Dear AxoSoft CEO and Founder,

I have just listened to your video where you talk about WWW - Who's Working on What and how this is the key question that OnTime can answer.

If you stretch your imagination this claim*might just* be true.  However, the reality is that in OnTime 2007 I need to flip between 4 different TAB views in order to see who is working on what.  All my developers code Defects, Features, resolve and manage Incidents and have personal and project related Tasks.  That's 4 views.  So, what is developer Fred working on?  I can't get a single list of Defects, Features, Incidents and Tasks sort them by priority and group by Project.  If I had just 2 developers then it wouldn't be an issue but I have 20 to keep a management eye on.

WWW = A "weak" claim at best.

So Mr CEO and Founder of AxoSoft, can you commit to a "Time" in which this much requested feature of a combined TAB showing ALL item types will appear on OnTime?

Thanks

Graham Smith

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------PeopleSoft Technical Team LeaderOxfam GB+44 1865 473255

Graham, thanks for taking the time to watch the video.  We agree that having a single view showing all items assigned to a user would be very helpful to answer the who's working on what question.  Until we get a chance to implement such a feature, if this is a must-have requirement for your team to function productively, I would suggest transitioning to using a single tab for everything and create a custom field that would determine the item type.  Using a single tab to track everything would give you exactly what you're looking for in the mean time.

Hamid

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Hamid Shojaee
Read the Ship Software OnTime Blog
Axosoft, LLC

Dear Hamid

Thank you for your reply.  Does your CEO and Founder agree with your response?  Perhaps you yourself are the "CEO and Founder" of AxoSoft.  I trust that my request and this reply has been read by the person it was addressed to.

Suggesting that I use a single TAB instead of all 4 destroys virtually all the good things that OnTime has!  What a sad implementation option that would be. The single view is not the only view that I need to effectively manage complex software development projects. 

So, I shall ask my question again if I may...

"...can you commit to a "Time" in which this much requested feature of a combined TAB showing ALL item types will appear on OnTime"

Sony and Microsoft committed to times to deliver their respective games consoles.  If you are so confident with your own product's and people's ability to deliver on time then please can you share with your committed and enthusiastic user community exactly what you are committing to and when.  Anyone can commit to delivering "something" on time.  But can you commit to delivering this specific feature request on a certain time? 

Graham

Graham, to specifically answer your question: no.  I can not give you an exact time or version number when this feature request might make it into OnTime.

If you're interested to know the reasons why...

• We are not a custom development shop
• We get hundreds of feature requests.  On a feature-by-feature basis, it would be pointless to make commitments that would be impossible to keep (that's an important aspect of shipping software on-time: not over-committing your team).
• Features are evaluated based on importance, frequency of request and difficulty of implementation and whether or not they are inline with the philosophy of the product
• We consider one of our competitive advantages the ability to change directions quickly.  It's common for us to shuffle features around and allow late requested features to take higher priority over older feature requests during the course of development.  Making commitments at will would tie our ability to change direction based on what we thought was the right thing to do and therefore reduce our competitive advantage.  So as a general rule of thumb, we don't commit to any particular feature release dates.  This is not to be confused with overall release schedule.

If you'd like to discuss further, feel free to call me.  And yes, anytime a customer asks to get my attention, even on a public forum, Axosoft employees will make sure it gets into my hands.

Hamid Shojaee
Founder & CEO
480.362.1900 x680

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Hamid Shojaee
Read the Ship Software OnTime Blog
Axosoft, LLC

Graham,

before writing critics about OnTime, try to make an 'other report' or just use Reporting Services.
We did that using the build-in report manager of OnTime.
Now we have a report showing everyting a Dev has done the last month and everything
he still has to do.. (If there were only more _beautiful she's )

Also I suggested a feature for the problem, a timeline view based on project or user.
And I'm still waiting for that feature to come true.

And it can! Using the SDK you can make it your self, just using the database. (Starting April)
(Not that I'm going to waste my time making a Timeline in Ontime _)
Take some Dev's and let them create what you want, to be able to see and edit...

What would be cool is the ability to create Add-On's for OnTime.
Custom tab's and detail tab's, export ability with VSTO and so on...
And a Vista Widget, euh... gadget. (Sorry Steve, my bad! )
Or a XBox version!
Having a location on the OnTime site where we can post custom made app's.

