How to Submit an Enhancement Request for erwin® Data Modeler

So what is the best way to “get it out there” for others to consider? You certainly want the erwin Product Manager and Developers to know your thoughts, but you also want your peers to be able to be aware, and to possibly comment, criticize, or praise your suggestion.

For erwin, the process used to be to contact erwin Technical Support and open an “issue/case/ticket.” You typically would get a response back in about a month or two. This served the purpose of communicating it to the erwin development team, but it didn’t share your ideas with your peers. User groups were a way to share your ideas and engender conversation, but it seems we all have smaller and smaller travel budgets, so unless you are fortunate to be in a major metropolitan area with an active user group, these opportunities are becoming fewer as well.

Enter the Data Modeling Message Board in the erwin Modeling Community on erwin.com. In particular, enter the Idea section. We now encourage everyone to leave their idea in the Idea section of the Data Modeling and erwin User Communities’ Idea Walls. Why did we change this? With the advent of social media, keeping one idea internally on one record in one place handled by one person at a time is just an inferior communications and organizational method to having your idea “socialized” in a community setting.

The benefits of having your idea socialized on the Data Modeling Message boards are as follows:

• Your idea is uniquely identified by a combination of the date/time stamp, the title, and your name. It is immediately visible by everyone in the community in a designated place easily accessible and very obvious. Comments from your peers, either alternative suggestions, workarounds, criticism, or improvement suggestions, are also posted in a similar way and you get notified by email when they occur. From erwin Development and Product Management’s point of view, it is instantly obvious which ideas resonate with other erwin users so it’s easy to gauge the community’s sentiment.

• Ideas are visible on the main Community Page on the right side bar entitled Recent Ideas. The special Idea section can be accessed, among other ways, by clicking on Show All link under this summary section. Here you can search/filter titles and sort by newest/older date, activity (number of comments), or title. Furthermore, you can Like, Bookmark, or Reply to an idea with a comment.

• Lastly, you can view all the Ideas in a tabular or tile view, and you can the status of what is Planned, Delivered, Under Review, Wish Listed, and so on.

Some customers say they liked talking to Technical Support while submitting an enhancement request or idea. If you feel that way, by all means contact us by Chat or phone, and we will be happy to talk with you and kick around ideas, suggestion, and workarounds. We love to talk to you! But, in the end, if it boils down to a new functionality request, we encourage you to record your idea in the erwin Community Idea Wall because it’s the fastest, most productive, most interactive, and generally superior way to share it with erwin product management, development, and your peers.

We look forward to your ideas to improve our erwin Data Modeler!