Changes to Groupsite

Chris - I feel you.  We do not currently have a place where we show the world how hard we are working or all of the great things we plan on doing in the future.

As we turn 3 years old, here's where our current focus is - we are checking every assumption we made about how easy, effective and useful our current features are.

We have always strived to only add features that 90% of our users would use  90% of the time. After watching very closely how our 33,000+ groups have been using these features, we have noticed some things that we missed, some things that weren't as intuitive as they should be and some that just don't work correctly.  

The fact that subgroup activity was not rolling up to recent activity reports other than in summary is a great example of something we didn't do right in the first place and is now fixed.

As I look around the competitive landscape, I still give us a B+ compared to what others are trying to do and think we are leading the way for social collaboration, however, as compared to what we could be, in terms of intuitive ease of use, I give us a C.

We want to get it right, not perfect, but right enough that every user can trust that a Groupsite will always deliver on its promise of helping groups make things happen.

Do we have cool new things planned for the future?  You bet. I am more concerned, however, about the groups that need to make something happen this afternoon.

It is users like you in this Champions group that help us understand how our tool is actually being used so please keep the feedback coming.

Thanks,

Shaun

Thanks for the response.  I know you guys are all busy.  It would benefit me as a groupsite manager to be able to keep up with "release notes" as new features are introduced or bugs are fixed.  This helps to let everyone know that the Groupsite development team isn't idle (which we know you aren't).  It also helps because we might have abandoned certain things on the site due to lack of needed functionality and you could have provided the functionality, but we're not aware.  Not looking for anything fancy.  A simple discussion forum where you post regular, short release updates would be awesome.

Thanks for Groupsite.com.  We're using it heavily to build community and collaboration.

I have to agree with the original poster.  I do undertand that programmers are busy.. Believe I know, I am one.  But the lack of knowing of what's coming or lack of seeing any enhancements or mention of enhancements keep me constantly looking at the competition to see what they are doing instead of concentrating on GroupSites to build a better site for the group.

Jeff - I agree with Chris as well.  In fact, we are working behind the scenes to come up with a manageable way to present an updated digest of al the improvements and fixes we make based on Chris's suggestion.

As for announcing future development roadmaps, we are not going to do it.  We did it two years ago and missing announced deadlines blew up in our face so we are going to under promise and over deliver from now on.

If competitors are moving faster and doing better, they deserve the business.

Marketing promises of future releases does not a happy group make. Delivering quality consistent service does and that is our goal.

Shaun

Thanks Shuan... Perhaps a compromise could be... if you have already started working on a new enhancement and your team is committed to completing it... i.e. you are positive you will bring it to market on the groupsite, then you could just give that "teaser" to the group, without any date commitments.  It is a way for us to know "stuff is being done and is coming".  I do appreciate the need to control expectations, so this is just a thought, if it makes sense for you guys to consider.  We love our groupsites but like all the users, we have our mental "Top 10" list of things we think would most benefit our groupsites... Knowing some of those might be looming on the horizon would help.   But I respect whatever decision you guys need to make.  The priority is to communicate changes (enhancements, bug fixes, new features, etc.) that you have pushed to production already.

Does Groupsite ever do customizations for a fee?

Hi, Rick. Groupsite.com does not provide custom services, but we do work with certified Design Partners. If you need help designing, launching or managing your community, just let us know. We should be able to point you in the right direction once we know a little more about your project.

Diana, thanks for your reply. We are still in the early stages of trying to use Groupsite, I'll take you up on your offer of referrals later if needed!