Feature Requests

[yggdrasil]

Please vote to have the feature request system moved here to the community. WHMCS should do something like Vivaldi does with their community here:

https://community.vivaldi.net/category/113/feature-requests

As you can see their feature requests is completely integrated into the community.

Having a separated feature system makes no sense when most WHMCS customers are active here. And some features should be discussed in the community.

So what do you think? Yes or no?

[Kian]

My 2 cents. And I admit it, I am biased.

All these feature requests systems make no sense to me. The concept of having people upvoting requests is a failure. It's so damn clear that in the end everybody wants everything. It's just a spam party of "Likes". It works in this way.

«Oh, one guy asked to add a blue icon. I want it! [Upvote] Umh... this other guy wants a red one. Well I don't really need it now but who cares? Something is Better Than Nothing [Upvote]»

Over and over again. Moving feature requests will change nothing. There is almost no way to distinguish important requests from irrelevant ones. No way to understand what are the real priorities of the community. Just people spamming likes. Developers most of the times don't give a damn since these systems are not really usable but they keep them online so that frustrated customers have a place to write their ideas that will never be implemented.

Edited August 22, 2018 by Kian

[brian!]

my two pennies on this... and I admit it, i am apathetic.

there needs to be a system where WHMCS can find out what changes their users want, how strongly supported those changes are... and then the crucial bit, those changes (if agreed to by WHMCS) should be introduced faster than the usual 5-year consultation period.... now to me it makes sense to have everything (where possible) in the same place... so community, hotfixes, feature requests etc... the idea that FR are better where they are is bizarre... at worst, it's not going to make the slightest difference to bring them in here - at best, it might bring more involvement (though I agree with Kian's comments on this)... but more involvement is pointless if the blocking of making them completed isn't resolved.

I don't know if we're effectively two different communities... e.g I would hope that anyone familiar with these f0rums, would know that it's pointless to submit/vote on a feature request... and admittedly I don't go there often, but having just taking a look at the new feature requests, their names are unfamiliar to me... so I suspect they're being sent there as a matter of routine by Support - utilising their two stock answers of sending users here for customisation and there for new features... the sad part about FR is that some of them are effectively simple customisations to do, that if they had posted in here, would get quicker solutions... but i've got better things to do that solve FR problems.

one other point - it wasn't the greatest idea to call a vote... they never work here; they're never popular (e.g hardly anyone votes) and if we learned nothing from Brexit, it's to never call a vote unless you are fairly sure of the outcome - and frankly even if the result was 100-0 in terms of yes, it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference... and now WHMCS can justify doing nothing about it based on the result (which at best is going to be split).

[bear]

2 hours ago, brian! said:

I would hope that anyone familiar with these f0rums, would know that it's pointless to submit/vote on a feature request... and admittedly I don't go there often

Exactly right. It's out of the way, extra effort to get there (frankly, I've forgotten even how to get to it, which may be the intent), find the issue you're interested in and then vote, only to have it largely ignored. At least if it were in the forums it would be far easier to see and comment on. Include a poll and you have instant results of popularity of an idea, along with commentary for improvements and more. 

Moving that to a community section makes a lot more sense, at least to me. 

 

EDIT: Just found it, and it requires a login, but doesn't say which one. Community? WHMCS billing account?
Awkward, still. 

Edited August 23, 2018 by bear

[Kian]

11 minutes ago, bear said:

EDIT: Just found it, and it requires a login, but doesn't say which one. Community? WHMCS billing account?

You need 4 accounts:

• WHMCS clientarea
• F*orum (what the hell when I write F*orum it's automatically replaced by community)
• Feature requests
• Marketplace

Forgot password? Yeah! 😩

Edited August 23, 2018 by Kian

[yggdrasil]

16 hours ago, Kian said:

My 2 cents. And I admit it, I am biased.

All these feature requests systems make no sense to me. The concept of having people upvoting requests is a failure. It's so damn clear that in the end everybody wants everything. It's just a spam party of "Likes". It works in this way.

«Oh, one guy asked to add a blue icon. I want it! [Upvote] Umh... this other guy wants a red one. Well I don't really need it now but who cares? Something is Better Than Nothing [Upvote]»

Over and over again. Moving feature requests will change nothing. There is almost no way to distinguish important requests from irrelevant ones. No way to understand what are the real priorities of the community. Just people spamming likes. Developers most of the times don't give a damn since these systems are not really usable but they keep them online so that frustrated customers have a place to write their ideas that will never be implemented.

Well, its working great for Vivaldi at least. In the end, the company is still the one deciding what gets developed and what is not. Its just giving users more voice. It will change one thing. We can comment on them with our opinions.

[yggdrasil]

25 minutes ago, bear said:

Exactly right. It's out of the way, extra effort to get there (frankly, I've forgotten even how to get to it, which may be the intent), find the issue you're interested in and then vote, only to have it largely ignored. At least if it were in the forums it would be far easier to see and comment on. Include a poll and you have instant results of popularity of an idea, along with commentary for improvements and more. 

Moving that to a community section makes a lot more sense, at least to me. 

 

EDIT: Just found it, and it requires a login, but doesn't say which one. Community? WHMCS billing account?
Awkward, still. 

