product, thanks in large part to our customers. Courier is used by hundreds of fantastic software companies such as New Relic, LaunchDarkly, Lattice, and Uservoice. These companies have partnered with Courier to deliver a better product experience to their users while dramatically reducing the amount of time and money spent on building and maintaining their own internal notification infrastructure.

*“Before Courier, we were spending tons of time integrating with every delivery platform every time a customer requested a new connection from us. But now it’s as easy as making an API call. So, so excited about this launch. Huge congratulations to the Courier team!”*  - Eric Koslow, CEO, Lattice

## What’s next: notifications that delight, not distract 
Product notifications are one of the rare parts of software that affect nearly everyone on earth. If you use the internet for work, to buy flights, to network, or to do just about anything else, you receive notifications from that software. 

At their worst, product notifications are annoying, distracting, and anxiety inducing. They can come through different channels from text to email to mobile notifications - or from all of them at the same time, acting as a constant disrupter in the user’s life. At their best, product notifications deliver a delightful experience and make sure that we’re aware of key events that might help catch a flight, meet a deadline at work, or connect with a loved one. In other words, they provide useful interruptions that improve the user’s life.

We will use this new capital to continue to invest in our core mission of making all product notifications delightful, starting now with mobile. What that means today is delivering an amazing toolset to the builders, product and engineering teams, who are in charge of developing product notification systems for their apps. We believe that just about everyone in these roles wants to deliver great notifications with excellent user experience, and that the better the tools and resources at their disposal are, the more able they will be to accomplish this. 

## Introducing Courier’s new mobile capabilities
Today, we’re announcing a new set of two tools and resources for product builders to deliver delightful notifications for their mobile applications. Mobile notifications are the most ubiquitous type of notifications and the one with most potential to annoy users. One annoying notification experience can result in a user turning off notifications altogether, which greatly reduces both the utility and engagement of any mobile application.

The first is our new mobile SDK. This SDK makes it easier for developers to manage push tokens across devices and operating systems. This gives developers better control and visibility, making it easy for them to deliver a more consistent and customized experience for their users based on the best way to reach and engage their users for their specific app. Here’s an example:

``` json
// Register multiple devices for a given user. Notifications will be delivered to each 
// device in a single send call.

{
  "tokens": [
    {
      "token": "abc123",
      "provider_key": "apn",
      "properties": {
        "test": true
      },
      "device": {
        "app_id": "com.my.app",
        "platform": "iOS",
        "model": "iPhone 13"
      }
    },
    {
      "token": "cba321",
      "provider_key": "firebase-fcm",
      "tracking": {
        "ip": "127.0.0.1",
        "lat": "0.0",
        "long": "123"
      }
    }
  ]
}

```

The second is our new mobile notification inbox. This inbox can be easily integrated with any mobile application, and gives the user a central place to view notifications, even if they have disabled push notifications. This gives the end user the ability to better customize their experience using an app by deciding when to access notifications, thereby reducing the number of interruptions mobile notifications cause in their daily lives while increasing engagement with the notifications developers deem necessary to use the product properly.

Visit this page to learn more about this new mobile functionality and request a demo and checkout this video of me demoing them below.

## Conclusion: The work is just beginning
Our mission to make notifications delightful is a big one and there’s still a ton of work to do. We could not have made it to where we are today without all of our fantastic customers, New Relic,  LaunchDarkly, Lattice, Color Health, and many others who share our belief in the value of delivering a great product notification experience. This new funding presents a great opportunity to achieve this ultimate goal. Get a demo [here](https://www.courier.com/features/mobile/) to learn more about Courier’s goals for mobile notifications!

If you are interested in helping to build the future of notification technology starting with mobile channels, we are [hiring](https://jobs.lever.co/trycourier)!


A Courier pigeon is propelled forward by the energy from a rocket labeled GV.

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A Courier pigeon is propelled forward by the energy from a rocket labeled GV

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Courier Raised a $35M Series B to Make Notifications Delightful

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Nick Gottlieb

We’re excited to announce a powerful new feature for the Courier platform: Courier Automations. Courier Automations is a toolset that includes both an API and a visual builder that allows anyone to easily configure logic for notification workflows. Need to send a reminder to class attendees 10 minutes before the class starts? Need to page an on-call engineer on multiple channels until they respond? These use cases and more can be achieved quickly and easily with Automations. 

