Hey Al, don't take these comments as directed at you, they are generic, random, thoughts.
I would agree that if a vendor keeps saying I want to hear what you have to say and then doesn't ever seem to implement anything that is requested, that vendor will not be as shiney a star to *you*. If you get that from every vendor you ask for it (because you will probably ask multiple so you can choose the best and cheapest) and none of them do it, you may want to look at what you are asking for. I have met some people in the past that have asked for seriously odd things that no one would ever implement just because they requests were so off the wall and specific to a very unusual deployment. Heck I probably have fit that category at times. As someone who writes software I can say there are definitely tradeoffs in what you will put into a product. How hard is it to implement? Does it really make sense with the rest of that specific product line? Are there a lot of people who would really like that feature? Is that feature just a cool feature or is it really useful? Is that feature something that can be maintained or does it depend on some specific version of the product or bug? If a specific version is it a declining version or the go to version and what is the time frame for the go to? Does that feature overly complicate the product to the point that you may lose people or cause more support issues? Is the feature supportable at all? Could a customer easily hurt themselves with the feature and you just don't want to deal with that possibility? Is that feature something you want associated with your products and company? And of course, the most important to me since most everything I put out there right now is free... Do I want it in there and do I want to write it? I consider myself extremely lucky overall in terms of asking for features/changes because many things I have asked for have been implemented by vendors. This has been for a hodge podge of reasons like knowing the right people (say like PMs/Developers/Execs), having enough leverage to twist a company's virtual arm to do something, being in a position to publicly decry a talk up a product. Knowing enough about how the operating system works to know whether or not something can feasibly be done. Most of all though, I think I generally try to put a lot of thought into what I am asking for and try to present why that would be good not just for me and my current need, but how others might find it useful as well. There have been many things that I thought would be cool, but when I look at it objectively, it would only be cool for say the companies that are 250k users or larger and would be very difficult to implement so it probably wouldn't make sense for a vendor to do because most companies don't really code for that scale companies. Many times products scale that high only on accident. I, personally, as the joeware guy, get somewhere in the area of several hundred emails a week (a high was about 1200 emails after some visible coverage) with various requests for changes to the tools I write. In all honesty, I bet I get more feedback than many vendors in terms of changes people would like to see. I think it has something to do with the fact that people know I really do consider the changes because personally respond to every email that makes it to me (I know I lose some in junk folders and spam catchers alone the way). The requested change may not make it in or may make it in months later but I always respond. Also I actively tell people to tell me what changes they would like to see, many companies you really don't know how to contact anyone and if you send an email you get a black hole response (a sucking sound). My responses aren't all, thanks for the idea or sending me feedback. They are mostly personalized and specific to the request. I have been known to be very thankful for an idea or an algorithm and I have known to point out the reasons why something doesn't make sense someone is requesting, hopefully, they come up with a better request the next time that makes more sense. I admit I also get a lot of off the wall emails and usually have a favorite "weird" email every week. I actually had some one who emailed me several times a week or few ago who was telling me how great the tools were but complained about the splash screen photo implying that it was perverted and further saying he couldn't point his customers at my website because of that photo. I could have ignored it, but no, I responded. That person, even though they have, IMO, an odd view of the world, may have a great program idea later on and I want him to feel comfortable emailing me. BTW, I did say that I wasn't planning on changing the photo. I might do it someday if I change the overall website or if someone pays me a great deal of money to remove it. In 5 years, he is the second person to say something negative about it with hundreds of people saying they think it is very funny and great. Basically, people need to know how to contact a company to submit ideas and they have to have a feeling that it isn't going to get no response or a form letter response the idea hits a black hole. I realize for a company like MS, that may be difficult. Every idea anyone has ever sent me I have on file to look at for changing the appropriate program for or idea for new programs. I don't promise time lines but I do keep those ideas and try to implement what I can that I think could/should be implemented. Anyway, unless someone has specifically been ignored when sending feedback to any specific company, if someone on behalf of that company, especially a program manager of a specific product asks for feedback. I say give it if you have it. Specifically in regards to Missy and Quest, I am familiar with both and know that any feedback given will be given consideration. I won't promise active feedback to you though. I personally am very comfortable giving Quest feedback and expecting that it will be read and be thought about. I have given them a lot of feedback through the years and know that some of it has made it into products and that some I have given recently probably will as well. I had the luck to chat for several hours with several members of the Quest team at DEC (I won't mention names but they know who they are), it was quite impromptu and was based on the feedback I had been sending through to them over the previous several months. I was happy to hear that they had been reading what I was sending in and were familiar with what I had written and were genuine in expressing thanks for the feedback. I am sure that some of my notes were not quite their favorite notes they ever got but the notes were read and understood and they were up to date enough on what I said that they had valid pointed questions about the feedback. I am sure they didn't know I was going to be there so I doubt it was a case of prepwork for the impending visit. I have to say that giving direct feedback like that is another great reason to attend DEC. I liked the fact that vendors other than NetPro and the sponsors were around, it helped with the overall community and helped dispel the idea that the conference was about product advertising which can easily happen when sponsored by vendors like that. Again back to Missy, if you have specific things you would like to see that no one else has done or is doing in piss poor ways for the product line Missy is talking about, post it to the list, bullet it out with what you would like and why. Let others jump on it as well and you will see how well your