Release info emails?

[bear]

Aside from the notice that pops up in the admin area in our installations (in my dev just now, I get just this on every page load: "What's new in Version ...
An error occurred while communicating with the server. Please try again."), is there a mailing list to hear about things like maintenance releases so I'm not surprised when I log into the community and see people talking about it? I *only* want to hear about releases or issues, not ads and services being added...

Any hope?

[brian!]

38 minutes ago, bear said:

is there a mailing list to hear about things like maintenance releases so I'm not surprised when I log into the community and see people talking about it?

there used to be one - the News & Announcements board... whenever there was a new release, Matt used to post in there usually within minutes of a release... rarely happens now, and certainly hasn't happened yet with v7.6.1 - I only found out about that release from a passing remark in a thread yesterday.

there is the WHMCS Blog - but as far as I know, that doesn't have an RSS feed, so therefore no subscription option.... there's Twitter too, but both Twitter and the blog will include ads for it's other services.

there's also the WHMCS Mailing List that you can subscribe to from the My Details section of the Member's Area... but how frequent they are, or what they contain, i've no idea as i'm not subscribed.

and don't get me started on WHMCS and RSS feeds.... if the hotfixes had rss feeds (been pushing on that for 18+ months), I could write an admin widget to tell users when hotfixes have been released specifically for their installed version... in fact, it was already written and then WHMCS changed how they did the hotfixes. 😠

the point about hotfixes being that they will have been released after an update, and unless you go looking for them, they won't be included in the download release, or I believe, the auto-updater... so the end-user doesn't know they exist.

the widget shows the latest community posts, the N&A posts (above) and Twitter feed... it's just missing the hotfixes tab. 🙄

38 minutes ago, bear said:

Any hope?

from the great communicators at WHMCS... unlikely. 🤐

technically, i'm not even sure if one of us could create a list or whether that would be classed as self-promotion.

[bear]

Well, I was hoping it wasn't just me finding those same lack of details (blog, announcements lacking and so on). Sure would be nice to have a proper mailing list, though. Getting used to this sort of small disappointments. 
 

[WHMCS John]

Hi there,

New release announcements are usually included in our next newsletter mailshot. We do this to help stagger the roll-out, so as to avoid our support team getting too busy.

New releases are announced first on our blog and social media, so that's the best place to monitor. Sadly RSS isn't as popular these days, so isn't a priority for us, but there is an RSS feed of hotfixes available here: https://whmcs.community/files/files.xml/

 

 

[bear]

Quote

New releases are announced first on our blog and social media, so that's the best place to monitor.

I don't do social media, I'm afraid. No time or inclination. 
As for the blog, that will announce full releases, but I looked recently, and maintenance/bug releases aren't "newsworthy", it would appear. A little frustrating we need to spot updates/fixes here on the community rather than being able to get a head's up via the simplest means; an email list. You have our emails. Just sayin'. 😉

[brian!]

14 hours ago, WHMCS John said:

so as to avoid our support team getting too busy.

i'm tempted to suggest that making the releases less buggy would do more for the support department...

14 hours ago, WHMCS John said:

New releases are announced first on our blog and social media, so that's the best place to monitor.

but the blog has no feed, so i'd have to actively regularly check it - I ain't got time to do that... i've got WHMCS Twitter on the v7.6 dev, so I might see an announcement out of the corner of my eye, but there's no guarantee.

I don't really see the point of a News & Announcements board if you aren't going to mention new releases in there as they're released. 🙄

14 hours ago, WHMCS John said:

Sadly RSS isn't as popular these days, so isn't a priority for us, but there is an RSS feed of hotfixes available here: https://whmcs.community/files/files.xml/

so why do some sub-f0rums here have them and some not? why does each individual feature request have it's own RSS feed ??

if each of the hotfix f0rums had their own rss feed (or alternative feed method), then I could individualise the visible hotfixes to the user's installed version (though there is at least one error in how those hotfixes are assigned so it would never be 100% as i'm at the mercy of WHMCS staff assigning them correctly!)... one long generic file list is useless as i've no way to tell which release a hotfix is applicable to.

no worries - i'll scrap the idea of informing users when an available hotfix has been released.... they can pester support to report a known bug, and support can then waste their own time linking to the file instead... not an efficient use of support time in my eyes, but you know best John.