## Why we built Automations
As developers, notifications are the primary way that the applications we build communicate with our end-users and the use cases vary widely. Some use cases are very straightforward and simply require that a single message goes to a single user once. Many notifications however require more sophisticated orchestration in order to deliver the desired user experience. Most developers today end up building a separate service to manage this logic. This results in additional infrastructure and development overhead and often in a less than ideal end-user experience. 

We built Automations so that developers can deliver the ideal notification experience without needing to build and maintain yet another service.

## What are product and engineering teams doing with Courier Automations today?

While today marks the official release of Automations, many of our customers are already using Automation to power key parts of their product experience.

The engineering team at [LaunchDarkly](https://launchdarkly.com/), a feature management platform, uses Automations to define the logic for notifications associated with approvals for their customers' feature releases. Any time approval is requested or granted, an Automation is triggered to ensure all the relevant stakeholders are alerted. You can read more about their use case here.

[Officevibe](https://officevibe.com/), which is an employee experience platform, regularly sends out Slack notifications on behalf of their customers asking employees to complete a brief survey. Their engineering team utilizes the Automations API to create lists of users for whom the Slack survey could not be delivered and send them an email survey instead. 

For [Yoga International](https://yogainternational.com/), an online Yoga platform, it's essential that they deliver a seamless experience to their customers from the time they register for a live class through to the start of class. Their engineering team utilizes the Automations API to send timely reminders to class attendees for each live class that happens on their platform.

## “Meetings Reminder”
Let's build a meetings reminder that sends an email reminder 10 minutes before the meeting and a link to the meeting notes two hours after the meeting.

**Design the Messages:**
1. Log into [Courier](https://app.courier.com/) and navigate to the [Notifications Designer](https://app.courier.com/designer/notifications)
2. Design an email reminder that will  be sent 10 minutes before the meeting with the Gmail provider (or any email provider of your choice)
![announcing-courier-automations-1](//images.ctfassets.net/z7iqk1q8njt4/2di1jnFJgbxPu9FRtn1xDg/edd5e62f03fda896df4139b1a1868f2d/announcing-courier-automations-1.png)
3. Access the template ID in the settings of that notification and save it for future reference
4. Design an SMS reminder that will be sent two hours after the meeting with the Twilio provider (or any email provider of your choice)
![announcing-courier-automations-2](//images.ctfassets.net/z7iqk1q8njt4/5T0R822GmEl85UJjpxTT8z/32a31f01a4533dceac58da99e62e7f87/announcing-courier-automations-2.png)
5. Access the template ID in the settings of that notification and save it for future reference

### How To Create an Automation Using the API (Node.js Example)

1. Within your Node.js app, install [node-fetch](https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-fetch)
	`npm install node-fetch`
2. Navigate to the [Automations API Reference](https://www.courier.com/docs/reference/automation/invoke/) and copy the starter code
3. Add an `automations` object with an array of objects called `steps`

```json
"automation": {
      "steps": [
        {
          "action": "send",
          "template": "template_id",
        }
      ]
    },
```

[Automations API Reference](https://www.courier.com/docs/reference/automation/invoke/)

[Automations Docs](https://www.courier.com/docs/guides/tutorials/how-to-automate-message-sequences/)
4. For this example, we will need three steps: send, delay, and another send. The first send step will send the 10 minute reminder. The delay step will wait for two hours after the meeting. The third step will send an SMS with a link to the meeting notes.

```json
"automation": {
    "steps": [
      {
        "action": "send",
        "template": "template_id_1"
      },
      {
        "action": "delay",
        "duration": "130 minutes"
      },
      {
        "action": "send",
        "template": "template_id_2"
      }
    ]
  },
```

5. Update `template_id_1` with the notification template from Step 3 of “Design the Message” and update `template_id_2` with the notification template from Step 5 of “Design the Message”
6. Update the `brand` and `recipient` attributes with your preferred [brand](https://app.courier.com/designer/brands) and [recipient](https://app.courier.com/users) IDs
7. If your steps reference any Notification Templates, update the ID `template` attribute
8. Run your code to trigger the Automation

```js
// Dependencies to install:
// $ npm install node-fetch --save

const fetch = require('node-fetch');

const options = {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    Accept: 'application/json',
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    Authorization: 'Bearer replace-token'
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    "automation": {
      "steps": [
        {
          "action": "send",
          "template": "template_id_1"
        },
        {
          "action": "delay",
          "duration": "130 minutes"
        },
        {
          "action": "send",
          "template": "template_id_2"
        }
      ]
    },
    "brand": "W50NC77P524K14M5300PGPEK4JMJ",
    "template": "EXAMPLE_NOTIFICATION",
    "recipient": "8ec8c99a-c5f7-455b-9f60-8222b8a27056",
    "data": {
      "name": "Jane Doe",
      "age": 27
    },
    "profile": {
      "phone_number": "2025550125",
      "email": "hello@example.com"
    }
  })
};

fetch('https://api.courier.com/automations/invoke', options)
  .then(response => response.json())
  .then(response => console.log(response))
  .catch(err => console.error(err));
```

9. Check the [Datalog](https://app.courier.com/logs/automations) for delivery status and error messages

### How To Create An Automation Using the Studio
This example demonstrates integrating an API V2 notification send call (Step 5 of "Design the Message").

