Hello,

we have been very keen on the new Custom Fields MultiEdit - we have been waiting for two years now for that feature ;-)

So we just tried it, but only two of our several custom fields are available.
What's wrong here? Does anybody else have this problem?

Harald

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Harry Fresacher
Bellevue Investainment

Currently you can only modify picklist type custom fields through multi-edit.  None of the other types are available for multi-edit.  This is something we may address in a future version.

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Dan Suceava
http://www.axosoft.com

You are joking?
We have been waiting for this important feature which was requested by so many customers for a very long time now.

What sense does it make to support now only picklist fields?

We are getting more an more disappointed that so many open issues posted by OnTime customers are ignored. And there are so many cropped functionalities now in the "new" version.

Harald

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Harry Fresacher
Bellevue Investainment

Harald, no we are not joking.  Having multi-edit ability on custom picklist fields certainly adds value, which is why we've added it.  Having multi-edit on all fields would add even more value and we hope to add that at some point in the future.  For what it's worth, the multi-edit feature has only included picklist type fields, but was missing custom picklist fields, so that was the higher priority.

It's presumptuous of you to assume we are ignoring customer requests.  We don't ignore any requests.  As a software developer, you must realize that it's impossible to incorporate every feature request into a new build.  With V7, we've incorporated hundreds of customer requests, prioritized in such a way that we satisfy the most common requests first.  You might disagree and we respect that, but if you want examples of features that have been added to OnTime V7 based on customer requests, take a look at these posts:

http://www.axosoft.com/products/ontime.aspx?cn=otm_whatsnew

http://forums.axosoft.com/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=19&MessageID=8629

http://forums.axosoft.com/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=19&MessageID=8995

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Dragan Marceta
www.Axosoft.com

Hello Support, hello Dan,

we are OnTime customers since 2004 and are using your software intensively. We are even listed on your customer testimonial page ( http://www.axosoft.com/products/testimonials.aspx?cn=tes_Comments ). So in the meantime we know the functionality, data structure, possibilities and limitations of this product quite well.

Yes, we are also developing software and like every team have limited resources. So we understand that it is not possible to fulfill everybodys wishes within some weeks.
So it is even more important to listen very carefully to our customers feedback and the frequency and severity of single requests. Our approach is to play with open cards, giving our clients roadmaps, priorities and schedules when they can expect a fix or improvement.

From the time we started to use OnTime, my collegues and I are monitoring and contributing to these support forums. And we have read about many, many bugs and feature requests.
Of course you don't ignore most of our requests. But we also know the usual responses:  'Your request has been submitted to our customer feedback section as a possible enhancement of our OnTime products.' or 'This issue will be addressed in a future release'.
A search in this forum for these phrases returns 100s of results, and if I browse them, a considerable amount of them seem not solved until now.
So my point is, that we don't see any outcome from many of our requests. Maybe you can put yourself in our customer position?

Most issues we posted or aggreed are still open (for years now). For some of them we have been promised by Axosoft to get solutions, but they haven't shown up yet.
On the other hand you have silently dropped several functionalities (certainly not on purpose) we and other customers had been using.

Just a few examples:

• The possibility to format texts in the Notes/Description fields is still missing: First requested by somebody in this forum on 1/29/2004, asked for and supported by many other users including ourselves. In OnTime 2004 there was a possibility by context menu, this was removed in OnTime2005.
  After that it was promised to address this - but nothing happened untill now.
  That's really one of the most annoying limitations which could be improved without much effort. I think it's sad that this old forum software (we use the same product ;-) offers so much more formatting features like the RichtText/Html field in OnTime.
• Several users have asked for a possibility to influence the "time stamp" format in the RichText/Html-Fields (first posted 7/14/2004). While this is not important for us, having seen many users asking for that in the last years I'm surprised that this has not been addressed yet. Even more since a solution has been suggested by OnTime where one can define sort of a format string to customize this time stamp. But it was never delivered.
• Show additional information for related items (workflow status, ...): has been requested by users several times (only in the thread 6469 by six users!).
• The main toolbar could be hidden (and OnTime remembered that), which is important for us since none of its functionality is needed by at least most of our users.
  In OnTime 2007 this functionality has gone - we see a big horizontal toolbar now wasting space for us. Of course this toolbar makes sense for other users, I'm just complaining that the functionality to hide it was just removed.
• Unneeded toolbar buttons could be hidden. There was a bug approved by OnTime that the button settings are not remembered correctly (first posted 3/4/2005 by us). So every day at startup our users are hiding again the buttons they don't need.
  Instead of fixing that, in OnTime 2007 now it is not possible anymore to hide toolbar buttons - again a functionality which disappeard without asking paying customers like us who are using it.
• The situation gets even worse for us with OnTime 2007, because on our 1024x768 support users screens now the toolbar doesn't fit on the screen anymore. The users see many buttons they don't need but don't have direct access to the search field anymore.
• OnTime 6.1.2.6397 has been the last version which was working on our system. We have German culture settings and as you know it is not possible to store date fields anymore in newer OnTime 2006 versions.
  OnTime 2007 should solve that, but in its current state is not usable for us since - see above - it doesn't fit on our screens...

