Greentings All -

I am a new member to the community, am using the trial of ServiceDesk Plus, and am ready to propose purchase of Enterprise, but my experiences in clarifying bugs and announced features not yet available is preventing me from completing that proposal.  While their is good documentation for many of their products, there is no documentation or consistancy that I have found with ManageEngine / SDP support.  I will share some experiences, and I will share some ideas.  Please share your own ideas and experiences as well.  Hopefully this discussion can serve as a road map for other new ME Community Members. 

 

Note To the moderators:   While many complaints may be noted, please do not moderate out posts because of them.  You should get alot of valuable feedback here from your customers and will help you support and maintain customers.  Thanks!

 

First, Within the program, there is the support tab, and it provides links to Request Support, Request new Features, see known issues, and a roadmap to features "For the next release".  While these tools are helpful to a point, they are ultimately useless in practical application. 

 

Specifically, I have submitted 4-5 feature requests.  The standard response is "Your Feature request ID is SDF-XXXX.  We will analze to include the feature ino ur future releases on a priority and demand basis."   I have posed the question back each time of " How does one check on the status of a request, or provide demand for a request made by another user?"  Their responses have ranged from "We will contact you when this feature is developed" to "Check the known issues to see what others have requested" to "Look at the roadmap to see the features we are implementing".   So in other words, feature request speed is based on demand and technical ability to implement, however , as far as I can tell, there is no way to track or influence "Demand" as a customer, and I get no feedback on the technical feasibilty of the feature request.

 

Also, the SDF-XXXX number given to my request can take MONTHS (as I have heard from others) to make it on the Known Isues/Features list, if it ever does... I have been given 4 different request ID's in the last month of testing, none of which show up in SDP Features list ... https://creator.zoho.com/servicedeskplus/sdp-known-issues/#View:SDP_Features .... which I feel this list is utterly useless.

 

In regards to the "Road map", this has the most value of these tools, however provides no additional information as to when to expect the features coming soon, and there are features listed there still slated to be released in 2012 (Last year).   I do give them credit for adding the weasel clause "Note: This is only a tentative schedule. The implementation of the feature set may vary based on internal priorities and time." 

 

It was in this roadmap page that I finally found a useful support link to the Forums.  http://roadmap.manageengine.com/sdp   Within the forums you can discuss other user's feature requests, "Vote" on requests you want too, and have a bit more interaction with possible features.     However within the forums, I don't see references to any Support IDs, so either these two methods of submitting feature requests are un-related, or manage engine is doubling up on their efforts.   As the forums actually allow the community to respond to the idea, either make sure you are using the forum to share your ideas, or if you do submit to the ManageEngine feature request, make sure you ALSO write in the forums, and publish the SDF-XXXX number in your idea, so if they do ever tie the systems together, they are able to.

 

One other area of support that I feeel would really help would be if they actually used their product to support us as customers.  I believe they do, and the Support Portal login can be found on their support page. http://www.manageengine.com/products/service-desk/support.html    However, I have completed the new user sign up, and have yet to receive my password, so I could not tell you if they are using SDP or not for their own support needs.  Based on their emails using the ##XXXXXXX## format, it appears they are...  Hopefully gaining access to this portal will alleviate some of the headaches I have of not knowing what progress is actually being made.  

 

So in summary, Use the forums and sign up for the Support Portal Login... everything else I consider a waste of time for both customers and Manage Engine staff.  Ifwe all do that, perhaps their efficiencies would improve with fixes, rather than their efforts to poorly maintain 4 or 5 different lists of issues and requests. 

 

Manage Engine Staff - what is your preferred path for Feature Requests & Bug reporting, that helps you most internally?