1. Navigate to the [Automations](http://app.courier.com/automations) page
2. Create an Automation Template from scratch
![announcing-courier-automations-3](//images.ctfassets.net/z7iqk1q8njt4/RjqcqLCVNS9lfXujVjfYi/53e5ac9daa1c3bd6127cd12d31240d98/announcing-courier-automations-3.png)
3. Add a send step and select the “10 minute reminder” for the Notification
![announcing-courier-automations-4](//images.ctfassets.net/z7iqk1q8njt4/376Kg67N5NuoSnRFYkVMD2/d215697c258a3f184426eae7a0acc2ec/announcing-courier-automations-4.png)
4. Add a delay step and update the length to 130 minutes
5. Switch over to code mode (top right, under the the “Publish Changes” button) and add an API V2 notification send call for the SMS with a link to the meeting notes

```json
{
      "action": "send",
      "message": {
        "to": {
      		"email": "example@email.com"
    	},
    	"content": {
    		"title": "Meeting Notes",
    		"body": "Link to meeting notes: ..."
    	}
      }
    }
```

![announcing-courier-automations-5](//images.ctfassets.net/z7iqk1q8njt4/5tHxpIlEfnpIxdYADaM9mk/cda00d734408dde76ef31a4ada77765e/announcing-courier-automations-5.png)
*This step can be done within the designer by following Step 3*

6. Select a trigger for the Automation (if no trigger is selected, the Automation can be triggered manually with a curl command)
7. Publish changes to save your Automation
8. Create a Test Event to test your Automation

```json
{
  "data": {},
  "profile": {
  	"email": "example@email.com",
	“name”: “Your Name”
  }
}
```

![announcing-courier-automations-6](//images.ctfassets.net/z7iqk1q8njt4/1wvA9W2yUDxkEZj6os4yNA/ace96c64264543efaa8a78099cc9b241/announcing-courier-automations-6.png)
9. Invoke your Automation in the Designer or copy the starter code and run it in a terminal

## Getting Started
[Sign up for a free Courier account](https://app.courier.com/signup) to get started with Automations. Courier’s Free Tier includes Automations and up to 10,000 notifications per month.

Several people receive messages by courier pigeon at exactly the same time

automations-announcement-header

Courier Automations is a toolset that includes both an API and a visual builder that allows anyone to easily configure logic for notification workflows.

automations-announcement-thumbnail

Announcing Courier Automations: Application Logic for Notifications

vahagn-headshot

Vahagn Aharonian

It requires an ample amount of time, effort, and resources to produce great, user-friendly documentation. Good documentation is fundamental to the way engineers get started with a product and ultimately use it in the long run, which makes it essential to both user retention and growth. Building our documentation at [Courier](https://www.courier.com/) was a task we therefore took very seriously.

We originally created our documentation for a very small, specific audience with specific uses for Courier. Over time, however, our user base, their use cases, and our product itself has grown dramatically. To cover our bases, we needed to improve and expand our documentation and this time, we wanted to make it scalable and with a focus on a great user experience. We decided to use [Docusaurus](https://docusaurus.io/) to do so, which allowed our engineers to collaborate and update our documentation more efficiently. Here’s how we built our documentation and what we learned in the process that might be useful to you. 

![built-our-docs-1](//images.ctfassets.net/z7iqk1q8njt4/5rCidPNvia7pzkFHRThDWg/0eee977765165d61b895bf2aac459ef0/built-our-docs-1.png)

## Identifying challenges with our documentation process
When we first started Courier, we just wanted [documentation](https://www.courier.com/docs/) that explained how to use Courier as a product. So, we found a tool that could help with that: ReadMe. 

