Put back date and time on requests.whmcs.com feature requests

[AzeDK]

Not sure how many have noticed, but in the latest makeover of requests.whmcs.com date and time has been removed, so you cant see how old a feature request is.

Please put back the creation date, so we have a better chance of knowing if its a fresh idea or old idea, and if its worth supporting.

[wsa]

I don't think they going to add it because they don't want people to know how old is the request they some old request like 5 to 7 years and still did not add it

[bear]

2 hours ago, AzeDK said:

Please put back the creation date, so we have a better chance of knowing if its a fresh idea or old idea, and if its worth supporting

They didn't care before, why would they now? Removing the date just makes it harder to see how much is ignored, so that's a permanent change, I'd guess. 

[brian!]

3 hours ago, AzeDK said:

Not sure how many have noticed, but in the latest makeover of requests.whmcs.com date and time has been removed, so you cant see how old a feature request is.

as the others have said, this was intentional and designed to mask how old any request is... there are ways to find out how old a request is, but not worth highlighting those methods here.

at least if any comments have been left (and not deleted), then that can give you a rough estimate of its age.

[Kian]

5 minutes ago, brian! said:

this was intentional and designed to mask how old any request is

Do you know when they made this change? I'm curious.

[brian!]

8 minutes ago, Kian said:

Do you know when they made this change? I'm curious.

it was in late April - I spotted it on the 26th, so sometime before then I think.

[malfunction]

5 hours ago, AzeDK said:

Please put back the creation date, so we have a better chance of knowing if its a fresh idea or old idea, and if its worth supporting.

It's a fallacy that the number of upvotes or creation date has anything to do with the probability of any given feature request being adopted.   Experience has shown that new features are selected based primarily on the affiliate income potential for WHMCS with a sprinkling of random minor tweaks that nobody asked for to make them look like they are providing value.

The feature request system is basically there to keep you preoccupied reading/posting/commenting/voting while WHMCS carefully lifts your wallet out of your back pocket, unnoticed.

Edited May 28, 2021 by malfunction

[WHMCS John]

Hi all,

It's fair to say there are other metrics which are more helpful to us in determining customer demand for new features for our product roadmap than simply the total age of a request. For example other factors such as voting intensity (votes over a set period of time) are more meaningful, which is something we can now better track. We saw that some of the design and workflows of the previous system (including displaying the original submission date) were making an inaccurate implication for some people.

In migrating to the new Feature Request system, one of our aims is to help it more closely reflect the realities of roadmap planning, and link it more directly with our DevOps systems. The original submission date of a request is not displayed to mirror this. Our intention is to make it easier to highlight features we are considering and get your feedback on those ideas to drive development direction and individual feature design. Another aim is to be more proactive in archiving stale requests to allow newer ideas an equal opportunity in the spotlight. But rest assured, long-standing popular requests aren't going away.

It would be an over-simplification to believe Feature Requests the only consideration, there are of course factors involved with software development decisions at any company; such as technical hurdles/practicalities, time/resources, company/group strategy and ROI.  Feature Requests are a key data source for us, but it's not the sole one. As a group we also speak with and survey customers and non-customers in-depth to understand and identify your needs in great detail. If cPanel/Plesk invites you to a survey, please do opt in!

I thought this was interesting; a photo from one of my old notebooks with just the feature requests I personally received back for v5.2, before we had any kind of centralised system to collate them (there are two more pages).

This was clearly sub-optimal because collating the information from each analyst was time-consuming, there would be duplication, limited to a single sentence description and impractical for the product team to follow-up and solicit further feedback or discussion with everybody who had the same idea. I appreciate that at times it might not feel like it, but collating this information in a public and quantitive way is far more effective at getting your needs and opinions directly to the decision makers than some alternatives.

Creating a brand new feature request system represents significant investment into our ability to effectively hear customer feedback, that isn't the actions of a team who's intention is to ignore  customer needs.

 

I hope that's provide some insight. Please do keep supporting your feature requests 🙂

[MrGettingRatherFrustrated]

Does this new system mean

1) New feature requests don’t sit in the wilderness for some arbitrary period before they are approved?

2)  The restrictions on the number of features that can be voted on in a given period have been removed?

3) Feature requests with the most votes will be prioritised over all others?

4) Feature requests won’t be marked Under Consideration (or whatever the term was) unless they actually are?

5) Feature requests will be owned & managed by the development team rather than the support

[wsa]

44 minutes ago, MrGettingRatherFrustrated said:

Does this new system mean

Am sure it same 

[Magicklug]

On 8/20/2021 at 6:36 AM, MrGettingRatherFrustrated said:

Does this new system mean

1) New feature requests don’t sit in the wilderness for some arbitrary period before they are approved?

2)  The restrictions on the number of features that can be voted on in a given period have been removed?

3) Feature requests with the most votes will be prioritised over all others?

4) Feature requests won’t be marked Under Consideration (or whatever the term was) unless they actually are?

5) Feature requests will be owned & managed by the development team rather than the support

Yes, quite frankly.

[MrGettingRatherFrustrated]

But still modertaed until and not automatically accepted - there does seem to be a determination to keep the system unusable