Is it advisable for Atera to publish a timeline for releasing new features?

tanderson

The question asks whether it would be beneficial or appropriate for Atera, to make public a timeline detailing when they intend to release new features.

tanderson

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@nina I think a timeline for releasing new features would be beneficial. That way, the community knows what's coming and maybe even be able to vote on upcoming features to be released quicker if the community would prefer those features first.

If Atera changed like this, the community would highly value it. It would make Atera feel like they genuinely listen to their clients and provide what they want.

In no way is this a bash on Atera. I think the product and the entire team are doing great things! I want to put my insight into the mix so we can make the best MSP product on the market together (developers & clients.)

[Deleted User]

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I have had this discussion many times with Atera in the past.

The general response is that they will not do it, for fear of getting slated for not releasing something at the advertised time.

But to that I say, just label it clearly with "these are provisional target dates and subject to change" and no-one will mind, it is better to say something than nothing - which is what they currently tend to do.

To be fair, I did stumble upon one rare occasion where they actually wrote something in the product ideas board with an approximate release date, but then they forgot to update that when it was actually released!

There appears to be zero resources allocated from the Atera team to actually updating the ideas board or commenting, which is a real shame as I pushed so hard to get this board implemented in the first place.

tanderson

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@nathan I agree with you. Something is better than nothing. I moved my company away from Atera at the end of last year because of some lacking features. Long story short, we had a horrible experience moving to Kaseya and ended up moving back to Atera. The worst part about it is after we decided to move away from Atera and the two months it took to do it, all the features we were moving for were implemented. If I had known to wait two months, I would have never spent the time and money migrating back and forth.

I think the IT industry can all understand that things take time to develop, and sometimes things get pushed back from their release date. I think they should, at the very least, have a yearly roadmap and allow users to vote on the top priorities and not even say specifically when things will be released. I can wait a few months for something, but not knowing is the issue.

I also agree with the zero allocation for the features board. I read almost all of it, and Atera needs to lean on community moderators that they vet to police it. Someone like you or I could benefit Atera by telling people that the feature is implemented and archiving the post or merging 10 of the same ideas into one post.

There are too many duplicates and too many feature requests that have already been released. Atera should have a master page on the feature board that shows every feature in bullet points per category.

[Deleted User]

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@tanderson You sum it up beautifully.

rob.williams

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I have asked so many times about this. How they can't have a roadmap is a mystery, it does seem like they randomly pick what they might like to develop next, rather than develop based on their customers priority/preferences.

I agree with the other comments, having at the very least, an idea of what is in the pipeline helps us decide how we might plan also.

For example, we really need a documentation management solution, but if I know there is one likely to be coming sometime this year then I won't spend time looking at alternatives.

nina

Hi! Nina here. Thank you for sharing your concerns. I hear you.

We have an AMA (Ask Me Anything) planned for this Tuesday, July 11th at 12 PM EST with Atera's CPO, Tal Dagan. This would be a great time to ask questions related to Atera's product roadmap and feature requests!

tanderson

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@nina Unfortunately, I will not be able to make it. Will Tal do an AMA post on the community page afterward?

nina

https://community.atera.com/discussion/comment/169#Comment_169

I would suggest that you write your question now (you can put AMA in the title) and submit it in to the community. Tal will go in tomorrow and answer all your questions via the community platform!

mbudke

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I would partly agree to what is written above. I can fully understand that it is very tricky to provide timelines and that if you provide a timeline you will always have people complaining in case that the timeline is not met. Due to bugs or unforseen challenges it is nearly impossible to meet each timeline.
Therefore maybe an alternative idea:

• do not provide timelines but a list of e.g. top 5 features which are currently in the queue. If there is a chance to order them please do so otherwise keep this information open.
• maybe add a date when the feature was put on the list so people understand since when it is on the list (of course if there is a feature on the list for e.g. 6 month then this can result in expectations to get it soon)
• maybe if something gets moved again and again provide some insights why. Most often it is the understanding which is missing to stop people complaining and explanations can be simple (e.g. feature XYZ was squeezed in due to a security reason, it is more complicated than we thought, we try to handle it on a more complex approach to also cover configuration XYZ)
• do provide a separate list of what is definitively fixed/ implemented in the next release because e.g. is already passed QA

So you do not need to make promises which you maybe cannot met but on the other side you provide a bit more details as currently available.

And just to mention:
If you want to get more people using the community such a list would be a key to get the people :-)

frank.pietersma

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Everyone has to deal with deadlines in their work. Why Shouldn't Atera?
I really don't see the problem in exposing a road map. Now we have nothing. We just have to wait and see.
When it suits Atera they release something. Just picking random things what suits the programmers at that time. Actually, its unbelievable there seems to be no plan!
From Atera perspective I can imagine thus is very convenient. When you don't have a timeline you can do whatever you want and whenever you want.

Every professional company has to deal with deadlines and is planning ahead.
So Atera, grow up and go work with schedules and deadlines, just like the rest of us.