[WHMCS John]

Hi @bear,

The Invision Files system does not currently appear to offer the option of individual RSS feeds per category, but I will certainly feed that back to them.

[bear]

5 minutes ago, WHMCS John said:

Hi @bear,

The Invision Files system does not currently appear to offer the option of individual RSS feeds per category, but I will certainly feed that back to them.

The community has the ability for a member to follow a section's content. If a section were devoted to just releases and hotfixes, that would work fine.  NO new services and products, no waffle posting...just straight up "hotfix for version xxx available, see notes/blog/link for details. Wouldn't take someone very long, and you could even make that community section read only, or something. 

[brian!]

with regards purely to hotfixes, you could subscribe to the specific hotfixes category for your installed version...

• v7.6 -> https://whmcs.community/files/category/74-v76x-hotfixes/
• v7.5 -> https://whmcs.community/files/category/73-v75x-hotfixes/
• others can be found at https://whmcs.community/files/categories/

the problem is not really about informing the users that come here... it's about automatically informing those that don't.... it would be almost easier if the autoupdater saw the hotfixes as .0.1 releases and acted accordingly...

[WHMCS ChrisD]

29 minutes ago, bear said:

The community has the ability for a member to follow a section's content. If a section were devoted to just releases and hotfixes, that would work fine.  NO new services and products, no waffle posting...just straight up "hotfix for version xxx available, see notes/blog/link for details. Wouldn't take someone very long, and you could even make that community section read only, or something. 

@bear Thats a good idea, I can create a board that will achieve this when a hotfix is posted it will automatically post this to that board, for new releases we can add a thread in, that way you can just follow that board, would that be sufficent?

[bear]

4 hours ago, WHMCS ChrisD said:

@bear Thats a good idea, I can create a board that will achieve this when a hotfix is posted it will automatically post this to that board, for new releases we can add a thread in, that way you can just follow that board, would that be sufficent?

Sounds like it would, yes. Definitely worth a shot, as long as someone posts those as they happen. Thanks!

[brian!]

if you're going to do that, you might as well just follow johns xml link

[bear]

Me? I don't want to parse and format anything; just want to have notices arrive that there's a new version or update if I'm not actively checking on the installed version. They post a changed version, it emails me that, and I come looking. :)

Edited September 2, 2018 by bear

[brian!]

13 hours ago, bear said:

Me? I don't want to parse and format anything; just want to have notices arrive that there's a new version or update if I'm not actively checking on the installed version. They post a changed version, it emails me that, and I come looking. 🙂

which is the way News & Announcements used to work until it's recent seeming abandonment...

never forget that with a RSS feed, you can use IFTTT.com and set a rule that when a feed is updated, it sends you an email - it literally takes 3 clicks to do and you then don't need to check that feed yourself... that's what I used to in the old days (e.g pre-Invision with vbb) - when Matt made an announcement in there, i'd get an email from IFTTT within half an hour... 2 days later, i'd get the official email from WHMCS.. that's one of the reasons why I unsubscribed from the mailing list as it was always old news that I already read about elsewhere.

sadly the blog doesn't have a RSS feed (it's not a WP site), so you can't do this with that... what is the point of blog without a feed?

with Invision, there's less of a need for that as we now have notifications and they can generate emails too - but sadly, if nobody from WHMCS posts there, then there's no notifications generated. 🙄

as I said previously, for v7.6 hotfixes, you could just follow that specific category... then if there is a v7.7, do the same for that... if Chris goes down the road of creating a generic hotfix category, then you're going to have to read each post generated to see if it applies for your installed version.... at which point, and after 3 years, they will have gone full circle as all the hotfixes used to be on one page.