ideas go over. I am sure there is more than just Missy and Martin who work for companies that supply tools like this and they could all use the info and duke it out in the market. I think anyone who builds tools with Exchange or AD and doesn't monitor this list is pretty silly. This is a great list and is a hotbed of ideas and real life questions/responses from people in the trenches. This listserv and the public newsgroups are the genesis of many of my most popular tools with this listserv being the most finely tuned mechanism for figuring out what people want/need. I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't more vendors out there that have added multiple items to their products or possibly whole products based on thoughts and questions and responses to this list. There are some seriously high power people from various software vendors that monitor this list (Gil, Darren, Stuart Kwan of the Ottawa Kwans [1], and of course others that I know are lurking) as well as PM's, developers, and other code freaks (like Missy, Vladimir, Jerry, Brett, ~Eric and others that are lurking) as well as consultants and trainers from all of the big consulting firms and some very good small ones that have further in-roads in product dev in various companies. Any of these people could directly influence product or could mention items they see here to people who control product if they see a good idea. Maybe a small mention here will light a fire under someone when they all of a sudden realize that they always needed what was requested as well they just never realized the lack or the need. Anyway, all of that to say, posting what you want in products to this list I think is a great idea. Just to get the opinions of others who may know of a product that does it or can point out that you are going about it the hard way. I've come to have a great deal of respect for many of the posters to this list. There are some really really good answers and some really really bad answers but there are always great discussions. I think "wow that is a great point" or "wow that is a great idea" or "wow I had no clue" more often looking at this list than looking anywhere else. Ok, my break is over, back to doing "weekend around the house" work. My neighbors are all confused about what I am doing. Before coming in for this last break I mowed and picked up sticks and then I fired up the chainsaw (which always gets people's attention around here as we have a lot of trees). Then I walked around the yard with it idling looking at all of the trees and finally stopped at my mailbox by the street and chopped it off at 2 ft. My neighbors won't come over and ask me what I am doing, they will just watch. Because of that close watching, I like to keep them a little off kilter. Now I will go out and put up the replacement mailbox which screws into the 2 ft stump. :o) joe [1] I would say those three people are representative of the three largest most influential companies in the AD and probably Exchange space. At least, they are the first three vendors I think of when thinking about major, heavily used AD/Exchange products. They are people doing cool things that I personally wouldn't mind being involved in if I wasn't doing what I do now. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Al Mulnick Sent: Saturday, May 07, 2005 3:18 PM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT: e-mail archiving systems Yep, but I have to admit that I look for vendors that not only hear but actively listen to the needs and wants I as a customer have. It's fine to hear feedback and say something like, "That's very interesting. Here, let me write that down and feed that back to.." but it's another to get an answer like, "You know, we thought somebody might want that, but to tell the truth we just couldn't find enough demand to make that something we'd do. We made a decision to leave that to a niche ISV." Or, "That is currently planned although we can't commit that it will be there. I understand what you need to be able to, but I need to know if there is enough demand to do that same thing in order to justify the time and testing in our product" My reasoning is that nobody has a COTS product that does 100% of what I want it to do today or a year after I deploy it. I need to constantly be in contact and in the stream to be effective in this fast changing world of COTS and costs. Of course, it never hurts to say, "Great question. Here, let me get your address so I can mail this free golf shirt while I write that down" either ;) -ajm -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of joe Sent: Saturday, May 07, 2005 9:23 AM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT: e-mail archiving systems LOL. Now you can get more opinions Missy. :o) People like hearing from vendors, hey, tell me what you would like to see. joe -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Missy Koslosky Sent: Saturday, May 07, 2005 12:31 AM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] OT: e-mail archiving systems Whoops. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Missy Koslosky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org> Sent: Friday, May 06, 2005 11:03 PM Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] OT: e-mail archiving systems Hey Deji, Read your post with interest. Don't know if you've heard or not, but I joined Quest Software as a product manager in their Exchange Solutions group earlier this year. Archive Manager, our archiving product, is my responsibility. This naturally means I'm always interested in competitive information, and on what people want to see that they're not seeing - what you love and hate. If you'd ever like to spill your guts (and I shan't quote you), I'd love to hear what you have to say. Hope all is well and that we'll get to see each other at the Summit -- or maybe even TechEd -- are you going to either? both? Best, Missy ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org> Sent: Friday, May 06, 2005 2:40 PM Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT: e-mail archiving systems I can only speak to KVS, and I can not say what I think of them in such a decorous forum. If you do get to speak with them in the course of your evaluation (you are going to do a thorough eval, right?), be sure to ask them what happens if you run out of room on a vault and you want your users to clean out their items to make more room. Remember to ask what happens when you are doing hardware refresh and you need your users to move stuff from their offline vault on their old computers to their offline vault on their new computer. Remember to ask them about the "unique" behavior of the online vault when you need to replace the vault itself or when you want to add additional vaults and split your users across multiple vaults. I'm out of here. Sincerely, Dèjì Akómöláfé, MCSE+M MCSA+M MCP+I Microsoft MVP - Directory Services www.readymaids.com - we know IT www.akomolafe.com Do you now realize that Today is the Tomorrow you were worried about Yesterday? -anon ________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Carerros, Charles Sent: Fri 5/6/2005 12:03 PM To: 'ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org' Subject: [ActiveDir] OT: e-mail archiving systems My company is currently review some archiving apps and I was wondering if anyone has any news to share (good or bad on them) excusing my spelling if I get them wrong. KVS (from Veritas) Convault Legato Mail Extender\File Extender Thanks, Charlie List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
