Moving Suggestions from Github to....

SuiteCRM Forum - English Language Suggestion Box
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Hello Community!

We at SalesAgility have been busy internally planning a lot of new processes and ways to maintain and interact with the ever growing community and your requests. The past couple years we have tried (and unfortunately not achieved) to stay ontop of the SuiteCRM github board. Although we all know that this is not an easy feat it needs to be dealt with and we want to begin laying down the groundwork to relieve the obvious bottlenecks within the company and gain traction of reducing issues and PRs. As I have said in another thread that we are very appreciative of your patience and your continued support whilst we make these small progressive, but hopefully effective, changes to truly make SuiteCRM a fantastic Open Source Community we can all be proud of.

So lets begin…

[size=4]Moving Suggestions.[/size]

We are moving suggestions away from Github to a more suitable place that we can clearly track, plan, upvote and then schedule into the SuiteCRM roadmap. This move will happen over this weekend and any new suggestions will be added to the platform we will be using which is Trello.

This board (SuiteCRM Suggestion Box) will be visible and open to the public which (requires login) can comment, subscribe, up vote, and in the future relate issues, PRs, branches and commits to suggestions. It will also include the kanban style columns i.e. backlog, in discussion, needs work etc etc. This will provide everyone a visual cue of what is happening and what’s required by them to establish a suggestion into a proposed feature.

The aim being is that with this new interaction with SalesAgility and the Community we will be able to clearly define, schedule and allocate appropriately suggestions to see them successfully merged into SuiteCRM more quickly. All suggestions which are agreed and hit the end of the board (i.e. ‘schedule’) then they will have a place on our or the Community’s roadmap (which I will discuss in another announcement)…

[size=4]Why?[/size]

So we can focus on dealing with suggestions without having them grouped together within the mountain of issues currently on Github.
With removing these types of ‘issues’ (currently stand at 177) we can allocate dedicate time appropriately to our bug fixes and allow the appropriate people to discuss and progress the suggestions separately.
Provide a more transparent time line of the end to end process of suggestion into merged feature.
We can introduce and implement Community provided contribution more efficiently into suitable sprints and releases.

[size=4]Pros[/size]

  • Having a separate platform provides us at SalesAgility to do an initial filter of what we feel should be discussed and appropriately allocate to either ourselves or the Community.
  • Provides and visualises a clear definition of progression of a suggestion into an agreed feature specification using kanban methodology
  • Includes a clear up vote system which will aid with prioritisation - though SalesAgility do have prerogative to progress lower voted suggestions if required.
  • Remains open to the public
  • Can in the future attach Github Issues, PR, Commits, Branches to a suggestion to retain github connectivity.

[size=4]Downside[/size]

  • Requires platform login (similar to Github)
  • Suggestions made by the public will still require to be created on Github (as the platform does not allow non board members to create cards).
  • Some other platform based issues – but we feel they are very minor.
  • Not as integrated with Github as hoped but very suitable for suggestions only.
  • Existing suggestions will be closed

[size=4]Impact[/size]

So this will mean that all the existing suggestions will be closed on Github and re-created on the new platform. You should not lose any comments or history from the issue as suggestions re-created will be linked appropriately however the up vote system will be re-started so may require members to apply their votes again to kick start the prioritise list that we will begin to employ.

[size=4]Last Word[/size]

As this transition is happening please feel free to provide your thoughts that can help us improve on the new platform i.e. labels columns etc. Currently the board is disallowing comments until the full migration has happened (hopefully by Monday 03/04/2017 morning).

Look forward to seeing you all on the new SuiteCRM Suggestion Box!

SuiteCRM Suggestion Box

Edited

Also, shameless plug, but if you haven’t joined trello yet then I would like to ask if you are able to do so using the following link (so we can get a couple of free months :wink: )

https://trello.com/misssamusaran/recommend

2 Likes
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What are the columns descriptions?

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Currently the Columns are:

Backlog (suggestions)
These are all the suggestions made. These will be prioritised by up votes and when ready moved into the Discussion column for further discussion between SalesAgility and Community.

Discussion (design)
These are the suggestions that have been allocated time to have a detail discussion and finalise the requirements and scope of the task.

Schedule (contributor)
These are suggestions which have been scoped out and are ready to be allocated to a contributor. These suggestions are now named ‘features’. Contributors will be labeled as either SalesAgility or the Community.

Planned (roadmap)
These are features which have been scheduled and are placed on either the SalesAgility or Community Roadmap. They will be labeled with the expected release version and re-created on the Github with appropriate label ‘Feature’ and allocated to the contributor.