[bear]

Following your release channel until that changes is once again having to keep up with changes as they happen. Case in point, if I'm following 7.6, and a new point release happens, that may be done on the new 7.6.5 hotfixes...
The point I'm making is this should be built in here on this site somehow. Make it so I get emails about any releases, possibly titled "7.6.2 hotfix" (as that changes), so I can decide if it's for me. The RSS external site is another third party kludge to compensate for the inadequacies of the communication here. 😉 I expect to be informed without needing to hunt for these, or go through hoops (or hooks, as it were) to stay up to date. Not really all that much to ask, I feel. 

[brian!]

26 minutes ago, bear said:

Following your release channel until that changes is once again having to keep up with changes as they happen.

i'm specifically talking here about hotfix releases... by definition, there can't be a hotfix release until a full release - so they're two different topics... updates and hotfixes.... updates should be covered by the Announcements board - the fact it now isn't is laziness and/or a policy decision by WHMCS... and if a policy decision, then why have N&A now?

and it's not *my* release channel - if I were doing it, I doubt it would be the current shambles.

29 minutes ago, bear said:

Case in point, if I'm following 7.6, and a new point release happens, that may be done on the new 7.6.5 hotfixes...

that's irrelevant, the way John seems to be arranging it is that *all* v7.6.x hotfixes goes in the v7.6 hotfix category; all v7.5.x will go in the v7.5 category; if/when the time comes, all v7.7.x will go in a v7.7 category... but no doubt by that time, they'll be using a different system again.

1 hour ago, bear said:

The point I'm making is this should be built in here on this site somehow.

I totally agree - but from that point on, we come at this from different angles... your direction is let's get WHMCS to do it... been there, done that, not worth the hassle... my thought is always to do it myself (if WHMCS aren't doing it either at all or correctly) because then i'm in the control and i'm not sat here waiting for WHMCS to do something... you could literally die of old age waiting for them to get around to doing things.

2 hours ago, bear said:

Make it so I get emails about any releases, possibly titled "7.6.2 hotfix" (as that changes), so I can decide if it's for me.

if Chris can get it so that a) when hotfixes are added to the HF categories, a link is added to News & Announcements board AND b) new releases are posted in there also, then you could follow that thread and receive notification (browser and/or email) when a new thread is made... I fear Chris' idea of making a generic hotfix consolidation board really only solves half the problem.... and if truth be told, it doesn't *really* solve that half - it's just a little better than the current situation.

2 hours ago, bear said:

The RSS external site is another third party kludge to compensate for the inadequacies of the communication here. 😉

true - but a kludge is easier than trying to fix WHMCS communication problems (cue Mission Impossible theme)... i've been banging my head against the wall for 5 years over that topic and i've found that life is so much simpler why you bypass the inadequacies of WHMCS and find your own solutions.

2 hours ago, bear said:

I expect to be informed without needing to hunt for these, or go through hoops (or hooks, as it were) to stay up to date. Not really all that much to ask, I feel. 

I agree again.

but there are so many more people that need to be informed about hotfixes and/or new releases that don't come here - so a community centred solution isn't ideal for everyone.

[bear]

Not the way I meant it at all. Your as in the one you/me/someone is using. 
(sorry for top quoting/answering, this f o r u m [screw you, auto correct] 😉 software and I don't get along) 

---

1 hour ago, brian! said:

and it's not *my* release channel

Edited September 3, 2018 by bear

[WHMCS ChrisD]

On 4/09/2018 at 2:16 AM, brian! said:

that's irrelevant, the way John seems to be arranging it is that *all* v7.6.x hotfixes goes in the v7.6 hotfix category; all v7.5.x will go in the v7.5 category; if/when the time comes, all v7.7.x will go in a v7.7 category... but no doubt by that time, they'll be using a different system again.

1

At this point we've moved all the HotFixes into the community, we've been posting them here for a while, what we have done however is divide them up a bit further by taking advantage of the functionality Invision Community provides us, over time i'm hoping to evolve this further, especially now my  focus is now on the community rather than a split between Support & Community.

