Handling feedbacks
Post date: Dec 06, 2014 4:28:23 PM
Even if people don't read documentations, you can't (and shouldn't) always avoid writing one. And as I started to build tools for Google Apps, I thought it would be a good idea to use Google Docs for my documentations.
The really great thing about Google documents is collaboration, so pretty much from the start I gave everyone comment access and people could link their questions or suggestions to specific parts of the documentation. It wasn't perfect but it greatly helped me to improve many parts (through rephrasing or additional details).
But then, last June, Google introduced "Suggested Edits" and it pretty much became a nightmare. All people with commenting access on the docs were in fact now able to edit them and everyone else was able to see those changes. So my documentations quickly became a mess that I needed to fix everyday (by opening the doc and rejecting the dummy suggestions of people who didn't know what they were doing).
I kept up with it for a few months, because I still really liked the part where everyone could add useful comments regarding specific sections of the documentations but I've finally disabled the ability to comment. It's just too much useless work. I hope Google will someday bring back this feature I liked in a usable way...
Speaking of things just a bit annoying from Google (ha!), the way feedbacks are handled in Google Add-Ons is also not that great. In all add-ons, you have an "Help" menu entry, on which, as the developer, you have no control. Last March, when Google launched the add-ons platform, there wasn't even a way to answer those feedbacks. We were receiving lots of emails, from people asking for help but without the ability to see their email address and answer them...
Fortunately, Google realized it was stupid and added a checkbox, unchecked by default, so people could share their email address with the developer and get an answer. As you would imagine, lots of people don't read and don't check the box, still expecting feedback...
I've also tried things like Google Moderator and Google Code to manage issue reports & feature requests but those tools are a bit old and not tremendously user friendly. So, all that to say that I'm now moving to UserVoice, at least for feature requests. I've seen good results for Gmail Meter (http://support.gmailmeter.com/forums/178569-general/filters/top) - even if ShuttleCloud, the current owner of the tool, do not invest any time in it (not sure if it is relevant to have an issue tracker if nobody is answering or even looking at it...).
Thus, 2 new addresses for feature requests:
Yet Another Mail Merge: https://yetanothermailmerge.uservoice.com/forums/276784-general/filters/top
Awesome Table: https://awesome-table.uservoice.com/forums/275847-general/filters/top