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Open Beta Program


Kevin McAllister

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On 9/22/2017 at 10:17 AM, Kevin McAllister said:

Bumping this thread again.... clearly at least one element in VW2018 could have benefitted from an Open Beta program :D

 

KM

Is that element Project sharing?

 

Not that I've had a chance to drive new version yet just working on the long-standing theory of teamwork elements never seeming to get enough coal face time to iron out bad interface conventions. 

 

That said not sure Open Beta is the answer, not sure open testers are going to take the time or the training needed to write good reports.

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12 hours ago, Matt Overton said:

Is that element Project sharing?

No, the new Title Block Border implementation. It needed way broader testing much earlier.

 

12 hours ago, Matt Overton said:

That said not sure Open Beta is the answer, not sure open testers are going to take the time or the training needed to write good reports.

I would disagree. We're already giving the feedback here, through our distributors and in bug submissions, its just coming to late and bad choices are locked in until the next version.

 

Kevin

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23 hours ago, Kevin McAllister said:

No, the new Title Block Border implementation. It needed way broader testing much earlier.

 

I would disagree. We're already giving the feedback here, through our distributors and in bug submissions, its just coming to late and bad choices are locked in until the next version.

 

Kevin

Fortunately it seems one can upvote again after a while, so upvoted it again :)

 

I agree on the open beta being useful to avoid bugs or undesired implementations to be in the release version, but for the latter it would probably require a pre-open-beta to correct those for the more complex things. Maybe also an (open?) beta for one specific tool in a special version of Vectorworks. Another software program has a short-run beta of their software for just one tool, so it is not a full open beta, but it would help to get input on that one tool that is going to be implemented in a future version. This might be useful for more complex tools that may get implemented in the version after the upcoming version.

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4 hours ago, Art V said:

Fortunately it seems one can upvote again after a while, so upvoted it again :)

 

I agree on the open beta being useful to avoid bugs or undesired implementations to be in the release version, but for the latter it would probably require a pre-open-beta to correct those for the more complex things. Maybe also an (open?) beta for one specific tool in a special version of Vectorworks. Another software program has a short-run beta of their software for just one tool, so it is not a full open beta, but it would help to get input on that one tool that is going to be implemented in a future version. This might be useful for more complex tools that may get implemented in the version after the upcoming version.

User workshops seem like they would be more useful here than seeding beta's.

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9 hours ago, Matt Overton said:

User workshops seem like they would be more useful here than seeding beta's.

Not really, as this would be for new tools bringing new functionality.  For example, the software program I referred to is going to implement point cloud generation through photogrammetry of UAV photos/lidar etc. which is completely new functionality for that software program. So they are looking for beta testers who will be supplied with a special version of that program with just that tool and none of the other beta features of the open beta program as they want input on just that one tool.
I can imagine that for new specialist tools Vectorworks may want to consider doing this too to get it right as much as possible from the start.

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On 9/27/2017 at 7:05 PM, Art V said:

Not really, as this would be for new tools bringing new functionality.  For example, the software program I referred to is going to implement point cloud generation through photogrammetry of UAV photos/lidar etc. which is completely new functionality for that software program. So they are looking for beta testers who will be supplied with a special version of that program with just that tool and none of the other beta features of the open beta program as they want input on just that one tool.
I can imagine that for new specialist tools Vectorworks may want to consider doing this too to get it right as much as possible from the start.

Then you are talking a whole new animal. Instead of a beta dropping a couple months before release and testers needing to cover the full scope of the program in that time and allow for the bug fixes. The model you talking about would suggest regular incremental features added to the software one at a time.

 

They'd also need to increase the frequency of service packs to say monthly.

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