Flow 1.0.2 & Feedback Ideas
There are two parts to today’s announcements.
Part Un: Flow 1.0.2 Now Available
This new release of Flow fixes a myriad of issues, increases stability, and clarifies a few user interface paradigms. For more details, feel free to read the release notes.
Coincidentally, it was roughly 1 month ago that 1.0.1 was released. As a few have pointed out to me, nearly a month between bug-fix releases is rather abnormal — this is mostly due to the massiveness of these updates.
Would you prefer it if Extendmac released smaller updates in a more frequent fashion?
I’m really interested to know the general opinion on this, so I strongly encourage you to let me know via the comments. 
Part Deux: Feedback Ideas
Since April 4th of this year, I’ve been wondering about the best way to handle customer feedback. At the moment, our support system is as follows:
- You e-mail us.
- If it’s support, it’s answered within 2 or 3 days, sometimes sooner.
- If it’s a bug report, it’s queued to be fixed, or marked as a duplicate if it’s already been filed. When it’s fixed, we’ll let you know, and point you toward the nightly release to confirm that we’ve fixed your issue.
- If it’s a feature request, we’ll follow up with dialogue if it’s something that necessitates it.
This is a nice system, no doubt, but I think it can be better. I don’t like that:
- Support is a closed-system. Because there is no mechanism for browsing past cases on the customer’s part, you guys can’t find instant-answers to issues that, chances are, someone else has already run into, and chances are, we’ve already answered.
- Some people hesitate to report bugs and/or features because they simply assume that someone else has already reported it. Right now, there’s no way for you guys to know what has already been reported.
Cumulatively, I think the problem with support today is that the collective body of information about/for Flow doesn’t grow as you invest time into giving feedback, and Extendmac invests time into addressing it. I’ve got a few ideas rolling around about how to fix this. Most notably, I think we need a system that:
- Allows users to submit feedback, specifying an explicit preference as to whether or not the case is to remain private or public. From experience, I think that most cases are generic enough (e.g. “Doing this causes Flow to crash.”) to be safely public.
- Provides an intuitive and simple way to effectively discover whether or not your feedback (bug/feature/support) has already been addressed. If it has, the system should allow you to let us know, in a single click, that “I have this issue too,” which effectively gives us a *far* better idea of what to address first.
In any event, this is most certainly not going to be a system that’s implemented quickly, but it’s something I’d like to see a dialogue start about. As I’ve mentioned previously, Extendmac is a rather transparent company (we’ve got nothing to hide), and this type of dialogue really counts.
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May 24th, 2008 at 4:17 am
Why not try out: http://lighthouseapp.com/ think it would work great in this situation.
May 24th, 2008 at 7:53 am
PS: I’d prefer smaller bug fixes, but save adding features for monthly releases so people can appreciate them more.
May 24th, 2008 at 8:01 am
@Ryan Townsend
Yeah, I’ve heard good things about LightHouse in the past. At the moment (even though I didn’t mention it in the post), Extendmac actually uses FogBuz, which, when compared LightHouse, is a bit more complicated, but functionally covers everything it does and more.
My biggest issue with both FogBugz and LightHouse is that they’re either totally open or totally closed. FogBugz lets users submit issues/feedback without logging in, but neither system allows the user to specify whether or not the case should be viewed as “private” (which can only be viewed by Extendmac and the author) or “public.” Moreover, LightHouse doesn’t seem to have the ability to sort bugs/feature-requests by category or area, like FogBugz does, and neither of them are tailored to handle support requests.
All that being said, I think both web-apps are terrific, but I recognize that what I’m asking for here (a partially open-system for a closed-source product) is definitely not your run-of-the-mill issue-management request!
May 24th, 2008 at 11:27 am
I quite like the idea of monthly releases, even though I do tend to download the nightly builds to try out fixes/new features.
What about http://getsatisfaction.com/? The developers of Today use it; it allows the option of people to tag dicussions, such as “I have that issue”.
May 24th, 2008 at 11:56 am
@John A
If you like getting the nightly releases, as of 1.0.2., under “Software Update” in Flow’s preferences, you can set it to automatically check for them, as it would any other official release.
As for GetSatisfaction, there are things I think it does right and others that it does wrong. I love that it’s designed to address issues, discussions, *and* support, and I also love that it’s got the “I have this issue” functionality. I don’t like that there’s no way to conduct a private-report with it, and while I see that they now have an API I can use to keep the UI in my control, I’m not such a fan of their UI design –– it seems cluttered/confusing at first glance, to me.
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:42 am
With the advent of optional nightly build updates made automatic, I don’t really see the need for more frequent bugfix releases. Anyone who wants them can just download nightly builds from within the app.
June 8th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I agree with Ryan Townsend. You should release small bug fixes frequently, but occasionaly release large feature updates. The bug fixes shouldn’t have to wait for the major updates!
-Alex Nichols
June 21st, 2008 at 4:21 pm
heres a suggestion
answer the emails you get!!!!!
July 13th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
I really want to be able to use Flow in place of my current FTP client, but it sadly lacks SSL support. Is there any ETA on when Flow will begin to support other methods besides FTP and SFTP?
July 13th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
@David
FTP w/SSL is definitely on the to-do list, but given the variability of feature implementations, it’s pretty much impossible to say when it’s coming. With time, though, it will be there. Unfortunately that’s the best I can say.
Thanks for your interest, though, David.
July 17th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
[...] previously mentioned wanting to move in a more open direction in terms of support, allowing you guys to give your [...]