Whats the deal with "Feature Requests"?

As my subject states, what is the deal with Interwoven "Feature Requests"? is there a central list of all the pending ones and their statuses? do any of them ever happen?

i know my company is down for numerous ones (a few we have even spoken w/ senior IW management about) and have never gotten any updates.

here are a few i had written down:

#21765 deployment job queueing
#40559 Replicant event handler
#36636 Customize order of the host names in Admin UI

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Eric B.
Federated Investors
AOL IM: arthas76

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Migrateduser

There is a central list of all Interwoven feature requests, but it is not directly available to the public. Although some may argue that it is desirable to have direct access to the feature requests and bugs (and they have), there are very strong reasons that we do not do so from marketing and legal perspectives. I think there are very few commercial software companies that make this information publicly available.

Each bug and feature request has a unique, identifying number so that it can be referenced unambiguously. If, as in your case, you have been provided with these numbers, it is so that these requests can be easily referenced in your communications with support or marketing.

Many feature requests are implemented, but certainly not all. Prior to each product release, the feature requests are reviewed by product management and prioritized. In some cases, a decision is made that a feature does not make sense for the majority of customers and does warrant the added cost or complexity. A tradeoff must also be made between the fulfillment of requested features and bugs other schedule features for the product release. Feature requests that have customer names or cases associated with them are generally given higher priority. Some feature requests are generated internally because TeamSite is used extensively within Interwoven.

In the TeamSite 6.0 release, for example, 147 feature requests were implemented.

Brinko Kobrin
Interwoven Staff Engineer

Migrateduser

Might I take a stab at this one?

Interwoven will tell you that "feature requests" are issues that are not bugs but might make the product better. In other words, creating a FR will shut you up about whining about an issue they may or may not consider adding to the product...some of us anyway Smiley Happy

An FR gets actual attention only if enough companies attach their name to that FR. How many companies warrants a closer look? How does anyone find out about FR's that other companies have opened? Good luck.

There is some hope that IW will open up the FR list to everyone so that we can actually make use of this "feature". But there's no target date/version for this that I know of.

Oh yeah, almost forgot, when is a bug not a bug but a feature request? Quite often - depends on how you define "bug". IW defines a bug is something that doesn't work as intended. That means that if something works, but works horribly wrong, it's probably a FR to fix it, not a bug. Better error handling? You guessed it - FR baby!!!

Personally, and I'm assuming it's ok to editorialize here, I find that the FR system (aka - The Abyss) is just a huge frustration point. They'll tell you that many hundreds of FR's have been fixed in their latest version. Well, none of mine were in that many hundreds and that's all that matters to me. To me a FR is a carrot on the end of a stick and I'm spinning in circles trying to get it.

But I'm not bitter...

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Edited by Smitty77 on 12/03/03 01:07 PM (server time).

Migrateduser

Brinko, with all due respect, and I do respect you very much - you know that, a FR system that IW informs all of us users depends on how many customers want a particular FR in order to get that FR on the priority list is only useful if everyone can see what FR's are out there so we can figure out if we want to attach our names to it. Wow, can you say "run on sentence" Smiley Happy

? Your system is set up to fail for the customers. Just because I haven't thought of a new feature myself doesn't mean I don't want that feature.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

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iwovGraduate

How about we all file a feature request to let all the customers see what feature requests are out there ? Smiley Happy

nipper

>Oh yeah, almost forgot, when is a bug not a bug but a feature request? Quite often - depends on how you
>define "bug". IW defines a bug is something that doesn't work as intended. That means that if something works, but
>works horribly wrong, it's probably a FR to fix it, not a bug. Better error handling? You guessed it - FR baby!!!

My personal favorite, oh yes that is a bug. In the documentation. It should not say you can do that.

>Personally, and I'm assuming it's ok to editorialize here, I find that the FR system (aka - The Abyss)

Smitty... you editorialize, never. I liken the FR system to an imperfect black-hole. Once in a while something actually comes out (though it may not look very much like what went in there.)

Andy

Migrateduser

good feedback...im glad im not the only one frustrated w/ this. i could see the issue with publishing bug lists, but i really dont see any with a feature request list (maybe available only to those paying the hefty IW service contracts Smiley Happy

was the list of 147 feature requests included w/ IW 6.0 part of the documentation somewhere?

>How about we all file a feature request to let all the customers see what feature requests are out there ? Smiley Happy

hehe thats pretty funny...i agree!
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Eric B.
Federated Investors
AOL IM: arthas76

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