There are so many things that can be done in sharing basic info, like Mobile version of OnTime.
There are no limits!!!

I've customized OnTime for the Developers, Support and Marketing within our Company.
Yes! The Marketing is using OnTime to get there folder done oNtIME!
And you know what... They have Macintosh computers!!!
No remoting, no bootcamp (no intel ), and they love the Ajax version of OnTime!

Now, I wish I could reproduce the engine of OnTime in my projects, so, OnTime, totally !!!

Jonathan

P.S.: Mr. Shojaee, where you able to contact Shakira's manager for me now?

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As a side note, the SDK is now available in beta format.  It's included in the V7.0.1 suite:

http://www.axosoft.com/products/downloads.aspx

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Dragan Marceta
www.Axosoft.com

Dear Hamid

Thank you for taking the trouble to reply.  Perhaps you could encourage all your staff that use the forum to use their names and job titles rather than sign responses as Admin or Support.  I don't need to explain to you the importance of this for your customers.

In response to your reasons why you cannot commit to fixing specific bugs or features I think you understand the reasons why customers need to know what is being planned.  I don't want to spend 5 weeks developing an external application using the OnTime SDK in order to deal with a deficiency in the core OnTime product only to find that you're planning to solve it in the next release.

How many examples of software vendors would you like me to give where they publish a 6 monthly value proposition for their software products or publish pre-release  notes in advance of new releases.  User bellevue raises the same points here http://forums.axosoft.com/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=19&messageid=9109#bm9134

I cannot believe that you don't know what's being planned for the next release or even the 4 or 5 releases beyond that.

I am not asking you to make a commitment that would be used against you in a court of law if you failed to deliver but I am asking for better insight into your plans so that I can plan as well.

I have 4 major issues with OnTime 2007 that it is essential for me to know an approximate fix and delivery date for.  If they are not planned for this year then I will consider solving them using the SDK or other means.  I would be happy to sign a nondisclosure agreement but this does not help the OnTime user community in general. The 4 issues I have (in no particular priority) are

1. Show other fields on the Related Items TAB. http://forums.axosoft.com/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=9&messageid=6469#bm6493

2. Better handling of Concurrent updates of items.  http://forums.axosoft.com/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=19&messageid=8871#bm8935

3. Improved rich text (HTML) editor for long descriptions. http://forums.axosoft.com/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=19&messageid=8823

4. Trapping the Escape/Cancel key after edits have been made.  http://forums.axosoft.com/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=9&messageid=5832

Kind regards

Graham Smith

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------Graham SmithPeopleSoft Technical Team LeaderOxfam GB+44 1865 473255

Graham, about the 4 issues highlighted in your last post, give us a couple of weeks and I'll make sure we respond with our plans.  Right now, our focus is on stablization of V7 and some community improvements (including these forums).  I'll come back to this post no later than March 20th with additional details.  You can call me out if I don't.

Hamid

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Hamid Shojaee
Read the Ship Software OnTime Blog
Axosoft, LLC

Hamid,

Thankyou.  As a customer I am interested in these 4 points but also as an OnTime community member I am interested in the wider issue of my vendor issuing product roadmaps and making sure that all license fee and support fee paying customers get a fair say in product development.

In my first job as a developer my boss had a sign on his door.  It read...

You can have it Cheap On Time Good Quality Pick Two!

I know Version 7 was probably On Time () I just wonder which other you picked?  Don't spend too long stabilising v7 and good luck!

Kind regards

Graham

Graham, first let me thank you for being a dedicated and power OnTime user.  As much as it might not seem like it from the dry responses that we give on these forums, we very much appreciate the feedback we get.  The posts on these forums get read and discussed at every level of the company, but it's just not possible to satisfy every post - the ones that get satisfied are long lost and forgotten.  In the coming weeks, you'll see a huge upgrade to the Axosoft forum site that will hopefully show how much we care about the Axosoft Community.

On to the 4 issues for which I owe you a response...

1. Show more fields on related items tab - With the release of OnTime V7.0.2, we expect to have a column selector which will include a few more columns for display options.  I suspect the additional column options in 7.0.2 will address most people's needs, but it will not include custom fields since custom fields are item type dependent and require more development time to implement.