On 4/09/2018 at 2:16 AM, brian! said:

if Chris can get it so that a) when hotfixes are added to the HF categories, a link is added to News & Announcements board AND b) new releases are posted in there also, then you could follow that thread and receive notification (browser and/or email) when a new thread is made... I fear Chris' idea of making a generic hotfix consolidation board really only solves half the problem.... and if truth be told, it doesn't *really* solve that half - it's just a little better than the current situation.

 

Part A of this is certainly doable, especially now we use the Invision Files aspect of the community, I can have a post automatically created each time a new hot-fix is created, let me enable this and let's see what feedback comes back in, with B) I'm happy to post when a new release is made, it will likely be a basic hey we have a new version go here to find it, go here for the release notes, but it could work, previously, the blog was powered by the community, we separated this out when we migrated away from vBulletin but I have no hesitation in making these important announcements via this channel if that is what wanted 

[brian!]

6 hours ago, WHMCS ChrisD said:

Part A of this is certainly doable, especially now we use the Invision Files aspect of the community, I can have a post automatically created each time a new hot-fix is created, let me enable this and let's see what feedback comes back in

I assume to the News & Announcements board - if it's elsewhere, then you're creating more work for yourself... and us.

6 hours ago, WHMCS ChrisD said:

with B) I'm happy to post when a new release is made, it will likely be a basic hey we have a new version go here to find it, go here for the release notes

that's all it needs to be - that's all Matt did when he graced us here with his presence... not asking for a War&Peace length post, just that something has been released with a link to release notes/changelog etc... though he should be doing it himself at the same as posting on the blog and twitter... or whoever is responsible for posting them should post here too... it's only copy&paste for gawd sake.

6 hours ago, WHMCS ChrisD said:

I have no hesitation in making these important announcements via this channel if that is what wanted

it's helpful for those of us already in the community - though it does nothing for those that aren't, e.g newbies who have just installed v7.6.x and don't realise there are already hotfixes available for it... though I happily accept that's not your problem Chris, it's a fundamental core WHMCS issue that they should auto-inform users of hotfixes in the dashboard (or elsewhere as bear prefers)... without feeds (or related method), I can't do it (web scraping would be both a major hassle and a waste of time)... so those poor users will open a ticket with support about a known issue.

[bear]

57 minutes ago, brian! said:

it's a fundamental core WHMCS issue that they should auto-inform users of hotfixes in the dashboard (or elsewhere as bear prefers)... without feeds (or related method), I can't do it (web scraping would be both a major hassle and a waste of time)... so those poor users will open a ticket with support about a known issue.

I'm ok with having it tell me in the dashboard, but when it comes to informing users of hotfixes, it's often faster and more efficient to do so via email. The point being that WHMCS is automated (support desk is external), and I don't need to visit all the time. Email is always being checked, even while on the phone out of the office.

[brian!]

3 minutes ago, bear said:

I'm ok with having it tell me in the dashboard, but when it comes to informing users of hotfixes, it's often faster and more efficient to do so via email.

they'd have to be consolidated into a daily email, because we know a week after a major release, they'll either be a flurry of hotfixes or another maintenance release - I doubt users would want to be receiving emails every few hours! 🙄

8 minutes ago, bear said:

The point being that WHMCS is automated (support desk is external), and I don't need to visit all the time.

true - perhaps my mind is biased in that i'm seemingly always in the admin homepage of one of our dev installations!

14 minutes ago, bear said:

Email is always being checked, even while on the phone out of the office.

they certainly need to find a way to tell users there are hotfixes available and that really needs to be pushed to them rather than expecting them to come here or contact support... even if you are installing the very latest version of WHMCS, there may still be available hotfixes and out of the box, the user won't know that - they won't be told during the installation, nor upon visiting the admin homepage... that situation has annoyed me for years, but it's down to them to sort it out.

[WHMCS ChrisD]

Thanks, everyone for the feedback, I'm taking this into account and working out the best solution moving forward as an interim option this will likely consist of a single board that combines hotfixes and releases into a single board that you can subscribe to at a frequency that works for you