Posting Feature Requests and cPanel's Review Process Explained

[cPanelDavidG]

cPanel appreciates your recommendations and ideas on how we can improve our software. Here's a brief overview of how we filter Feature Requests and work to implement them into cPanel software:

1. We're looking for Quality Feature Requests:

A Quality Feature Request:

• Your Feature Request describes with details, a single well-defined idea.
• Your Feature Request receives positive feedback from other cPanel Community members.
• Your Feature Request has received little or no negative feedback in the ongoing discussion.

The cPanel Community Forum Team may assist with this process by separating Feature Requests with multiple ideas into separate Feature Requests, each representing a single idea if needed. Please try and keep each Feature Request to it's own thread.

If you are requesting support for a new version of software we already support (e.g. a new version of MySQL 5.x.x), please elaborate on why this is important to you. We already monitor for new software releases, so there is no necessity to inform us of a new version of a specific application. However, we are always welcome to feedback regarding why specific upgrades should be expedited, i.e.: resolution of major security flaws, introduction of support for functionality critical to your customers etc.

2. Community Review of our Report to Development:
Once discussion with the Community has settled to form a single well-formed idea, the forum team will generate a report to send to our development team for review. However, before we send the report to our development team, we will post it to the forum thread so you can verify that it accurately reflects the functionality you desire and how you want it implemented. This will help ensure the report eventually provided to the development team is accurate. Community participation and review of this entire process is important.

3. Practicality Checking:
While we would love to implement all popular suggestions, we must balance our desire to implement solutions with the practicality of implementing those solutions. Once the forum community has agreed on functionality we should implement, our forum team will discuss the ongoing Feature Request discussion with our developers to gather feedback about how practical it is to implement the functionality being requested.

If an idea is deemed impractical, or an alternative solution to resolve the same issue is discovered, we will let you know and recommend a course of action that will lead to the same or a very similar result to the functionality you recommended, via that Feature Request thread.

4. Development Processing:
Once we have a report that you, as a Community, approve of and our developers deem is practical for us to implement, we file the community-approved report with our development team. This report is stored in an internal system we use to track the progress of development of specific features. If our developers have any questions they need answered, our forum team will ask you those questions so we can provide the implementation you desire. We will also update the thread as an ETA is determined.

A report being filed with our development team does not guarantee implementation, but it does significantly elevate the status of the Feature Request. At this point, this Feature Request is assigned a case number and the thread title is updated to have [CASE #####] in its title, where ##### is a case identification number used to reference this on our internal systems. Having a case number does not guarantee that a specific request will become implemented, but it does mean our development team is now involved with handling the request. We also flag the request as "Filed with Developers"

As an ETA becomes available, we will flag the thread with the version we anticipate that functionality becoming available.

Sometimes, we may find an alternative solution that solves the same issues being addressed by a proposed feature. If this is the case, we may share this alternative solution so you can then voice your feedback with regards to implementing the alternative solution that resolves the same issues.

Overview:
This is an overview of our process for reviewing Feature Requests and should not be considered an unchanging set of restrictions. Instead, we hope by sharing this information, you gain a better understanding of how Feature Requests are processed by cPanel, allowing us all to focus on productive discussions that result in the functionality you desire being added to cPanel products.