2. Better handling of concurrent updates - Your detailed post on the concurrency issue and well thought out solution (in this post) is very much appreciated.  You covered nearly every potential angle of the concurrency issue.  This issue is definitely much more involved and requires signifcant resources for both development and testing to implement.  There are a number of things that locking records touches besides the edit forms.  Multi-Edit and workflow changes are a couple that come to mind.  Because of the thorniness of this issue, we're shooting to address it in a 7.1 or 7.2 (if we have one) release.  I'll talk about a release schedule in a bit.

3. Improved HTML Editor - There has been a lot of discussions on these forums about the HTML editors in both web and windows versions of OnTime.  Unfortunately, there aren't any great HTML editors out there for Windows, so our options on Windows are very limited.  To make matters worse, most of the complaints about the HTML control are regarding the Windows version.  On the web side, the market is full of HTML editors, but most of them truly suck.  Believe me, we've tested nearly a dozen different web HTML controls and the one we've settled on is one of the best.  So here's what we are doing for the short term: we're adding a CSS file that will allow users to edit the look of the content for both web and windows and we're also adding more toolbar options to adjust font, color and size.  We expect to have these changes in 7.0.2.  Longer term, we hope to have a better Windows control and we're all ears for any suggestions.

4. Trapping Cancel/ESC if edits have been made - Only thing I can say here is...sorry!  I can't believe we let this one go for that long.  It'll be in 7.0.2

So what's the release date for 7.0.2?  It'll be out in the first half of April.

What about 7.1?  We don't have a ship target for 7.1 yet because we're still working on the release goals for it.  The more we put in, the later it'll be :-)

Hamid Shojaee
Founder & CEO

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Hamid Shojaee
Read the Ship Software OnTime Blog
Axosoft, LLC

Dear Hamid

Thank you for your comprehensive and honest reply to my issues.  I really appreciate it and it does help me in planning our rollout of 2007. 

>>As much as it might not seem like it from the dry responses that we give on these forums, we very much appreciate the feedback we get.

I wish I got the sort of feedback from my customers like this.  It's priceless. Glad you take it seriously and look forward to seeing the new forums and more information on product plans.

If there's anything else you think I can help with in building the user community and relationships with AxoSoft then please let me know.

kind regards

Graham

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Graham Smith
PeopleSoft Technical Team Leader
Oxfam GB

 

Hamid,

I'm a user that took advantage of a special offer for OnTime V6 to get 5 licenses for "stuff all" money i.e. $5 or whatever it was. We've been using OnTime V6 for a number of months now mostly just as a issues/features repository but am looking at moving to using it to drive workflow more. We have a definite need to reporting on "who's working on what" but the standard reports in V6 just don't cut it. Because of this I checked out the V7 functionality just in case that form of reporting that consolidates the issues/defects/tasks data into reports for users/all-users. Unfortunately my conclusion was that there was no such functionality. If there had been I would have purchased a 5-user license straight away (which validates your special offer from last year).

The point of this story (apart from illustrating that I'm stingey/cheap :^) is that standard "Who's Working on What" reports that cut across issues/features/tasks etc. is important to me. I can't imagine that its not important to any software development team of 2 or more with the importance rising as the user count rises. I have no experience with Microsoft's Team System, but I imagine the term "Work Item" came about because of the need to handle items of work such as issues/features/tasks consistently in reports, UI etc.

Conclusion: Add my vote to any feature requests that allow reports and the user interface to display and work with issues/defects/tasks as generic work items (or whatever term you choose to use).

Thanks, Apolon..

 

I concur.  I assign tasks from the Defects and Features tab, and sometimes the Tasks tab, but not from the Incidents tab as that falls to another manager.  Our team members can span all 4 tabs.  It would be great if I could see the total workload for all users while I'm assigning new items.

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Stefan Barlow
Systems Architect
AmeriCommerce
http://www.americommerce.com

A quick note that using the OnTime Windows Report Designer, you can fairly quickly write a report that combines Defects/Features/Tasks/Incidents on the same report. 

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Hamid Shojaee
Read the Ship Software OnTime Blog
Axosoft, LLC

Graham, I think we've nailed a few more of your requests in V7.1, specifically with the "User Dashboard".  We'd love to get your feedback on it.  It addresses a combined view to see everything, on the fly filtering, grouping, summary of data and auto-refressh.  See what you think in the V7.1 beta:

http://community.axosoft.com/forums/thread/11763.aspx

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Hamid Shojaee
Read the Ship Software OnTime Blog
Axosoft, LLC