Is the What's New post always a tease?

Tom Klimchak · March 2019

Is it just me, or do I keep reading about What's New features only to find out that I don't have them yet? Sometimes the What's New descriptions give a heads up about it only being available to EAP. That's annoying, but at least they're upfront about it. I'm also guessing there are "tiers" within EAP where some members get features before others.

Right now I don't yet seem to have vertical page breaks (neat, but not a big deal) but I also can't seem to find that Calculate Measure feature what was mentioned on What's New today.

I feel like I'm being teased ?

Steve Stegelin · March 2019

Hey Tom!

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Everyone with Insight Designer should have the new calculated measures feature. That said, it's not something that really jumps out at you out-of-the-gate. For the feature to appear, you first need to add two measures to your insight. When you do, a plus sign (+) appears next to where you might add another measure. When you select +, you can then select Create Calculated Measure to choose the outcome you want — such as sum, ratio, or difference — and between which measures.

Likewise, if the "vertical page breaks" feature you mention is the horizontal divider for custom dashboards, everyone with Report builder should have that feature as well.

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To break a custom dashboard into sections as you create it, select Dashboard builder, Page elements, and move Horizontal divider to wherever you need it.

I hope that helps, and that's good feedback about the discoverability of some of these enhancements to larger features. Thanks!

Tom Klimchak · March 2019

Thank you, Steve Stegelin‍ !

I was looking for the Create Calculated Measure to instantly appear and never even thought of floating my mouse over it. ? Ooops, my fault! I'm not sure what I was thinking with the Divider. I've used them several times already....

I'm actually pretty excited because next Friday I'm going to start rolling out some of these Insight Dashboard reports for the first time to my Development Officers. I've made some reports/Dashboards (can't decide what to call them) that instantly calculate the work of dozens of little queries and reports. Really quite amazing how this all works so well!

Steve Stegelin · March 2019

Awesome, that's great to hear, Tom! Keep me posted on how the rollout of your custom dashboards to your Development team goes. Thanks!

Kathryn Hall · March 2019

About the "tease" part - this is something we're struggling with. We have a very sensible policy of starting to roll out new features and functions to a very limited group of people. Start with 50, 100, 200, 500, etc. This allows us to mitigate risk and get feedback as the feature / function gets rolled out. In some cases, we halt the "waves" while we readjust or tweak things. It can take months sometimes for all customers to be provisioned, due to this watchful, cautious rollout approach.

When release waves start, we announce in the "What's New" update that "some of you" will get the new feature / function. We've found people don't like to be surprised by finding a new menu item in their software, something that might change a workflow and causes questions about how to use it. So we err on the side of notifying early. At this time we don't have the ability to post these notes to just those accounts included in a new feature wave.

Any thoughts you have on this practice, I would love to hear them!

David Dines · March 2019

Kathryn Hall:

About the "tease" part - this is something we're struggling with. We have a very sensible policy of starting to roll out new features and functions to a very limited group of people. Start with 50, 100, 200, 500, etc. This allows us to mitigate risk and get feedback as the feature / function gets rolled out. In some cases, we halt the "waves" while we readjust or tweak things. It can take months sometimes for all customers to be provisioned, due to this watchful, cautious rollout approach.

When release waves start, we announce in the "What's New" update that "some of you" will get the new feature / function. We've found people don't like to be surprised by finding a new menu item in their software, something that might change a workflow and causes questions about how to use it. So we err on the side of notifying early. At this time we don't have the ability to post these notes to just those accounts included in a new feature wave.

Any thoughts you have on this practice, I would love to hear them!

Maybe there could be a binary icon/indicator for new features that are either partially or fully rolled out?

Mark Guncheon 2 · March 2019

Here's a suggestion. Since you are able to roll things out to groups of people, you should be able to send the "What's New" to only them. You stated that you don't have that ability. How do you determine which 50, 100, 200 or 500 receive the gift of these new features. Certainly you have account names, numbers, something by which you can notify them via email, Snap Chat, Facebook Live, etc.

This problem results (IMO) in the degradation of your "What's New" announcements. Why read it if it is filled with information that doesn't apply to me.

"Oh, There's a new What's New in NXT? What won't I get this week?"

Bill Connors · March 2019

While I appreciate the frustration of knowing that there is functionality rolling out that I can't use yet--been there with clients several times, I do experience that frustration myself--I would prefer that BB not limit the information shared about it such as sending the What's New to targeted audiences only. First, there are lots of people like me who need to know what's going on whether immediately available or not. And second, I would respectfully recommend that all DBAs/DBMs should be reading these messages and preparing their orgs for what's coming before it arrives so they can thoughtfully implement it as appropriate as quickly as possible. What security questions arise, and who needs to be talked to? What training needs to be prepared? How will this affect our current procedures that I should start planning for? Answering users asking, Why doesn't/When will RE do X? Etc. Again, while I acknowledge the frustration, I would rather know things are coming as far in advance as possible rather than getting the notification at the same time I get the functionality. At least that's my two cents/personal preference. Thanks.

Russell Presgraves · March 2019

Is there any way we could know in which wave our organization is slated to receive specific functionality? Our CSM hasn't been able to answer.

Kathryn Hall · April 2019

Russell Presgraves:

Is there any way we could know in which wave our organization is slated to receive specific functionality? Our CSM hasn't been able to answer.

For all waves, especially early ones, we select organizations according to characteristics of their accounts - features used, country, size, other attributes. As we roll out later waves, the criteria become more general. The product team has developed a "wave generator" application that can randomly select accounts to provision according to the characteristics they need to fulfill rollout requirements. So often we don't know which wave you'll fall into until the list is pulled. Early on in this process, I tried sharing details about waves and dates with CSMs, which turned out to be not a nice exercise. With the first few waves we encountered a permissions issue which required some reshuffling (postponement) of dates and this made for ... general unhappiness. Is Jim S your CSM? Tell him to check in with me if he has questions or there's a specific feature / set of features you want to see earlier.

Russell Presgraves · April 2019

Kathryn, thank you for some insight into the process. Jim is indeed our CSM and I'll let him know to speak to you about a specific concern.

Leslie Bardo 3 · May 2019

I completely understand the "waves" and appreciate the thoughtful process. That said, it would be great if there could be some kind of indicator that says when you expect it to be available to a wider audience.

Borrowing from this most current What's New, maybe change this:

Tip: Don't see this feature? No need to worry. If all goes well based on feedback and usage, expect its wider release in a future update.

to something like this:

Tip: Don't see this feature? No need to worry. If all goes well based on feedback and usage, expect its wider release by the end of July 2019.

This week's struck a particular chord in me, as I've been waiting what seems like forever for the Events functionality and was hopeful we would be in that "for some". No such luck!! :-( But it would be great to have an initial estimate as we head into planning events later in the year.

Kathryn Hall · May 2019

This week's struck a particular chord in me, as I've been waiting what seems like forever for the Events functionality and was hopeful we would be in that "for some". No such luck!! :-( But it would be great to have an initial estimate as we head into planning events later in the year.

Hi, Leslie - Good suggestion - that's something our team has begun to incorporate into such announcements going forward. It can be hard to predict sometimes exactly how long the rollout will take (since if early waves indicate a need to "tweak" it could delay things somewhat). Nonetheless, there are goals, and we can share these.

And, since you spoke up, Samantha's added your organization to the next wave of accounts that will get Events. You should be seeing it soon.

Cheers, Kathryn

Is the What's New post always a tease?

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