Calling All RSE/RDP Users--Vote Now!

Back in December we blogged about the RSE wish list. But lately, we've discovered that it seems not many of you followed up on our suggestion, so we're taking another shot at it.

IBM developerWorks has a place for submitting and voting for your favorite requests for enhancement (RFEs) for RSE (and/or other Rational products). Many of the requests we have heard most often from RSE users are already on the list. If some of your favorites are already there, add your votes to help direct IBM's development efforts to the features that the most users want/need.

For example, we took a look at the top 20 voted RFEs for Rational Developer for Power Systems. Some of our favorites are in the top 20, such as an SQL prompter, the ability to re-indent /Free-form RPG code and--our personal pick--support of RDP running natively on Mac.

So there are some great RFEs out there. But the sad thing is the small number of votes that have been cast for the enhancements. Given how many RSE users we hear from who want some of these functions, there should be (at least) hundreds of votes out there for several of these RFEs. But when looking at the top 20 RFEs by number of votes, as of yesterday, we found fewer than 50 votes for even the most popular ones.

Susan taught two RSE sessions yesterday at the RPG & DB2 Summit in Fort Worth, Texas. Each had enough people present to double the votes for nearly all of the requests if every student present voted for them.

Just as Susan challenged all of her session attendees to go look at the submissions and vote for their favorites, we're now challenging all of you out there. You can put in your own suggestions as well. But make sure you check to see if something close to your own requirement is already out there so that you can simply add your own vote.

It's easy to add your opinion. Go to the website and create an IBM ID if you don't have one already. Under "Browse RFEs," look at the top 20 voted RFEs. Then choose Brand: Rational, Product family: Design & Development, Product: Developer for Power Systems. There are many other ways to browse and search for RFEs if you don't see your favorites in the top 20.

Don't just sit there, VOTE. Your favorite tool needs you.

Comments

[Terry Hertel]

I suggest that people look beyond the top 20 most voted RFE's because there may be others they they are interested in. New, worthwhile RFE's won't have many votes yet and wouldn't make the top 20 list. I created a search for Brand: Rational, Product family: Design & develpment, Product: Developer for Power Systems, Component: RPG/COBOL Development Tools and went through the whole list one time. Now I review new submissions on a weekly basis. Unfortunately the new submissions don't appear to have been reviewed by IBM since the latter part of January, or if they have, the list has not been updated.