ReadMe gave us enough features to get started with our documentation. We could create and update our documentation when needed and without much effort, but we couldn’t collaborate as much as we needed and could only save one draft at a time. This was a major challenge because anyone could easily overwrite another’s work if they were working on the same file at the same time. ReadMe also had a flat file structure which was inconvenient to use. There was also no real [Git](https://git-scm.com/) integration into their CLI, so we had issues with document versioning and collaboration. Ultimately, this meant that docs were in the approval process for an unnecessary length of time and not everyone was able to make suggestions for improvement as they came up.

So some years and a few significant product updates down the line, we knew that it was time for a major documentation update. ReadMe was easy to get started with and served us well for our first couple of years, but we needed something that addressed our more specific pain points.

## Prerequisites for a documentation tool
So we knew we needed something new. The next step was to decide which solutions were necessary to address our pain points for the next version of our documentation. The team came up with a list of requirements for documentation tools we would use in the future.

### Limitless Collaboration
A happy challenge with a growing company is the need to scale almost every aspect of it as the team and product grow. As Courier’s technical team grows, we have more subject matter experts to provide input on documentation, which is good news for the quality of docs. However, more SMEs mean that we need more people to be able to collaborate on a draft at a time. Since the team will only continue to grow from here, limitless collaboration was one of the basic necessities for our future docs tool(s).

### Versioning
A growing company comes with the inevitability of a growing product. As new versions of the product are released, there will always be an overlap time when some of our users are using an older version of the product and some are on the newest version. Our documentation needs to cater to both of these groups of users, which means to make sure everyone has the correct information, versioning is an important docs feature. For example, we need to keep the documentation of our API 1.0.0 version separate from the one for API 2.0.0 and ensure that it is possible to update and switch between versions quickly and easily.

Version was also important to allow for the option to separate and store drafts away from the official documentation so that the team would be comfortable working without the pressure of a breaking change. 

### Link Validation
One of the worst things that can happen to user experience in product documentation is for a user to click on a link and get a 404 error. It makes it more difficult to keep users in the docs and following instructions, which can ultimately affect how many users successfully get started with the product and/or are able to troubleshoot on their own. A docs tool that would include link validation for internal links would go a long way toward avoiding damaging errors and UX issues.

### Localization 
We have customers from different ethnic groups all around the world who speak a diverse set of languages. To cater to a global audience, users need to be able to read our documentation and get the help they need, regardless of the language they speak. Localizing our documentation like link validation, improves user retention and UX.

## Docusaurus matched our list
With our list in place, we were able to begin researching to find the right new tool. After some research, we discovered that [Docusaurus](https://docusaurus.io/), which is built on React, allowed for limitless collaboration, versioning, link validation, and localization. 

With Docusaurus, we built our docs as markdowns and exported them as a static site. We created reusable custom components and now have complete control over how we build our documentation. The [MDX](https://mdxjs.com/) integration is also particularly useful, as it allows any JavaScript code to be embedded into the .md file. 

With a few lines of code, we could tweak our theme to suit our brand colors or customize any part of our documentation by [swizzling](https://docusaurus.io/docs/swizzling) the components we wanted. We also could use plugins to extend the functionality we got from Docusaurus. An example is the plugin for our search feature that allows customers to find relevant documentation.

![built-our-docs-2](//images.ctfassets.net/z7iqk1q8njt4/7umSHw0duZhot5KinxvX5g/1cf7082bd4060524f991dda6f714814b/built-our-docs-2.png)

I also built our custom API explorer myself, which enables developers to try out our API methods directly from our docs. I built it as an embedded React component placed in the MDX file. Because we host our documentation on [Vercel](https://vercel.com/), we could utilize Vercel Functions to proxy the API Explorer requests to the Courier API through our docs backend endpoint.

![built-our-docs-3](//images.ctfassets.net/z7iqk1q8njt4/5UGnlKtqc5VETHZdpcSUO6/270125cefaca0baf3b7d712a4120c059/built-our-docs-3.png)

With Docusaurus, we have been able to build our documentation quickly and easily. We can now make updates by simply cloning the repo on [GitHub](https://github.com/), branching off our main branch, implementing the changes, and creating a pull request (PR). Once someone has reviewed and approved the PR, it’s merged with the main branch, which deploys to Vercel and updates our site with the changes.

All we need to contribute to our documentation is a GitHub account and an integrated development environment (IDE). This helps us keep track of every maintenance task for our documentation.

## What’s next for our documentation?
There are a few more goals we have for our documentation. We have yet to utilize Docusaurus’s localization feature, so that’s in the works. We have also recently made our documentation [open-source](https://github.com/trycourier/docs) to welcome external contributors. This way, the user can take ownership of the updates they want and help themselves and others who would benefit from their contribution.

