Democracy in Development: how to use Parallels customers vote for the creation of new functions

Probably, many users believe that much better developers know exactly what should be in the product function. And we really listened with interest to all of their suggestions. There is another problem - to gather opinions in 1000 is possible, but does 1000 different things you can not (and it makes no sense).

To work on our product Parallels Plesk was efficient, we decided to run the system, where each user can speak, and we can focus on what's important. As a means of implementing tried SaaS-solutions Uservoice . And although at first we did not like it, pleased with the final results - the problem was solved with minimal resources.


Even if we have something to offer only one person out of a hundred, when our user base it has tens of thousands of people. In practice, it is more than a thousand proposals through various channels - sales service, technical support, public forum, etc. And this is only formally recorded sentences. This volume is very difficult to process manually - group repeated proposals to clarify the details of each. In practice, the processing proceeds only fresh takes at least 8 hours per week.
Another problem: not all users of the product are our customers: most of our market is served by the distributors, and many direct channels of communication with our clients for their inaccessible. And although we in some form or transmit reviews, there is a dull phone.
The idea to establish a more orderly interaction through open voting actually lying on the surface. We ourselves have practiced before the vote in closed expert groups. Technically was to extend the concept of group to almost all users.

How to choose h4> At first sight got some services and applications, including Uservoice.com - SaaS-service offering Web services for the collection and processing of different kinds of feedback. But at the first examination we rejected it, as looking "universal platform" that could be flexibly customized. A Uservoice.com looked very, very limited - almost no configuration.
But then ahead loomed the prospect of spending many hours on the installation, configuration, and evaluation of solutions, and then another, and an unknown amount of work on their service, updates, fall, debugging, etc. And we decided to treat the issue easier. Basic needs satisfied uservoice.com service, cash investments are not required (we started on the free account), the time required is minimal - all can make one (even krivoruky) manager itself for several hours. This minimalist form and we started in February 2013. On the portal plesk.uservoice.com , which allowed users to ask us for a new function or support their voices already existing queries. Full lean, we have not even taken up the portal to its zone and left .uservoice.com.

Running h4> Some fear inspired in what we've tried before voting is for multiple products from a holder Parallels, and they gave a rather modest effect. For example, users are quite intensively asked some function on different channels, but did not want to vote for it then.
Therefore, the launch of the portal came as a complete project in several phases:
• «sow" his proven, good features that clearly necessary and useful.
• In the second stage invited a group of experts on product from our forum, which voted first, and made other quality inquiries.
• Invite other users from our forum
• open the portal publicly built right into the product:

Effect h4> Of course, this initial campaign "explosion" of ideas could not have been the first 10 were ours, for the following month received another 14 - already from users. For more than a year of work, the number of requests exceeds 600. In the day we get 1-3 new query and a few comments and votes to already existing.
The portal is not yet fully supplanted other channels receipt of offers, but we often offer the user to simply make it to the plesk.uservoice.com . As soon as it is supported by a significant number of people, it will be considered with priority. This especially helps in processing proposals from non-obvious value.

Correlation to implement a function h4> Although the portal was launched and when the next version - Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 - was already fully planned, including release as much as we closed 28 inquiries from the portal. Let these functions were planned independently, but we are very pleased with this coincidence between our views and user. Currently implemented are 19 queries, some of which have already got kids in version 12.0. Actually, Plesk 12.0 is about to be released, and now we invite voters to join the beta-testing a new version .

This is another convenience of the system, it is necessary to update the status of all proposals and to vote for him are notified. We used it as a collection of additional information (locating polls in status), and for the invitation to testing



One can cite a typical example of the discussion and implementation of the request. For example, there is a very useful function - ограничить sending outgoing mail server . Need it to prevent spam through your server if the password of any user (mail, ssh, ftp) was dragged off trojan with his car in someone's evil hands.
The function is not very simple, because it is necessary to identify reliably, on behalf of a user name to send mail. Year and a half or two years ago, we chose to give the parties a solution to this problem, but it does not cope well, so we decided to withdraw it from the market and provide its own development.

However, implementation of these constraints, each user in practice imagined differently. For example, when we sent a voting poll with two options - A, B, or "Other", 80% answered "Other". We realized that we missed something important, revealed additional scenario and very replanned development.



It happens that our developers are so light up some of the proposals that implement the experimental solutions, which we are not yet ready to fully support.



It should also be noted that the proposal rarely makes sense to do exactly as asked. Wish - it is rather the problem or need for which can offer quite different solutions.

Operation h4>

1. cheat. B> Because the portal - a third-party solution, then this question, we have no control and little bit worried. However uservoice.com successfully blocked the only attempt.
2. Garbage and negative. B> This is very small. Most likely, because the soft start it possible to establish certain norms which then have to follow the simple "modeled", motivating the audience to behave constructively. However, some examples of misuse are available, they can be divided into two groups.
   
3. non-figurative and non-constructive suggestions. For example, "do less", "make free", "you have poor support", "bad work", "it's nothing you have changed." They are not very much, and we can not afford to respond to them constructively, without resorting to hackneyed ban. Two main approaches:
   
4. to ask for additional information (to tell exactly what is broken), and then transfer the request to the status «need info».

help than we can. For example, say "no free plan, but there are cheaper versions, and there is a free trial" and to close this request. request to solve the problem on a particular server, and bug reports. Requests about fixing something, and bug reports on the portal are undesirable. We have it clearly written, but if it does something to the plant, we still while trying to process. If the problem is identifiable, it will report the known solution and close the query. If the bug is reproduced - then fix and close. But if the problem is described poorly and / or the author does not answer the questions - of course, close the request as non-core. Localization. B> The portal is conducted in English, and sometimes we ask when it will release in Russian or another language. Certainly not in the near future. Our product is geographically very widespread. English allows us to work with everyone, and people from different countries - to support their voices each other's sentences. Launching the localized version would lead to an obvious problem: on the one Russian speaking customer accounts for at least 40 clients with a native English, and another 40 with English as a second language, respectively, the "Russian" proposals would inevitably lower rating than "British".
While uservoice offers only create separate forums for each language in the Premium-rates. But we are totally satisfied with the existence of several independent systems with different priorities. The solution to this problem lies partly on uservoice - need support multilingual forums (чего yet ). Second half - our need organizing regular national translation into English sentences.

What is the result? H4>

Yes, in the beginning uservoice.com we did not like - beautiful, but already very tight restrictions. But in the choice of software came to the conclusion that spending time on maintenance and configuration own system inefficient. Therefore, choose a side and SaaS-solution. The calculation generally justified, its limitations, we are accustomed to, they were not critical. We spend time just to work with the system per se - answers and status updates. Its maintenance cost us 0 hours 0 minutes per month. The portal allows us to effortlessly select the most popular requests (number of votes) of the total volume of the huge and work closely with the most important. It helps portal offers the user the ability to similar offers from the existing institutions - in response to the dialed his text. This allows to drastically reduce the number of duplicate proposals.
 Currently, the same portal launched for another product - Parallels Plesk Automation ( http://pleskautomation.uservoice.com/ ), it older brother Plesk'a with the ability to manage multiple servers.

So if you have suggestions for the product, then you Plesk.uservoice.com , and if the questions on the experience of using uservoice - then in the comments.

Source: habrahabr.ru/company/parallels/blog/221445/