All,
I wanted to put this out there and get your feedback.

Our current status is that we expect to release beta 4 by the end of next week. We may reach beta 8 or 9 before we submit to the App Store, so we are still a few weeks away from launch.

We have the feature set for 1.1, 1.2 and a Pro version lined up and will commence development of 1.1 as soon as we release 1.0.

Ok, with that said. Here is an idea I have been thinking about.

There are many people on this board who are orphans from multiple legacy products from days gone by and swear by certain features from various products they used in their past.

With a 1.1, 1.2 and Pro version roadmap published, were a user to have a specific feature they wanted added but for which there was not enough demand to warrant me funding development I am thinking of opening up the option of having people pay to add a specific feature.

If a specific feature request fell outside of the published product plan but made sense within the overall design of the product, I would make available the option to pay to have that specific feature added.

I fear that some people are going to think this is a good idea and many are going to jump right down my throat, so please bear in mind its just an idea to fund development of features that may have a very limited audience but might make all the difference to specific users.

Anybody have any thoughts on this, ever seen something like this done before?
Peter

It's an interesting proposal, Peter, but hard to react to because we don't know the key element: "pay how much"?

I suspect you don't know the answer, which is fine, But I think most readers will think "sure, I'll pay $20 for it" when you might be thinking a price orders of magnitude higher,

And then, does that mean all the other users would not have access if they didn't fund the development? I don't think that's your intent, because you would end up with lots of different classes of users with access to a disparate set of features, which could be a support nightmare.

Anyway, more info needed please.

I concur with what Paul said. It's an interesting concept, but hard to react to without further details.

Worth pursuing, I think.

Steve Z.

Paul,
Thanks for the feedback. Couple of thoughts.

What I would probably do is publish the roadmap and identify the items that are funded in the roadmap.
Create a mechanism for people to submit feature request which I would either incorporate into the roadmap and fund as any develop would or alternatively for items where the demand is very small but really important to a user or small group of users and where it does not make sense to me offer to have the feature added but for a fee. In these cases it would not be for profit and I would only add the feature if it fit with the overall product.

An example might be a very specific filter operator and the cost might be $300. Something like that.

Yes any features incorporated in that way would be available to all.

We have a lot of cool features coming in 1.1 and 1.2 let alone the pro version, so this concept won't be an option for a while even if we decide to do it.

Thanks,
Peter

Paul Korm wrote:

It's an interesting proposal, Peter, but hard to react to because we
don't know the key element: "pay how much"?

I suspect you don't know the answer, which is fine, But I think most
readers will think "sure, I'll pay $20 for it" when you might be
thinking a price orders of magnitude higher,

And then, does that mean all the other users would not have access if
they didn't fund the development? I don't think that's your intent,
because you would end up with lots of different classes of users with
access to a disparate set of features, which could be a support
nightmare.

Anyway, more info needed please.

The recent iA Writer Kickstarter campaign for porting to Windows should provide an indication of what individuals are willing to pay. Of course, that was for the full programme, not just one feature.

It might make sense to run a poll where prospective users can pledge a certain amount in return for one or more additional features, to be selected from a list. If a person selects, say, three features, their pledge would be divided to those three. Then you can see which features represent the most money.

Most importantly, as this kind of tool is not just aimed at individuals, there may be some good funding opportunities from interested businesses.

P.S. Just a note to say that I wrote my input before your reply was posted, so I didn't take it into account, but I believe that the suggested approach is compatible with yours.

P.P.S. I should add that I'll be happy to participate along with my company when the programme is ported to Windows...

This is an interesting model -- somewhat of a variety of the community approach we have in enterprise software but generally not seen in consumer level COTs software. Community approaches usually involve some sort of community governance to gain consensus on features. Are you thinking of a "user council" that customers could buy into?

