Community Suggestion: Link Forum Discussions to Product Updates (edited)

ajbopp

@Coach Natalie does an excellent job of listing all the new features, feature updates, and bug fixes whenever a new release is made, helping to understand the changes we can expect to see.

it might be even more helpful if a link was provided to forum discussions for each item, where applicable, that a particular software change would impact (a link from that forum back to the announcement would provide a nice cross-link).

This might help quench some of the frustrations that are repeatedly expressed about little being done on one thing or another.

DannyB

I think this is a great idea… but can imagine how much extra work this would create unless there is some way to automate the linking.

ajbopp

@DannyB It sounds like a lot of work to me too, until I remember how quickly @Coach Natalie and others always seem to be able to merge posts when the subject is duplicated. Seems like they are pretty on top of things in that regard.

Coach Natalie

@ajbopp, thanks for the suggestion!

When it comes to new feature announcements, we do usually link a feedback post where users can leave their feedback. We try to keep announcements neat and on-topic to the subject at hand, which is why we close them to additional comments; we want the point to stay clear and apparent and not become cluttered with feedback. Though we do appreciate the feedback, which is why we create those separate feedback posts when applicable. Same with release notes — these are our official and only product notes so they need to just contain the release info.

Would you or @DannyB or anyone else who's voted on this idea provide an example, please? I'm all about linking to similar topics and providing those types of resources, and I think this helps with organization as well, so we'd be happy to review our processes. We'd just like a clearer idea of what this would look like. 🙂

-Coach Natalie

ajbopp

I was thinking of something like this:

• FIXED: The Accounts List is not displaying all accounts. (community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/5486; community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/5490/ )

So not even a full URL (which will get expanded into a summary view, adding to clutter). Just something to give the curious forum user something to search for.

My thought is that this will provide, in one post, the primary forum discussions impacted by all changes, rather than depending on the forum users to have to go searching for separate forum posts (that may not actually exist) for each change.

Coach Natalie

Thanks, @ajbopp!

-Coach Natalie

DannyB

The reason I like this idea, whether it is practical or not, is that it will demonstrate that the development team is responsive and actively maintaining and improving Simplifi with fixes and new features being "tagged" with links to corresponding forum discussions about the issues and wishlist ite.