Introducing ZenQMS’s customer roadmap and new features request

 

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ZenQMS’s product roadmap can now be viewed by all current users of ZenQMS through the ZenQMS help desk.

The Product Team, like everyone at ZenQMS, always tries to take a customer first approach in our design and development of our product. Our focus is to make an eQMS that is easy to use, easy to implement, and ultimately, easy for you to control the state of your quality. 

 

We cannot achieve these goals without valuable feedback from you, the Quality Manager, the Lab Director, the manufacturer, the scientist, the technician. No matter who you are and how you use ZenQMS, your experience is unique and we love to hear about it so we can learn from you. 

 

As a result we’re pleased to roll out a custom roadmap with a new, designated channel for product feedback. This is a tool we’ve been using internally for quite some time to handle user feedback and set our roadmap and we are excited to make it available to all of our users. 

 

The public roadmap will be available for access from support.zenqms.com and allows you to view the projects we are currently developing or will be in the future. You can provide feedback on those ideas and projects, or suggest your own idea for something you’d like to see in ZenQMS. 

 

All of this feedback is funneled directly to our Product Team where we read every request, prioritize it, and evaluate every request. This is an ongoing process of receiving feedback and adjusting accordingly so the roadmap is meant to be somewhat fluid. Making our roadmap public gives you up to date status of what we’re working on at ZenQMS. 

 

Where do I find the Zen’s Product Roadmap?

From support.zenqms.com, there is a new button in the top right corner “Have an idea?” Clicking this button will open a new tab to the roadmap.

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From support.zenqms.com, there is a new button in the top right corner “Have an idea?” Clicking this button will open a new tab to the roadmap.

 

Reading the Roadmap

So you’ve got the ZenQMS roadmap in front of you, but how do you read and understand it? Our roadmap is designed to be easy to read and digest, but there are still a few things to understand to help navigate around the roadmap. First, is the status tabs (pictured below)

 

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The status tabs give you the status of the list of features seen on the screen. There are 4: Under Development, Under Consideration, Waitlist, Launched.

 

In Development - These are features that the development team at ZenQMS has already started working on and will come out in our next major release or two. These projects are usually pretty far along and any feedback might not be able to be incorporated in our initial implementation. 

Requirement Writing - These features are “on deck” so to say. The product and design team are talking about these features everyday trying to finalize the details, and the development team might be building early prototypes. This is a great time to get your feedback in. The features usually wouldn’t be introduced for another release or two. 

Vote For New Ideas Here - These features are the top requests from our users. The scope of these features is still being determined, designs are just being started, and no development has started. This is the best time to get your feedback in! These features could be about a year away from being deployed.

Launched - These features are in Zen today. Go find them, try them out, and give us some feedback! 

 

Submitting Feedback

Submitting feedback on an item you see on the roadmap

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There are two ways to provide feedback to our product team. The first of which is to provide feedback to a feature you see on the roadmap. To do this, click the feature to open up the detailed view. In this view you will see relevant information about this feature like a short description, additional comments from the product team, and how many votes have previously been submitted. 

 

Scroll to the bottom and you will see a place to submit your own feedback on the feature. Select how important it is to you, enter some brief comments, and enter your email address and click Submit. 

Email addresses are required to 1) prevent someone from spamming or voting more than once on an item, and 2) to allow us to follow up with any further questions on your feedback. We won’t contact you for any other solicitations.

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Your comments or feedback will only be sent to our product team and won’t be visible to anyone else viewing the roadmap. 

Submitting feedback on an item you don’t see on the roadmap

Don’t see a feature you’d like to see on our roadmap? No problem, submit a New Idea by clicking the button in the top right corner:

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You will see a place to submit feedback on a new feature or idea. Select how important it is to you, enter some brief comments, and enter your email address and click Submit. 

Email addresses are required to 1) prevent someone from spamming or voting more than once on an item, and 2) to allow us to follow up with any further questions on your feedback. We won’t contact you for any other solicitations.

Your comments or feedback will only be sent to our product team and won’t be visible to anyone else viewing the roadmap. 

 

How does Zen determine what goes on the roadmap?

Every request comes in and is determined if it is a new feature, an improvement to an existing feature, or a bug. Bugs are removed from the roadmap process and prioritized separately. New features and improvements are then evaluated for their Effort (development effort) and their perceived Value using input from a wide array of stakeholders including but not limited to users, product team, sales/potential customers, Help Desk, development team, consultants, strategic objectives, or marketplace influences. 

 

Using Value and Effort, we can place all features and improvements on a priority matrix and place them into categories, see below. 

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“Quick Wins” are a no-brainer work on these ideas next. “Major Projects” are important but take time so we’ll start working on those next. “Fill Ins” are third in line of priority and will be worked on as we can. “Not a priority” items aren’t worked on. These are re-evaluated on a monthly basis so items can be increased in Value or dissected into smaller projects so that their Effort goes down. So items that are in a lower priority category won’t necessarily remain there. 

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