If I paid, say, $49 for SheetPlanner and needed a specific filter, say, which wasn't on the road map. And the offer was $300. I'd probably say, thanks, but I'll get by with what I have. If I knew that if I paid $300 then the next person would get the feature for $0, I'd probably think "I love my fellow hominids, but I just bought that fellow a very generous present. Hmmm".

So, it's hard to see this working in practice.

Makes more sense to just have a subscription model and take your chances.

SheetPlanner wrote:

>An example might be a very specific filter operator and the cost might
be $300. Something like that.

Yes any features incorporated in that way would be available to all.

Alexander,
Thanks for your feedback. Much appreciated.

After we get the Mac version launched and some runway, I will give some thought to the possibility of a Windows version.
Maybe you could send me your contact info at support@sheetplanner.com

Thanks,
Peter

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

P.S. Just a note to say that I wrote my input before your reply was
posted, so I didn't take it into account, but I believe that the
suggested approach is compatible with yours.

P.P.S. I should add that I'll be happy to participate along with my
company when the programme is ported to Windows...

I'm not familiar enough with the program to be requesting features. But I can tell you that I would like Sheetplanner and Tinderbox to have usable documentation. Tinderbox has a reputation of being a program that is great when you can figure out how to use it. Sheetplanner doesn't have any documentation via the Help menu, so I don't know exactly what it does. I am a creature of the 1980s, and one of the few people who read the XyWrite and askSam documentation from cover to cover. With no documentation or obtuse documentation, I usually give up on otherwise useful documentation.

So I guess I am saying that I am willing to pay extra for a manual on SheetPlanner, but I really don't like the concept.

Jeff,
We are working on it. It will be there at launch time I expect!
Peter
Jeffery Smith wrote:

I'm not familiar enough with the program to be requesting features. But
I can tell you that I would like Sheetplanner and Tinderbox to have
usable documentation. Tinderbox has a reputation of being a program that
is great when you can figure out how to use it. Sheetplanner doesn't
have any documentation via the Help menu, so I don't know exactly what
it does. I am a creature of the 1980s, and one of the few people who
read the XyWrite and askSam documentation from cover to cover. With no
documentation or obtuse documentation, I usually give up on otherwise
useful documentation.

So I guess I am saying that I am willing to pay extra for a manual on
SheetPlanner, but I really don't like the concept.

I am sort of thinking of features for future versions or the Pro version. For now, I am learning the features through trial and error. Most of the prompts in the program inspector are pretty intuitive.

Jeff,

If you have any feature requests, be sure to let me know.

Thanks,
Peter

Jeffery Smith wrote:

I am sort of thinking of features for future versions or the Pro
version. For now, I am learning the features through trial and error.
Most of the prompts in the program inspector are pretty intuitive.

At the moment, I'm grappling with how to structure sets of tasks. For example, for each chapter, I teach (there are 15), there is a set of the same 5 tasks that need to be done as I get to them. At first, I had the 5 tasks as headings, and below each as children were the 15 chapters. Then it occurred to me that I could have 15 chapters as the headings, with 5 tasks below each chapter as children. Doing the latter made it easier to focus on not omitting any of the 5 tasks. That made me wonder if future versions would be able to color code the backgrounds of a parent and its children, to make that grouping stand out.

Jeffrey,
We will add a 'rules' engine and conditional color in a future update which most likely would do as you describe below. I say most likely because we have not speced the feature yet.
Thanks,
Peter

Jeffery Smith wrote:

At the moment, I'm grappling with how to structure sets of tasks. For
example, for each chapter, I teach (there are 15), there is a set of the
same 5 tasks that need to be done as I get to them. At first, I had the
5 tasks as headings, and below each as children were the 15 chapters.
Then it occurred to me that I could have 15 chapters as the headings,
with 5 tasks below each chapter as children. Doing the latter made it
easier to focus on not omitting any of the 5 tasks. That made me wonder
if future versions would be able to color code the backgrounds of a
parent and its children, to make that grouping stand out.