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Hi. I don’t fully understand the new system, but that’s ok, I’ll just learn it as we go along and start using it…

My initial feelings about moving suggestions away from Github:

–> some of the things labelled suggestions on Github are really bugs.

Maybe a quick look at those suggestions to re-label them would be in order before removing them from Github.

–> please don’t let the new system slip into a dictatorship of upvotes.

Dropbox had this Votebox thing which was terrible, basically a graveyard of good ideas, eventually they dropped it in favor of… an old-style forum. The problem with Votebox was too many ideas, too many votes, people would only see the top-voted suggestions, so good ideas went completely unnoticed, to a point where it was impossible to get anything into a good position on their list.

There should be multiple factors when evaluating an idea or suggestion, upvotes is only one of them. But popularity is not the same thing as importance, practicability, genious, innovation, etc.

So please make sure a good idea gets a fair chance, even if unpopular (perhaps for being too technical), as long as there is good reason to pick it up (easy to implement, nice cost/benefit ratio, clever, original, etc.). Democracy is not always a good judge. Sometimes all it takes is some wisdom (like from experienced developers in SalesAgility) to recognize value, and then the lack of votes shouldn’t be a problem.

So: upvotes are ok, but don’t make them too prominent, too visible, too critical to get exposure.

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Hi Pgr,

–> some of the things labelled suggestions on Github are really bugs.

Agreed, when we are migrating we’ll re-evaluate the label as we have already seen a few which are bugs.

–> please don’t let the new system slip into a dictatorship of up votes.

Again, completely agree. I will update the thread to state that the up votes will not solely dictate the progress of a suggestion from Backlog into Discussion but if it also aligns with SalesAgility own vision of the project. Correct, users may not up vote because of the complexity of the suggestion but as the main organisers of this board will be technically minded this shouldn’t be too much of a an issue. :wink: But we will review this up voting system if it becomes one.

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Hi Everyone,

That is the initial migration completed. You will probably have seen that all the suggestions on Github have been closed and where appropriate have been moved onto the new SuiteCRM Suggestion Box.

Some suggestions may have slipped through the cracks and should be re-opened and labelled as bugs, if so let me know and I will re-evaluate them.

We have already moved some suggestions into the Discussion (design) column as we felt these were the most sought after and already had a fix (or fixes) proposed.

Over tomorrow I will update appropriately these Discussion cards, but not to stop you from getting the hang of Trello I will enable the comments.

See you on the board.

1 Like
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I’m not a big fan of Trello but I understand your needs.
I have used it for some time in another project but i see it useful just for small teams and for tasks “under work”, not for suggestions that will remain there for some time and eventually will be ignored.
But I will use it again with SuiteCRM!

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Sorry for my Question (may be Stupid Question) - But why we can’t manage the suggestions using this forum? What’s the need of different places?

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@deligence these ugly, illegible forums don’t have a bunch of useful features: labels, mentions, easy crosslinking of issues, etc.

The difference between Github and Trello is harder to see. I guess Trello has that overview of many issues at once, with that column organization to see progress. Let’s see how that goes…

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I agree, but we can have a better solution for this Forum. https://www.discourse.org is a good tool for this purpose.

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I previously suggested Stack Exchange or Askbot:

https://suitecrm.com/forum/suitecrm-7-0-discussion/9269-let-s-move-these-forums-to-stackexchange

I didn’t know about Discourse, but it looks good.

1 Like
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Thanks @pgr :slight_smile:

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Hi Everyone,

Thanks for joining us and look forward to progressing the suggestion box further.

As we have stated earlier this is a new process for us and if there is a more suitable platform we will certainly consider it (thanks deligence for the recommendation, we’ll have a wee look at that).

I agree horus that the kanban is good for small sprints and other smaller grouped tasks, but I’m sure we can get this to work for us until (or if) there is a better solution for us but it is certainly an improvement already!

Of course there will always be a transition from one place to another, and its all agreed that these forums are inadequate - whether the forums also require a review itself…

Also, shameless plug, but if you haven’t joined trello yet then I would like to ask if you are able to do so using the following link (so we can get a couple of free months :wink: )

https://trello.com/misssamusaran/recommend

Many Thanks Everyone!

1 Like
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I already have an account with trello.com - How I can access SuiteCRM’s Board? My username is deligence

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Only SalesAgility team are able to create and move cards within the board. If you have a new request the process is still to raise it on Github and it will be moved to Trello from initial filter from SalesAgility.

As a public member you can comment and upvote and link Github Issues, PRs,etc to cards as well

Also for additional sorting I am currently using Chrome Extension to do so. Allowing me to sort by voted items.

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Thanks for Quick Response.

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Ask for the information for these interesting things.