Until then, learn to use Courier via our [documentation and tutorials](https://www.courier.com/docs/guides/tutorials/how-to-design-a-notification-template/). We also [live stream](https://www.twitch.tv/trycourier) content that’ll help you get [started and continue with Courier](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuONBIOzl-hypZ5qqWKDeeg).


built-our-documentation-header

To cover our bases, we needed to improve and expand our documentation and this time, we wanted to make it scalable with Docusaurus.

built-our-documentation-thumbnail

How We Built Our Documentation On Docusaurus

Aman profile pic

Aman Kandola

Last fall, we published [a post](https://www.courier.com/blog/why-remote-work-is-not-here-to-stay/) on how despite the ongoing impact of Covid-19, Courier would remain committed to keeping our office in San Francisco and focusing our hiring efforts on local talent in the Bay Area. As the company has evolved, we’ve decided to shift our approach to a remote-first model. Although we had good reasons to choose not to go remote earlier, this eventual change in mindset led to several new initiatives during the hiring process and to maintain company culture in a remote-first environment. This blog post will highlight some of these initiatives and why we chose them.

## Why weren’t we already remote?
There were a few reasons we didn’t move to remote-first sooner. Firstly, we believed it would be easier and quicker to onboard new employees in-person vs. remote. When you’re a small team, every single hire changes the entire dynamic of the company so it’s really important to make sure they have a great understanding of the company’s culture, strategy, product, tools, and customers. People generally tend to be less hesitant to ask questions when they see people in-person than over Slack, especially if they’ve never met them before. When speed is critical, poor communication can become a bottleneck and we thought focusing on in-person hires would shorten the onboarding process. Secondly, we believed that certain kinds of collaboration were not feasible in a remote environment - especially in scenarios that call for creativity and quick decisions such as product design, marketing campaign construction, and deal strategy. Third, we also believed that maintaining a physical presence as an early-stage startup would actually serve as a differentiator since we saw many other similar startups shift to remote-only and we had a handful of people join the team citing our office and the in-person experience we offered as motivating factors. We believed there were many other similar candidates who specifically sought out an in-person experience after over a year of remote-only work and we would be well-positioned to compete for their talent.

We’ve since learned that, while these assumptions were not completely unfounded, we overestimated the negative impact of shifting to remote-first. We had also always intended to eventually hire outside of the Bay Area as the company grew, but after another year of learning about the benefits of remote vs. in-person work, we decided to rapidly accelerate our timeline and immediately shift to a remote-first approach. 

There were two primary factors that led to our decision. The first is that even though we were ostensibly an in-person company, after March 2020, we never mandated office attendance even after many of the in-person restrictions were no longer legally enforced. The result was that we had many employees who, while based in the Bay Area, rarely came in person and who had onboarded and operated 100% remote since the day they joined. We found that they were just as effective as employees who were coming in regularly and we had not sacrificed any operational velocity or our existing company culture. Second, we also found that even though there were candidates who did indeed appreciate our commitment to maintaining a physical presence, there were many more who wanted the flexibility afforded by remote work. By shifting to a remote-first approach, we could actually offer an attractive work environment to both of those types of candidates and, after experimenting with this approach for a few of our open roles, we saw a large increase in our inbound talent pipeline for those roles. We simply could not move fast enough on hiring if we focused only on Bay Area talent. So if we had nothing to lose and lots to gain, it seemed like shifting to remote-first was a pretty obvious decision.

## Compensation and leveling philosophy
Of course, shifting to remote-first isn’t as simple as making an announcement and writing a post - we had to consider the long-term impact this would have on the company and how best we could support the growing percentage of our team that would be permanently remote. Firstly, we had to decide how we would compensate remote employees. We’ll be writing a separate post detailing our compensation and leveling philosophy, but ultimately, we decided it made the most sense to pay everyone the same amount regardless of where they were based (within the U.S.) and to make compensation and leveling information completely transparent internally and in all external job postings. This would be the fairest approach for all team members and would minimize the associated administrative overhead while also making expectations clear to any prospective candidates. 

## Cultural and communication expectations
We also decided to make our cultural and communication expectations more explicit in the recruiting and onboarding process for new hires. Some examples of the kind of communication behavior we now explicitly outline for all employees include: preferring public Slack channels to DMs, encouraging asynchronous communication over synchronous, and sharing notes from in-person meetings with context in Slack. We also introduced a handful of new ongoing company activities to help remote employees get to know everyone on the team such as monthly virtual hangouts (escape rooms, games, etc.), quarterly in-person events where we bring the entire team in for some fun, and starting new employees in cohorts when possible instead of by themselves and encouraging them to come in-person for at least a few days in their first few weeks (travel expenses all covered by Courier). 

