Guys, any update on Certificates?

It seems to be a common question and "SOON" is simply not a good enough answer.

Please provide some sort of clarity.

I don't doubt you do excellent work but really, this is getting ridiculous.

We are working our way on the roadmap, this is next. I can't give you the exact time it will be ready but we already have specs and it's our list to be done next.

Hi there,

We are considering using Guru however I am slightly alarmed that 2 months and 2 weeks ago Merav said quite clearly that your team were working on this function NOW, but in the post 3 weeks and 5 days ago, you suggest that this item is next on the roadmap (which suggests to me it's not yet been started) and you can't give any time frame for completion.

What actually sets your release schedule? Are you on a features-based release cycle or a time-based release cycle?

We're really not up for investing ~$300 for an extension which has no formal structure to its update schedule, and given the posts in this forum it doesn't exactly fill me with confidence that things are getting done particularly quickly.

For an E-Learning system, certificates are pretty critical - I can't believe that firstly it wasn't a core part of the system, and secondly that it has taken so long for such a feature to be implemented given the number of (presumably paying or potential) customers voicing their need for this feature.

Ruth

Hi Ruth,

Coding is not easy. This is the reason we prefer to not mention a date or any kind of reference when someone ask for a new feature. Other customers take the reply as a reference and if we can't make it happen in the time we said we receive this kind of messages.

As you can see Guru is a young extension it born with the latest J! 1.5 version and in the middle we had a big conversion to J! 2.5. Anyway we added a lot of new features and it was awared as best CMS elearning extension in the recent CMS Expo.

We know Certificates are important and this is the reason we will include it soon. But there are many customers who are using this extension with great sucess and without this feature.

We are serious developers and be sure we will include this feature in future releases. I will talk with the programmers to see how much time we will need to add it.

Will back with you shortly.

Thanks for your patience.

Best regards,

Ricardo wrote:
Hello,
When asking people to pay about $300 for a piece of software you need to provide a roadmap. You can get away with providing rough estimates (like month this we are planning this). Saying developing is hard work and we cannot provide a roadmap and than later referencing you are serious developers...I am a project manager and part of that job is talking to our development teams to get dev. schedules. If a developer ever said coding is hard so I cannot provide a time frame, well it wouldn't go over well for anyone. If it was a $10-100 software you could get away with just saying these are features we plan. Once you walk into high priced software territory you are in a different ballpark and need to start playing like it.
I am not saying this to be a jerk, rather when a lot of professional read your statement its a gigantic turn off from your products. I like what you guys have to offer and want to see you grow.
-Matt

Matt,

We do have a road map, right here:

guru.ijoomla.com/road-map/

We update it often with what has been completed.

The problem with giving exact estimates is that, learning from past experience, people hold it against us: "But you promised it will be done by x date, you are a liar!", yes, we had such reactions.

That's why we don't commit to any specific dates. You as a project manager must know that no matter how good the estimates are, there are always different obstacles that make the project go longer and these are unpredictable, in addition to that, during our extensive QA, we find bugs or logic issues that were not evident from the start and could not be predicted.

We are not trying to brush people off, we are just being realistic. Next week we will be releasing a new version with some great new quiz features. We thought it would take 2 weeks, but it took 2 months.

All we ask is that people have a little bit of faith in our process. We've been around for a long time, we are not here to rip anyone off or to play games with our customers. We always deliver what we say we would, even if a little later than people expect it.