I noticed many feature requests there are from newbies asking things that WHMCS can already do. So having them here, we could help those people out telling them "You can already do this, see this thread..."

It would mean many features which are not really features can be closed down. We could also subscribe for the ones we are interesting and be notified by email as well have better discussions on how to integrate things. This is already happens here in the forums. There are plenty of topics discussing how to implement a new feature. It just makes sense to have that sort of information and feedback consolidated instead of separated. I don't think most power WHMCS users even use the current feature request system. I surely don't.

[yggdrasil]

18 minutes ago, Kian said:

You need 4 accounts:

• WHMCS clientarea
• F*orum (what the hell when I write F*orum it's automatically replaced by community)
• Feature requests
• Marketplace

Forgot password? Yeah! 😩

Exactly. That is not user friendly at all.

[WHMCS John]

Hi all,

Thanks for your thoughts on this matter.

The feature request site is a very useful tool for us; it enables us to effectively gauge demand for particular features, frees up technical support resources from fielding suggestions, and allows individuals direct input on specific new features.

I agree that over the years other tools have been developed which offer even nicer features, and we are in fact developing a replacement for UseResponse software. I hope it will help improve in several of the areas you've identified. For example we want to tie the logins into a single-sign-on with the members area and community. We also want to be able to link feature requests to tasks in our internal development tracking tools so that we can provide more timely updates on what is being worked on.

Also some more quality of life changes to help eliminate moderation confusion, automatic pruning of topics which do not gain traction and increase user discovery.

Watch this space!

[brian!]

15 hours ago, WHMCS John said:

The feature request site is a very useful tool for us; it enables us to effectively gauge demand for particular features

I wouldn't think that it does... there are lots of similar features all with 1 request because users don't bother to search before submitting...

15 hours ago, WHMCS John said:

frees up technical support resources from fielding suggestions

aren't most submitters directed there from support in the first place - in other words, the suggestion has already been made, and support are spending time redirecting them there.

15 hours ago, WHMCS John said:

Also some more quality of life changes to help eliminate moderation confusion, automatic pruning of topics which do not gain traction and increase user discovery.

and then work on the holy grail - getting the requests developed and completed in less than 5 years.

15 hours ago, WHMCS John said:

Watch this space!

looks forward to 2020 with great anticipation. 📅

[yggdrasil]

On 9/1/2018 at 6:16 AM, brian! said:

I wouldn't think that it does... there are lots of similar features all with 1 request because users don't bother to search before submitting...

aren't most submitters directed there from support in the first place - in other words, the suggestion has already been made, and support are spending time redirecting them there.

and then work on the holy grail - getting the requests developed and completed in less than 5 years.

looks forward to 2020 with great anticipation. 📅

If they are developing a new system, I guess they can make the user search before hitting submit or show him a match first, that would drop most duplicated requests if the search/match system is properly designed.

I'm not convinced that a voting system is the best way to develop software either. That is based on a popularity contest, not how people use the software daily. The way this works with other companies is that they talk and get feedback from their oldest users/power users directly. There is no simple solution to deciding what gets in and what gets dropped as different people have different needs. Newbies tend to suggest gimmicks which are not required or should not be there as it makes the software more bloated and power users want things that newbies don't even understand how it works or don't require them (yet). The issue with newbies is that they drop the software fast, older users don't, they are using it for years. So in the end, those are the ones that understand how the product solves problems for them on a real business. The end idea of any software should be exactly that. Save you time = saving money, make you more productive and basically solve problems.

[Kian]

44 minutes ago, yggdrasil said:

Newbies tend to suggest gimmicks which are not required or should not be there as it makes the software more bloated

They shouldn't be allowed to partecipate. Maybe it sounds offensive but damn, it's full of their irrelevant requests.

[yggdrasil]

46 minutes ago, Kian said:

They shouldn't be allowed to partecipate. Maybe it sounds offensive but damn, it's full of their irrelevant requests.

Surprisingly I don't think they know what WHMCS does. I think most of them don't even understand what they are trying to do as a business either. Probably teenagers or one night operations. You can see this when they are surprised they have to pay for support & yearly upgrades. That alone means those people probably don't license or use any other software. WHMCS is a tool, its not going to run the business for them. Hence you see many features that make no sense.

Like someone asking for WHMCS to monitor their services and servers. Seriously? Something like Nagios that took decades to develop, and many other open source softwares and they think WHMCS can add something like this... Not going to happen, they would have to open a completely new different company just for that. And this is just stupidity because there are solutions for this and most are free. If someone is asking an integration, plugin or module, that is fine. Asking WHMCS to do things its not supposed to be doing shows they have no idea what WHMCS is. Most also don't understand that everything a software does, means its more intensive on CPU, RAM, etc. Then most of them try to run WHMCS on a shared host which makes no sense but keep asking more features. If they want a software that does all the things they ask, they have to expect it to require more server resources...

WHMCS can't do all things that shine under the sun. Then you have other features which are smaller but WHMCS already does. Or there are ways to do what they are asking but they just did not read the documentation or played enough with the features. I think most feature requests that are useful, are the tiny things that make a specific function better. I believe in adding small things and make things better over time vs just adding something big that will not work, is buggy or has to be removed in the future.