I understand that, which is why i try to make special effort to approve all newly submitted ideas every Thursday evening. But… you are right… if someone creates a new idea on friday morning, and then submits it to Frideas immediatly, it will not yet be visible. I dont have ad answer for that.
Or just use the weekly Frideas thread for the discussion… I always try to post my problem and “here’s what I’m thinking” before submitting an idea, and often the problem is already solved by an existing feature/setting I wasn’t aware of.
That’s what you are doing. Not every team is doing that at Epicor.
My problem in the past has been getting ideas approved outside of the main Kinetic category. Other categories like Grow, don’t have the same level of commitment to approving ideas.
This is perhaps the bigger issue. And what I was referring to above. The other teams aren’t reviewing at all it seems. It took months to get a Quick Ship idea approved. That support made us submit.
Right the current solution punishes everyone. We don’t ban everyone on the forum behind moderation when someone comes and spams it.
We kick them out delete their account and censure them individually. You guys (Epicor) should do the same
Even if they get approved I don’t think some teams are using ideas at all.
Fully agreed. It’s evident in the other products.
moderation after the fact should work fine.
I do: Idea-Gate has shown who is and isn’t doing the work. Now take down the gate.
I’ve run into recently where a product team “implemented” an idea and marked it closed. But they didn’t do at all what the idea was asking for. To the point it was clear they didn’t even review the idea. When support went back to development they said submit a new idea. Even though the idea was already there they just didn’t review it. Then the newly submitted idea isn’t approved because it’s already implemented. It’s a pointless cycle.
That’s established itself as a highly effective pattern after 30+ years for boards, groups, and projects across the internet. Approving all posts is expensive and counterproductive, managing users is efficient and effective.
/edit to add/
Compounded by the clumsy moderation, my biggest complaint is Epicor employees posting in Ideas. Epicor employees are certainly incentivized to deliver Ideas, else why would it exist? A lot of Ideas are posted under names that map to Epicor roles. It’s discouraging to see developer todo lists cruising past objectively great customer input. How do we get through when we’re up against a self-approved copy of the current sprint?
Just to be clear to readers… I’m suggesting eliminating, not moderating, employee input Ideas. Ideas’ value is as a customer input channel and needs to prioritize customer input. Love to hear about internal goals and work, but it needs to be shared somewhere else.
I would add one more thing to this. Customer input should be evaluated objectively on its merits, Epicor employees shouldn’t be playing favorites.
I wish those responsible for non-Kinetic Ideas, Quick Ship and MES to name two, would be as punctual as you. If that were the case Frideas! may be able to make a comeback.
I don’t think they shouldn’t be allowed to put in ideas. They should just be evaluated on the same merits as the customer ideas. If an employee OR a customer has a great idea, I want to see it and vote for it. On the flip side, if they are the only one who thinks it’s a good idea and gets no traction, it should be left by the wayside, just like a customer idea should. (and everyone thinks their ideas are good ideas, otherwise they wouldn’t post them). There are lots of perspectives that can help us gain a better whole.
The changes to policy is only part of the problem, the attitude behind them is the root of the issue. Even if the policy was reverted today, if you keep the heart that wrote this paragraph, than the dark cloud that hangs over community relations will remain.
This statement is
- Dismissive of the experiences of respected members of the community, and may be considered gaslighting.
- Does not agree with evidence - we have provided many examples of ideas that were not approved in this timeline.
- Does not agree with your own follow up statement “which is why i try to make special effort to approve all newly submitted ideas every Thursday evening.”
We do not feel supported. We feel like there is a growing breakdown in the relationship which isn’t being acknowledged or worked on. We want you back on our side. Please.
Is this really a problem? I can’t say I’ve seen any ideas that would meet this criteria. Maybe there’s a small percentage that I’m not seeing.
Duplicate ideas are a problem. Timely review of each idea would help here.
I have an idea: Rename the “Submitted” status to “Pending Review”. Then have Epicor staff review these ideas in this status. Don’t hide the idea behind an idea-gate. Any duplicate ideas can be merged and ideas lacking detail can request more detail or be removed.
For the duplicates issue, are we using latent space vector similarity (vector db) to facilitate the detection of these? It wont be foolproof but it will certainly help, especially for the bulk of low hanging fruit. Considering Epicor has “Prism”, I suspect ya’ll have some AI experts, but if not, I am available for consult.
@mbayley you are not seeing inappropriate ideas, because we are now capturing the poorly written ideas (or rants in some cases) before they become visible. The idea portal is designed to help Epicor meet the needs of our customers.
What you describe is pretty much our basic procedure.
- i run a dashboard showing all new ideas that need reviewed - i do this several times per day. On thursday evening and Friday Morning, i try to do one extra pass to capture any late arrivals
- After review of each idea, I mark it visible, and change its status from Submitted to Gauging Interest
- In the case where the idea was logged into the wrong section (Quickship, for example, I still mark it as visible (if it appears good), but i leave it as “submitted” letting the quickship team finish their review.
- In the case where it is flagged as a duplicate (yes, the platform automatically searches for dups), then I will investigate and merge if appropriate before it becomes visible.