Recently we introduced to the community a new way to collaborate with Novell on enhancement requests, the Novell Ideas Portal.   If you didn't get a chance to see this announcement please take a moment and check out what my fellow Product Manager, Jason Blackett had to say about Ideas in his recent Blog Post.

Hopefully you had a chance to look at the new Ideas Portal and started adding your own enhancements to the list and voting for those already in the list.  It’s been less than 2 weeks since Jason made the announcement, I wanted to let you know how Ideas is going in its early stages for the Collaboration product line.

• • In Collaboration we have two main forums. One for GroupWise and its components, and one for Vibe.

• • As of this Article in GroupWise we have 191 Ideas and 784 votes.

• • As of this Article in Vibe we have 47 Ideas and 162 votes.

I think this is a great start in a short amount of time.  I do need more input.  I want to hear from the Collaboration community.   This will be used in the planning cycle to help us understand what is most important to you.  This information combined with regular onsite visits from Product Managers, will help us prioritize the work for each release.  This will also let you see what other members of the community want to see in the product, and when an enhancement is planned, you will get an indication in the Ideas Portal.

I do have some tips from the early implementation of Ideas that will help us and help members of the community understand your Ideas and contribute to it as well:

• • The system forces you to search first and then create your Ideas after you haven't found a match.  I strongly encourage you to make the best effort to find out if your Ideas are already in the forum and then vote for it.   This will be much more effective in helping us prioritize Ideas.

• • Be descriptive in your Ideas so we know what you are asking for. I want to know the persona of the person asking for the request (User, Admin, Mobile User etc...). What they want and then why they want it.

• • Visit often, be active in the community! Invite other members of the community.  As Jason mentioned, "We are expecting that as a community you will help guide us on the Ideas that are the most valuable to you.”

Finally,  thanks to everyone who has embraced the Ideas portal!  For the rest please get out there,  check it out and vote today!

GroupWise Ideas

Vibe Ideas