On the other hand we of course see that you are adding functionality.
The introduction of Views for instance is a very important improvement, even if it is not completely working yet (but of course it's still Beta/RC).

Just as an example: in OnTime 2007 you added "Incidents". Without doubt interesting for many (new) customers.
But: I've just done a quick search within the forums if anybody requested the introduction of "incidents", but without success.
On the other hand I can find many issues in the forum which are not fixed yet.
This looks strange for users like me who only see the forum feedback and therefore cannot understand your priorities.
Why do you add functionalities not requested (at least not that popular) in the forums, but don't fix so many older bugs and issues heavily requested there?

Incidents, SCM , populate Pick lists with SQL proc are all cool things. I just think that it needed probably more time to implement them than to fix some of the major problems that current users like we are encountering every day.
I admit, I also like and long for new features. But generally I'd prefer quality of features against quantity!

Since all these new things have undoubtly been implemented based on customer feedback, this forum is obviously not the primary way to give such feedback. Maybe you can tell me another way we can communicate our feedback (a special email address?).

Conclusion

Multi edit for custom fields is one of the top requests in the forums. So I personally was really excited to hear that this will be implemented in OnTime 2007. And then I got my reality shock when I saw that only a fraction has been implemented - just a teaser for the complete functionality needed and requested in the posts.

That is frustrating for users, maybe you can understand that.

Harald

PS: By the way, thank you Dan for signing with your name. It makes a conversation more 'human' than just an anonymous 'support' (no offense!).

 

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Harry Fresacher
Bellevue Investainment

Harald, just so you know, this response is from Hamid Shojaee. I'm the founder of Axosoft.

Let me first start by saying that we absolutely LOVE dialogue with our customers in any form.  You can call me directly at 480.362.1900 x680 if you'd like to talk with me in person.  You can also email me at hamids at axosoft.  We listen to all customers regardless of how they speak (or sometimes shout) at us.

I hope the fact that people on these forums (especially the beta forum) receive quick responses and that nearly all the posts have a response from someone at Axosoft goes to show that we're very serious about feedback and that we especially care about the feedback from the forums.  With that said, let me address some of your concerns:

Let me start by saying that we avoid promising specific features, unless the feature has already been developed or (in the case of the toolbar issue, which we hope to fix in V7.0.1, shotly after initial release), if it's an oversight.  As you've pointed out, most feature requests are added to our internal feedback database and we reply to customers that we'll consider the feature as a possible future enhancement, not a promise to implement.  There is a big difference.  I absolutely hate companies that over-promise and under-deliver.  An objective person should find the opposite to be true with Axosoft.

Many of the features we've added (such as "Incidents" or an AJAX rewrite of the web interface) are named differently than how the requests are made by customers.  For example, we've known for years that customers use OnTime to do support and IT helpdesk ticket tracking.  When they use OnTime for helpdesk purposes, there are a number of features that they want, like easier customer associations, easier customer creations, etc.  All that stuff was added and named "Incidents".  Incidents incorporates dozens of feature requests, none of which were requested as "I want Incidents", but instead as "I want OnTime to create tickets from emails" or "I want custom alphanumeric numbering schemes", etc.

The AJAX re-write of the web interface and the SQL-side filtering, paging improvements for example addresses numerous requests with the shortfalls of the V6 web interface and OnTime performance for large installs.  I'm sure you'll find numerous posts regarding performance on the forums.

Every single feature enhancement you see in OnTime stems from user feedback, the vast majority of which, comes from the forums.  How we've prioritized and implemented them might not satisfy everyone for V7.0, but we're not done with the OnTime product line.  It'll continue to improve.  That, I promise.

Hamid Shojaee
Founder & CEO

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Hamid Shojaee
Read the Ship Software OnTime Blog
Axosoft, LLC

Hamid, thank you for your reply.

I understand that you are adding features not just for fun or boredom, but because new and existing customer desire them. That's fine!
I've also recognized that the new RC2 should at least solve the 'hide main toolbar'-issue. Apart from that your answer doesn't contain any foreseeable improvements for customers like us, working with several open issues in OnTime for years now without getting them fixed. What I mean is, I haven't found and feedback to any of the issues listed above.

Still I think before adding new features it would be better to satisfy current customer's needs by fixing issues which are open for months or years. I've listed just some of them, going back until year 2004...

Unfortunately your answer didn't address the core message from my post (why are bugs not fixed for up to years), nevertheless I'm interested in your opinion about that and if you can put yourself into our position as a long lasting client.

Harald

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Harry Fresacher
Bellevue Investainment