Thanks for the response–is it something overly difficult to find out?
Yup! We’re using Discourse for this forum though the vote aspect is an available option but we modified some sections with a custom build. 
3 Likes
You’re awesome–thank you so much!!
3 Likes
You’re welcome! And you’re awesome, too! 
1 Like
Can you give us some color on the criteria Wyze uses to determine if/when things move from no comment to maybe-later to researching, etc…
Looking at the items in-development, It seems customer feedback and their votes play a smaller role than I initially thought.
Sure thing!
- launched - Has already been sent out to the public.
- testing - Usually means that it’s in beta testing though recently we used this for alpha features.
- in-development - Means that we’re actively working on it but we’re not ready for external testing.
- researching - We’re looking into this and trying to select a good method for implementation but we’re not at a point of working on it yet.
- maybe-later - This isn’t on our internal roadmap at this point but we’ve seen and considered it. Sometimes features that we plan to implement later but haven’t come up in the pipeline are in this category.
As for the in-development items, many of these had more votes with previous voting methods. But while there is a strong correlation between requests and features we work on, it’s not a perfect one. This is impacted by our ability to deliver the feature, if we found a method to implement it during the research stage, if something paves the way for a future feature, company goals, and what our resources are. Many of the features that we’re currently working on entered the pipeline before the Roadmap launched.
3 Likes
Is it possible to have a third option to separate items being researched and items actually in being created. Or would the two be concidered the same?
I was thinking ‘researching’ would be defined as ‘investigating to see if possible and if it was feasible’ and ‘Working on’ defined as ‘in the development and/or testing phase’.
As for ‘in the future’ it might be asking too much but because the ‘in the future’ wish list is so long, could they be given a rating to indicate what kind of priority each item might be. Ie: 1 being high future priority, 2 being a long term priority. Right now all are what you might say are ‘when we get to it, we get to it’.
Knowing a feature has or doesn’t have a higher priority might sell more cams, Sinetimes it’s worth getting in on the low prices now and waiting for the upgrades is worth it. And sometimes knowing what you need isnt in the radar really saves a lot of frustration by allowing other solutions to be found.
Since there is the wishlist and with voting, some might not understand that a wishlist and opportunity to vote doesn’t mean any particular wish is going into production.
I know I made that mistake and experienced much frustration. Knowledge is power! I now have the power to make educated and sound decisions.
Thanks you and enjoy the rest of your week.
1 Like
After a feature graduates from the “researching” phase, it is moved over to the #roadmap category on the forum, which has its own set of tags. Take a look over there.
Also, we are considering adding a tag here, something like “not feasible”, or “not planned” to give folks a better idea of features that are not likely to be worked on any time soon for various reasons.
2 Likes
Good to know, I didn’t know that ‘researching’ actually meant it was put on the Roadmap. I’ll have to check that out next. So many layers and areas of information, it gets confusing sometimes.
No, “researching” doesn’t mean it’s been moved to #roadmap. There are two tags in #wishlist:
researching - We’re looking into this and trying to select a good method for implementation but we’re not at a point of working on it yet.
maybe-later - This isn’t on our internal roadmap at this point but we’ve seen and considered it. Sometimes features that we plan to implement later but haven’t come up in the pipeline are in this category.
AFTER researching is done, it moves to #roadmap and will have one of these tags as it progresses further in development (from the bottom up):
launched - Has already been sent out to the public.
testing - Is a feature or product in beta testing.
in-development - Means that we’re actively working on it but we’re not ready for external testing.
1 Like
Ok that helps a little. So it’s taken off of wishlist and moved to road map after researching.
Questions and thoughts…
I see potential confusion. If the item is moved off the wishlist to Roadmap, when the wishlist is checked for new ideas that are already on the roadmap how is it to be known it’s on the roadmap and not to create a new wish?
If it is decided not to be moved to the roadmap for whatever reason, then is it put into a ‘maybe later’ state?
On the roadmap there is a sort feature for research. When sorted that way, nothing comes up. What is this research used for?
Perhaps the second field. On wishlist can be changed to ‘roadmap’ indicating it has graduated from being just a wish. Then use the research tag in roadmap to indicate it’s being researched. That way anything besides ‘maybe later’ can be tracked on the roadmap.
However still leave the item on the wishlist so everyone knows that wish has already been identified and they don’t create another wish while it’s being worked on.
Thanks again, hate to be so anal and all. If I’m confused I’m sure there are others.
2 Likes
That’s a very good point that I don’t think we considered. We should probably change out guidance to ask folks to search both #wishlist and #roadmap to make sure the idea isn’t in either one.
As I mentioned above, Wyze is considering adding a “not feasible” tag, which would server this purpose.
“Research” isn’t a #roadmap tag, so nothing would be expected to come up in that search.
This is not a capability of the forum software that we use.
Thanks for your thoughtful input.
2 Likes
Loki covered most of what I would say. But I’m definitely going to talk to the team about this. Thank you for the great feedback!
Actually if you check the list of tags you can choose from when sorting roadmap, there are 5. Launched Testing Working-on Researching and Important.
Makes sense that Roadmap would include Researching since it’s a movement of progress and no longer just a wish.
Basically an item is either just a wish (Wishlist) or resources have been dedicated to it (Roadmap).
If the tag on the wishlist labeled ‘Researching’ was changed to ‘roadmap’ and all items in research were added to the roadmap (and not deleted from the wishlist) it would solve 3 things.
- Give a search direction to look at the roadmap.
- Prevent a duplicate entry for a wish already created.
- Keep wishes all together and progress all together because Researching is still progress being made.
Oh and bonus: reduce confusion.
Thanks again.
There have been a few cases where we started researching something and then ended up going a different direction temporarily. So the request went back to maybe-later but was still up for consideration. Researching IS progress but until something is in-development/planned for a release it isn’t in the internal roadmap yet. It’s more of a signal that, “This is under stronger consideration but still isn’t at a point of further action. We’re looking into the feasibility and if we want to go that way soon.”
Ok thanks.
“Researching” was present in the drop-down tag search in #roadmap only because there was one #wishlist topic that was merged and closed but didn’t get migrated back to #wishlist when we opened that category. I have fixed it, so the tag drop down now looks like this:
The “important” is used only for the top post explaining the #roadmap category. So now the tag drop down matches tags described in the explanatory post.
1 Like