## Reviews for new hires
Lastly, in an effort to help us better identify how we as a company could support new employees when they first join, we are instituting a 30 day review process for all new hires when they hit 30 days from their start date. Instead of focusing exclusively on performance indicators as most review processes do, we are going to be emphasizing behavioral indicators of success at Courier via peer reviews. Some examples of indicators that we believe will be correlated with success are “proactively asking questions”, “offering feedback”, “taking ownership”, and “proactively suggesting improvements”. The goal of this process is to help reinforce the work philosophy at Courier for new hires (and reviewers - they’ll have to be on the lookout for these behaviors) and help us think about what we should be looking for in the hiring process to make sure there is a mutual great fit with all candidates. 

## The impact of this decision
Since we announced this change to the team a few months ago, we’ve seen a largely positive reaction. Ultimately, this change allowed existing team members more flexibility since they can now live anywhere in the U.S. without any changes to their compensation or they can keep coming into the office as they already were. We’ve also noticed a significant increase in our inbound talent pipeline across all roles from candidates who want a primarily remote experience. It’s worth noting that even among the non Bay Area hires we’ve made, they’ve all come and visited at least once already and our Head of Developer Relations, Nočnica, who is based in Portland, actually cited her experience having lunch with the team in the office during the interview process as a primary factor in her decision to join Courier. We’re excited to see that this has been received well by our existing team members and potential candidates alike and will be continuing to think of improvements we can make to build a world-class workplace at Courier. 

If you’re interested in learning more about opportunities at Courier, check out our open roles [here](https://jobs.lever.co/trycourier/).


Several people sit on blue clouds away from each other with their office in a cloud at the back, but are working together remotely

now-remote-first-header

We wrote a blog post about why Courier would never be permanently remote. This post covers why we changed our minds and Courier is now a remote-first company.

now-remote-first-thumbnail

Why Courier is Now Remote-first

suhas-headshot

Suhas Deshpande

When I realized there was a leak in my home, I knew it was time to put my expertise to work. I needed to call on my years of experience and passion for my job - as a software engineer? While at first glance, it may appear that a plumber would have been a better option, my argument is that there is a step to be taken before a plumber is even involved to fix a leak. And that is to detect the leak when it first happens. 

Sure, I could have a plumber on call who checks for leaks every day, but seeing as that’s not an effective use of time or money, we needed to find an alternative to waiting for the problem to become bad enough to become a major problem. So if a 24/7 plumber-butler wasn’t an option, I thought some kind of automated system would be more realistic.

As it turns out, I had been thinking for some time about how to use a Raspberry Pi with Courier to bring notifications to life. This happened to be a perfect use case to try it out, so I decided to invest in the appropriate hardware and make use of my own software development skills to make sure that I would get a notification any time there was even a small leak in my home. This way, I’d know to call the plumber and handle the problem before it became too big to handle.

## A leak can become an expensive problem
I myself had a water leak in my apartment some time ago. Because I didn’t know there was a problem until it was already too late, I had to call for a plumber when the damage was already done. Even for a simple leak like this, I ended up spending more than $500 to fix it. 

But things could have been much worse. Major damage is often caused by mold spores.
Water leaks may also cause structural damage to property. Walls start swelling and warping, leading to cracks and holes in them. Furthermore, water leaks may negatively impact the value of a home.

I never wanted to deal with the complications, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. But of course, it was important to find a solution that would be fun and interesting as well as useful. 

## Building alerts for water leaks using Raspberry Pi
During my research for a solution in the form of alerts for water leaks, I found that I could use a small, affordable [Raspberry Pi](https://www.raspberrypi.com/) single-board computer to achieve my goal. With this tiny computer, I could read signals from my water sensor and then send those signals to my monitor. 

To develop the project, which I called [potential-octo-lamp](https://github.com/suhasdeshpande/potential-octo-lamp), I first got all the hardware I needed to detect water leaks and connect to my computer. These devices included:

* [Raspberry Pi 4 Model B](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WYC73LF?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details)
* [Floor Water Sensor for Flood and Leak Detection](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079YB1T8J?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details)
* [SanDisk 128GB Ultra MicroSDXC UHS-I Memory Card with Adapter](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GYKNCCP?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details)
* [GPIO Breakout Expansion Kit for Raspberry Pi 4B](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08736NSPK?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details)
The next step was to build “potential-octo-lamp” to send alerts for any detected water leaks. I built the project to check for leaks from the sensor using JavaScript and TypeScript programming languages. When potential-octo-lamp detects one, it then sends the result to my phone using Courier and Twilio.

