Change this board to differentiate between actual bugs and actual enhancement requirements

policywonk

Am getting increasingly concerned that this community board does not differentiate between actual bugs in Tado systems and enhancement requirements.

As an example @davidyall recently identified a bug, unequivocally, in the way in which schedules are organised and what happens when there is a manual override.

It is possible to differentiate between actual bugs, complaints and enhancements - and it should be.

Here's the proposal.

1. Create a community driven bug list on this Board. Every time is given a monthly status report of:
   1. Initially Reported,
   2. Then Accepted/Refused
   3. Then either Pending/ Addressed/Dropped
   4. Then Closed.
2. Only allow Admins and moderators to file/update this list.
3. Allow Admins/moderators to review the enquiries filed by users and, if they are clearly based upon a perceived bug, forward the case to the bug board, which gives the tech team and support team room to comment;
4. Or if they are really an enhancement, to forward to the enhancement request board. This reduces the enhancement request list to less of an impression of Disneyland.
5. Enable Tado tech to decide upon the status of each request in the Enhancement Request board and/or Bug notice board.

This may not be politically soft on users or Tado tech support, but it will enable us all to be clear about gaps, what we know is possible or critical, what is not worth waiting for.

Would appreciate it @Emcee @Rob @davidlyall, @wateroakley would consider.

davidlyall

Sounds like a good idea.

Unfortunately, the line has been blurred between these items for a long time. It would also probably make some sense to make an initial list of common enhancement requests and bugs then archive off this forum so that a fresh start could be made

policywonk

@Davidlyall. Completely agree. It would also help to create another category, in which established effective procedures to implement a boiler/thermostat combination are well documented.

For example, in the last 3 years there have been dozens of enquiries about the use of HT-BUS, E-BUS - digital comms links with boilers - and their implementation. It is clear that the Tado team are stressed and cannot always give unequivocal recommendations. But it is possible for end users to document what they did that worked so that we can search and apply lessons learned elsewhere.

Emcee

Hello @policywonk and @davidlyall

Interesting that you mention "archiving off this forum"…
We are currently using Higher Logic Vanilla as our community management tool.
The tool is lacking in many respects (such as limited categories). We are discussing potentially starting from a clean slate with a new community management platform in the future. The big worry, of course, is that this means current community members would have to move to the new site, which isn't a given.

Concerning the suggestion at hand, currently we can only have 3 categories on the forum: Discussion, question, idea. To me, it seems obvious that a bug should be documented in the 'discussion' category while an enhancement request should be made in the 'idea' category. I am on the forum most days trying to triage and organize posts to follow this logic.

We already have an internal bug list based on the posts on the forum. I'll see if it's possible to share it here in a 'discussion post' and have more bugs be reported in that thread.

policywonk

@Emcee

When on the forum, I would register my purpose of involvement, as a volunteer working to reduce stress that others experience.

From that standpoint, knowing am a relative newbee, doing my best to be helpful and not arrogant, it has become clear, after searching for solutions thast there have been for many years known, repeating constraints users have faced, some of which are unequivocal bugs- and more.

When new users log in, many do not consider looking through the past, many do not know what precise words to search for. So they create new discussions, often covering well established and actually resolved topics. Being an old geezer, have worked on fora with classic cars for decades, and found thst those fora have evolved, organised the discussions to distinguish between

• established and well known limitations (eg the 6LowPan limit on device radius; the limit on number of devices, number of rooms, etc)
• reported bugs and their status (eg scheduling)
• solutions to known processes and technical obstacles (eg. on which boilers, the digital interfaces are known to work)
• known work in progress (eg. which revisions of Ebus are not yet supported but being worked on)
• ideas and gaps (eg the app doesnt sometimes report problems reported on those digital interfaces)
• technical interfaces (APIs, etc)
• ideas and challenges which havent yet been explored fully (from a user's standpoint, this is where the forum helps).

I honestly dont think the group of regular assistant this forum has, which I suspect has similar intentions to mine, would mind transferring to another board if we know it will help everybody receive benefits which save time.

@davidlyall, @wateroakley ?