Where is Smartbear's transparancy, TestComplete's roadmap, follow-up on Feature Requests

I'm with tristaanogre.  What he said x100.

Even the forums have improved immensely since I started using TestComplete 8 years ago.  There used to be many posted questions that never got answered and now you can rarely find one without a response.  (I know, because I hunt for those!)  SmartBear has spent a lot of time upgrading their processes and I can certainly tell the difference in the answers on the forums and in the support turn around time.

Having been trained on some other testing tools in the past few months, I can say for sure that SmartBear is much more responsive than other, much larger companies.  One in particular only has forums and no direct contact with Support or Sales so if you can't find an answer there, you're stuck.

We were also given full access to SmartBear staff at the conference in Boston.  I had a long list of questions that weren't answered in panels and the TestComplete product owner sat down with me and went through everything.  

I suggest that any user who has specific questions about feature requests or roadmap or anything else contact

SmartBear Support: https://support.smartbear.com/product-list/

or their salesperson at

SmartBear Sales info@SmartBear.com

I too am a user, not a SmartBear employee.  This forum work is all on my own time and for my own benefit.  As long as SmartBear is delivering for us, then a few posts that aren't updated are the least of my concerns.

Thanks SmartBear!

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tristaanogre wrote:

A little context:

 

A WHOLE BUNCH of those new ideas, if you check the comments, stem from inexperienced users requesting TestComplete to be able to perform some sort of functionality that is already supported.  Commenters (including me) point out the pre-existing feature and the feature request pretty much "dies" at that point.  Now, that said, would be nice for SmartBear folks to mark such requests as "removed from consideration" or something but I think the 416 count of new ideas should take into consideration that many times, new TC users request a feature before they explore all possible ways of implementing things.  

 

As a side note:

 

I'm a user of TC... so is mgroen2... we are paying customers... we pay SmartBear to supply us with the tool.  We have a choice... to continue to use the tool or to find a different tool if we are dissatisfied.  If we don't like the way SmartBear does things, we could always find some other vendor.

 

Personally...  the tool is SO flexible, SO powerful, with SO many different ways of doing the same thing, I'm quite satisfied. If it doesn't do EXACTLY what I want, usually I can find a way of doing it with a little ingenuity and, to quote the Beatles, "get by with a little help from my friends."  This community does an EXCELLENT job of providing many different ways of achieving results as well as helped establish some "Best Practices" over the years.  So, while there are a LOT of Feature requests... I keep in mind that back in version 1.52 (the first version I ever touched), I was EXTREMELY limited in how I could do stuff... We've come a long way, baby, since 2001... 

 

So, mgroen2 is entitled to his opinion... but as for me, keep up the good work, SmartBear.

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I agree with tristaanogre that duplicate ideas should be removed from the list of ideas. Same as requests which are already implemented (in one or another way). 

What I am missing is Smartbear's pro-actively managing the feature requests section. Removing duplicates, cleaning up the list, assigning priorities to it, etc, and communicate about could/should be better.

The argument of paying customer (and that you always have a choice to go another vendor...), is putting up a smoke-screen. It's not a valid argument in this discussion. It's polluting the discussion about (lack of) Smartbears transparancy on the (status of) feature requests. 

The tool is flexibale, and I like it, but I also think it could be improved (that's why I focus on the feature requests), and especially the communication / management on the feature requests from Smartbear could/should be improved.

We (at least I) put effort in entering feature requests, read those from others, vote for them etc. I expect the same from Smartbear side, with actively communicating about implementation schedules, beta testing possibilities, status updated, etc.

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prashantmohan wrote:

Dear Mathijs,

 

Thank you for reaching out to us.

My name is Prashant Mohan and I am the Product Manager for TestComplete. I totally understand your concerns about transparency as far as feature requests are concerned, and we are working on fixing this issue over the next few weeks. We receive feature requests from a variety of forums – community, support, customers, and sales – and prioritize them based on value to customers, effort to build and impact to business.

 

I assure you that we are working on improving the process that will benefit our customers and increase transparency. Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any other concerns, and I’ll be happy to address them.

 

Marsha and Robert, I really appreciate your support for the SmartBear team. TestComplete wouldn't' be the product it is without your feedback and presence in the community.

 

Again, I apologize for dropping the ball as far as feature requests are concerned and I will make sure to correct this going forward.

 

Thanks,

Prashant Mohan

Product Manager, TestComplete

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prashantmohan I have just sent you a private message.