With [Courier](https://www.courier.com/), I could create custom alerts and define their titles and body text. I could also specify the communication channels through which the alerts should go and the recipients of these alerts. I also added a [Twilio](https://www.twilio.com/) integration on Courier to deliver the contents of my alerts through the channels I specified — in this case, SMS and email.

## How to use potential-octo-lamp to get alerts 
Luckily, I’m a really nice guy and have made potential-octo-lamp open source. You can use my program to protect your own home from water leaks. Once you have all the hardware requirements listed above, connect your Raspberry to your water sensor. If you need help setting them up, this [tutorial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwKiiWYQies) will help. Then you can begin using potential-octo-lamp to receive alerts for water leaks in five easy steps:

### 1. Create Your Courier and Twilio Accounts
If you don’t already have [Courier](https://app.courier.com/register) and 
[Twilio](https://www.twilio.com/try-twilio) accounts, you’ll need to sign up for both to configure your alert system. You may sign up for free on Courier and Twilio using an email address. Courier also allows you to use your Google or GitHub account to create an account.

### 2. Add Your Twilio Integration in Courier
[Start by getting](https://www.courier.com/docs/guides/providers/sms/twilio/) your Account SID, Auth Token, and messaging service SID from Twilio. Then log into your Courier account and go to [Integrations](https://app.courier.com/integrations). Add the Twilio info to their corresponding fields in Courier.

### 3. Retrieve Your Courier Authorization Token
When you create an account with Courier, you get an Auth Token so that you can safely make requests to and from Courier. Once logged in, you may retrieve your Courier Auth Token from the [API keys page in Settings](https://app.courier.com/settings/api-keys).

### 4. Clone potential-octo-lamp and Add Your Courier Auth Token
Next, go to GitHub and clone [potential-octo-lamp](https://github.com/suhasdeshpande/potential-octo-lamp). Because it’s unsafe to input your Courier Auth Token directly in your code, create a .env file and add it there. That way, it’s only visible to you.

### 5. Start the App
Finally, run the following commands one after the other to install dependencies and start checking for water leaks:

>> npm install

>> npm run build

>> npm run start

<div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 200.55555555555554%; height: 0;"><iframe src="https://www.loom.com/embed/6c977bc087fd4943b27fbda8c2069f65" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;"></iframe></div>

As soon as your floor water sensor detects leaks, potential-octo-lamp sends alerts for water leaks to the recipients you added on Courier. Then you can quickly repair the leak to prevent further damage.

## Alerts are your answer to urgent situations
Potential-octo-lamp is open-source, so you can clone it and use it yourself. Any improvements or suggestions you may have are also welcome. You can raise an issue or [reach out](https://www.linkedin.com/in/suhasrdeshpande/) to me if you’d like to contribute to the project!


Two robots, one with a Courier logo and one with a Raspberry Pi logo, fix a leak.

raspberry-pi-leaks-header

I decided to invest in a Raspberry Pi and Courier to make sure that I would get a notification any time there was even a small leak in my home. 

raspberry-pi-leaks-thumbnail

How I Used Raspberry Pi to Detect Water Leaks in My Home

The consumerization of SaaS has resulted in a massive handling of PII (personally identifiable information) over recent years. The security and protection of said PII has therefore become central to the foundation of a quality SaaS product, and Courier is no different. In a world where there seems to be a new data breach every time we look, users continuously demand transparency into how their data will be handled. SaaS engineering and product teams who care about how secure their apps are are just as eager to fulfill this demand. Today, in a big step toward this transparency, we are excited to announce that Courier is now fully SOC 2 Type 2 compliant. 

But what does this mean? Software security and compliance is constantly evolving and is as complicated a topic as it is important. So we wanted to take this opportunity to talk a bit about what it means to be SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, why it is important that we are, and what our journey looked like on our way here. 

## Why Courier invested in SOC 2 compliance
Courier’s mission is to make software-to-human communication delightful, currently through providing excellent notification infrastructure. Product notifications can include a wide range of content. A rideshare app may need to include a user’s location information to provide the best experience, while a banking app may send notifications with personal financial information. Because of the sensitive nature of many notifications, it is important to us, and our customers, that Courier provides safety and security for sensitive data and peace of mind for our end users.

