Your typical admin tasks?

You can try to predict your tasks, but you'll often find that it's a waste of time. Sure, there are the basics, like sending a user a password reset link, but for the very domain-specific things... I try not to get ahead of myself.

I have always found that getting a manual process down to a fine art is the best way to introduce some sort of automation — in this case a workflow in an administrative panel.

Have you built a custom admin panel to carry those?

No, I have better things to do, so I look for an extensible library that handles the basics. In Rubyland, there's ActiveAdmin, RailsAdmin, and Administrate. I like ActiveAdmin, though its DSL takes some getting used to.

For TinyVoicemail, I have a CRUD interface that handles a lot of the reporting. I have an interface to send one-off emails and the ability to resend an activation code to users. It's still an infant, so I'm sure there's more I'll be adding, but for now since its so young it's fine to have manual processes.

Admin tasks I typically deal with:

• writing emails for marketing campaigns

• sending emails for marketing campaigns

• cron jobs that call into APIs/scapers to load data into my system. After it's in the system, quickly verifying it looks good (changing status = submitted => status = published if it's fine) and ready for end user consumption.

• checking user reported flagging of items are present and need attention

• checking user reported feedback

• checking bug reports

• checking new relic reports

• going through email

I'm sure there's more- I'll think about it and chime in again if I think about others.