Damien Poussier

Damien Poussier said:

That is an incredibly basic function. Why has it not been implemented yet?

Every feature and piece of work is prioritised through the product management team based on a number of different scoring mechanisms ranging from what we think the right strategy is for the product going forward, bugs that need to be fixed, votes on ideas raised in our ideas site etc.  This particular feature does have a few users asking for it, but not so many that it's clear we should address this with the urgency you would like to see it done.  There is an idea for this that has been there for 8 months or so (I cannot find an older one) and only 5 users want this:

https://community.rws.com/ideas/trados-portfolio-ideas/i/trados-studio/due-date-for-single-tasks-within-a-certain-project

It's not enough for a few passionate users to want this, and it is very easy to vote.

Damien Poussier said:

Unrelated, but I was tearing my hair out for 10 minutes trying to create this thread. The box to ask a question didn't appear, even after I joined the group (a dumb system to begin with). Then it worked, for seemingly no reason.

I'm sorry you didn't see the big red banner that said this:

We did try to make this as obvious as possible but are limited by the functionality of the forum to put this where we really wanted it... right across the missile of the screen instead of at the bottom.  We hoped the red would ring to a users attention.  We are upgrading the platform next month and will revisit this to see if we can make it more obvious.

The reason we require this is to help with our fight against spam.  Nobody likes their inbox filled up with spam and so we do what we can to protect all users from receiving unwanted email in their notifications if they are signed up to them in the forum.  So that would be part of the reason.  The other reason is that when you are signed in we now who you are and can help you more easily especially if we need to create a support case to assist you.

Frankly I don't think this is an unusual requirement at all.  Proz.com, TW_Users etc. all require you be signed in to participate.

Damien Poussier said:

I also like how the "Customer Feedback" in Studio is not actually there to allow you to give feedback, but again, to get you to "join" some nebulous program.

It's not exactly nebulous, unless you just didn't read it?

You don't have to join and you can opt out whenever you like.  This is in fact a good way to collect information about problems that may occur, sometimes without you even realising there is one.  This also helps us prioritise which problems to fix as it makes sense to fix the ones that occur the most often.  Asking users to report problems is a very unreliable method of gaining meaningful statistics, notwithstanding the fact many users won't bother anyway unless they know they can reproduce a problem consistently.

If you want to provide feedback we have these forums, which I think are pretty good and we are very happy to engage with anyone irrespective of their views.  My own experience of using software and trying to get help over the last 30-40 years is that this is actually quite rare, particularly as companies get larger.  We do our best to do more to listen to our customers, but as you can see from the ideas site which has been around for some 14-years I think (give or take a year... ) the number of participating voters certainly doesn't reflect the number of users we have and it never has.  The truth is its actually very difficult to get good feedback from a statistically significant number of users.  So the customer feedback option is just one way of us getting feedback without you having to report it.  I think that's a worthwhile endeavour.

Damien Poussier said:

I'm disliking Trados and this site more every time I have to use them.

You don't have to use either.  But if you do we're more than happy to engage, and listen to your criticism to try and help where we can.  Constructive and specific criticism is always best.

Paul said:

I'm sorry you didn't see the big red banner

I saw it eventually, when it finally showed up, but it wasn't there for a while, even after reloading the page.

Paul said:

It's not exactly nebulous, unless you just didn't read it?

I did read that, but it still doesn't help. It says what it won't do, but I have no idea what I would be committing to by accepting, and it seems more like a way for the company to gather metrics than for me to voice an opinion.

I also notice now that there's an AI which frowns at you like you're a child when you're being negative on here. I'm sure that was a good use of programming time.

Paul said:

I'm sorry you didn't see the big red banner

I saw it eventually, when it finally showed up, but it wasn't there for a while, even after reloading the page.

Paul said:

It's not exactly nebulous, unless you just didn't read it?

I did read that, but it still doesn't help. It says what it won't do, but I have no idea what I would be committing to by accepting, and it seems more like a way for the company to gather metrics than for me to voice an opinion.

I also notice now that there's an AI which frowns at you like you're a child when you're being negative on here. I'm sure that was a good use of programming time.

Damien Poussier

Damien Poussier said:

It says what it won't do, but I have no idea what I would be committing to by accepting, and it seems more like a way for the company to gather metrics than for me to voice an opinion.

It isn't there for you to voice an opinion and it is there for us to gather metrics.  Things like:

• how many of a particular error are users seeing and what part of the software was being used when the error occurred
• what default options are changed so we can determine if we have the right defaults
• etc.

Many metrics and all intended to help us provide a better service.  But as mentioned, you don't have to use it if you prefer not to.  We're not hiding anything here.

Damien Poussier said:

I also notice now that there's an AI which frowns at you like you're a child when you're being negative on here. I'm sure that was a good use of programming time.

Of course every single person who works for RWS is a Trados Studio developer and doing anything else is a total waste of time!  Actually this functionality was developed by a Senior Director responsible for the community using Python and some tweaked opensource AI models for sentiment.  Something he did in his own time because he is as passionate about improving what he's all about which is community. 

The purpose of the "AI" is to frown at you sometimes and encourage a more positive reply... certainly I need a wake up from this every now and again as I'm not always the most tactful responder.  But it is also to help us with managing the forums.  If you click it you'll be taken to here where you can learn a bit more:

https://community.rws.com/developers-more/feedback-groups/community-help/w/community_wiki/6045/sentiment-labels-in-rws-community

As admins we also see a little more.  We see a score based on the sentiment of the thread overall.  It helps us see if the threads have been helpful or not which is something that is quite hard to get a handle on and gives us a measure of how effective the community is.  We can also hone in on topics where they are consistently "frowning" and use this information to identify what could be done to improve this situation - better training, raise the profile of problems users are having that product management has not addressed and may not even be aware of etc.  There are many things we can and intend to use this for and we believe it's a very good use of programming time, even if we had paid a professional to do it!

Despite what you may think we do care and everyone is trying to do their best.  Can you imagine what it would be like going to work every day not caring about what you do, or coming in just to find ways to rip off our customers?  I totally understand users needing to rant when things don't work... I'm definitely guilty of this myself... but I think it helps to stop and think and recognise that the people you're ranting at probably don't have the ability to effect the sort of changes you want.  They can and will make sure your voices are heard though and will try to help where they can.

Anyway, I hope you have a good weekend.

Paul said:

certainly I need a wake up from this every now and again as I'm not always the most tactful responder

I'd rather get a grumpy response than someone policing themselves because a computer told them to.

At any rate, thanks for the answers.