Submitting feature Ideas more easily.
Posted: May 12 2011
Submitting feature Ideas more easily yet keeping them organized too.
Several times in the past I and others had suggested a bug tracker and feature tracker. Now TSS has it. Great. However ideas are probably being lost when some users maybe have not had time to learn it yet (or maybe they do not want to learn it). However their idea(s) may be excellent. Loosing these ideas is not good for TSS. So the suggestion is this. If a suggestion comes into the forum rather than the tracker, TSS should enter it in the tracker (which makes sense since they are going to know the contents much better than all the users). When TSS enters the new feature idea they should have a drop down box that they can use to quickly enter the user name of the person who submitted the idea in the forum. This process should automatically send the user the details as to where it was entered in the tracker and give a link directly to those details. This would allow the user to keep tabs on it and they may submit more ideas on this topic. It will get them started in using the tracker.
In addition to this I think the link to the tracker entry should be put into the forum thread where the idea originally came in. This way users who are tempted to comment in the forum will be able to click and go directly into the tracker entry instead. Another reason to do this is the original user who submitted the idea may loose the email which has the link. This way if they had adjustments or sub-ideas related to the their original idea they may go back to the forum to find the post they created and there they can find the link to the tracker.
Maybe the tracker could even link back to the original forum post some how.
Several times in the past I and others had suggested a bug tracker and feature tracker. Now TSS has it. Great. However ideas are probably being lost when some users maybe have not had time to learn it yet (or maybe they do not want to learn it). However their idea(s) may be excellent. Loosing these ideas is not good for TSS. So the suggestion is this. If a suggestion comes into the forum rather than the tracker, TSS should enter it in the tracker (which makes sense since they are going to know the contents much better than all the users). When TSS enters the new feature idea they should have a drop down box that they can use to quickly enter the user name of the person who submitted the idea in the forum. This process should automatically send the user the details as to where it was entered in the tracker and give a link directly to those details. This would allow the user to keep tabs on it and they may submit more ideas on this topic. It will get them started in using the tracker.
In addition to this I think the link to the tracker entry should be put into the forum thread where the idea originally came in. This way users who are tempted to comment in the forum will be able to click and go directly into the tracker entry instead. Another reason to do this is the original user who submitted the idea may loose the email which has the link. This way if they had adjustments or sub-ideas related to the their original idea they may go back to the forum to find the post they created and there they can find the link to the tracker.
Maybe the tracker could even link back to the original forum post some how.