Also worth keeping in mind is that SaaS companies tend to use other SaaS tools to build their own products, which must be disclosed to customers using sub-processors agreements. One requirement of SOC2 compliance is ensuring that all of your sub-processors are also SOC2 compliant so this is a necessary step for providing software to many other SaaS tools.

SOC compliance is one way Courier, like other SaaS companies, can reassure customers and end users that their data remains and will continue to be as protected as possible. Having a Systems and Organizations Control (SOC) report shows that we have the important security controls in place, are using best practices to prevent, detect, and remediate any  breaches, and will be transparent with our customers in how we use their information.

 ##Why all SaaS companies should be SOC 2 Type 2 compliant
To understand the steps to take to be SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, we should better understand the myriad of SOC reports a company can produce and why SOC 2 Type 2 is the best option of them all. 

A company that is SOC 1 compliant reports on security controls around financial information and objectives. SOC 2 compliance steps beyond finance and focuses on reporting on security controls concerning the five trust services principles (TSP) including security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. Recently, there has been a trend towards producing and sharing SOC 3 reports in place of the more rigorous SOC 2 report. A SOC 3 report is typically generated during a Type II Audit and is intended to be a publicly available report that describes the internal controls a company has in place for SOC compliance at a high-level. They generally do not include enough information to be considered a substitute for a full Type II report, but can provide a third-party with general information on a company’s policies without divulging any sensitive information about internal controls. 

Because of the detail and depth provided, SOC 2 compliance is the best option for most companies. Of SOC 2 reports there are two types: Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 reports are quicker and easier to generate because they cover security controls and their functions on a single given day. Their purpose is to show that the controls exist, but do not provide any context on whether the controls are used in practice. Type 2 reports, on the other hand, consist of a one-year audit period requiring evidence of effective policy and control enforcement. . While these reports require more time and resources, they also provide a better view of the effectiveness of a company’s ability to detect and repair security vulnerabilities.

Courier wanted to be able to not only state our intent, but also prove to interested parties that we are following through, which a SOC 2 Type 2 report would allow us to do. 

## What did Courier’s journey to compliance look like?
Over a year ago, when Courier started acquiring customers in industries with sensitive data like financial services and healthcare, it became important to show our customers that their data (and their customers’ data) would be in good hands. To do so, like many early stage tech companies, we went for SOC 2 Type 1 compliance first.

In order to become Type I compliant, we needed to develop a set of policies and controls for our business practices covering a range of activities from financial reporting and hiring, to how we ship code and store data. We used a software service called Vanta, a Courier customer, to develop these policies and ensure we had covered the entire set of requirements. The process after this was fairly simple - we engaged with an auditor to go over our policies and ensure we were meeting all of the criteria to be Type I compliant. After they completed their brief audit, they generated a SOC 2 Type I report for us. We completed this in November 2020.

Since Type II compliance requires going through a one-year audit period, we had to wait a full year before we could begin the process. In December 2021, we began an engagement with [Geels-Norton](https://geelsnorton.com/#home), an advisory service that is a qualified auditor for SOC 2. In order to complete their audit, they requested and analyzed evidence from Courier that we had effectively enforced all of the necessary policies and controls for SOC 2. Some examples of evidence included proof that we enforced hard drive encryption on all devices, enforced multi-factor authentication on all engineering systems, and regularly conducted meetings with our board. Once we satisfactorily completed the audit, they issued a Type II report for Courier.

## Conclusion
The journey to ensure that we are doing our best to protect our customer’s data does not end with becoming Type II compliant. In addition to continuously evolving our policies to follow best practices in the industry and baking them into our company’s culture as we scale, we are also working towards other compliance standards such as HIPAA so that we can support healthcare organizations with their customer communication infrastructure and ISO 27001. As a provider of core infrastructure, it is extremely important to our customers that we remain on the cutting edge of security practices and we remain committed to earning their trust.


The Courier pigeon is in castle fortress surrounded by defenses to protect against imminent attack

soc2-compliant-header

This post is about what it means to be SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, why it is important that Courier now is, and what our journey looked like on our way here. 

Courier [Courier]

How LGBTQ+ Diversity Builds Better Companies

Courier Raised a $35M Series B to Make Notifications Delightful

Announcing Courier Automations: Application Logic for Notifications

How We Built Our Documentation On Docusaurus

Why Courier is Now Remote-first

How I Used Raspberry Pi to Detect Water Leaks in My Home

How Courier Became SOC 2 Type 2 Compliant

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