8.0 diagram enhancements

[qwerty]

Whatever "a fair few" might mean. Definitely Santa's sleigh got stuck in the Australian flood and we have to wait for the Easter bunny.

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[skiwi]

Allow labels on entities to have much more freedom for layout, eg

text rotation
text positioning (left, centre, right, top, middle bottom)
text colour and size
text enhancements, eg hollow
inside the box
outside the box



not in 9.1
not in EA 11

[skiwi]

See also

9.0 diagram enhancements
9.0 whiteboard diagrams

[skiwi]

I've been thru most of the items in this thread with the beta EA 11. My conclusion not in EA 11

[qwerty]

  Though I did not expect something much different from your research. That means we got 3 (Three!) versions with a lot of plunder but no substantial change as asked by the users. Ommm. I can hear the temple sound from Australia here on the other side of the world.

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[Eve]

I'm going to go against my personal rules for posting in this kind of thread and risk being attacked once more.

Please realise that the views expressed on this forum (and especially this thread) are a tiny fraction of the feedback we receive from users. There have been a few things implemented that were from this thread, but demand for improvements like to the document generation that we did in EA 11 make the demands in this thread seem insignificant in comparison. Even if I consider that this thead is about diagram enhancements, the new features added in version 11 for diagramming have a much wider benefit to the entire user base

Sometimes labels can be too long for the horizontal space available.

It should be possible to manually change the width of a label and have the text in it reflow to multiple lines

It's been in EA for years.

Ctrl+Shift+Y - set to wrap features.

2. Resizable ports!
5. Intersecting connectors - should have option to show "jumps" at crossings to make it clear that one connector is passing over another.
7. Connector ortho only mode!

All done.

Allow the same element to be shown multiple times on the same diagram. This requires a clean separation between the definition of the element itself and its graphical representations on diagrams.

Not likely to ever happen. We've gone as far as having a working implementation but it still wasn't a good way to model. EA 11 allows a diagram frame to be included without the frame to achieve some of the benefit.

Allow dynamic filters in diagrams to work with connectors (1)

not in v11

Yes it is, but it was in before 11 too.

Allow labels on entities to have much more freedom for layout

Why? What is the use case? What would you actually use it for? (Or more accurately, what portion of EA's user base do you think would find this useful?)

[RoyC]

At a more general level, in support of Simon's comments in his second paragraph, let me draw a parallel to illustrate the use of this user forum page.

I went to a food survey at a local prepackaged food factory last night. We were given barbecue-flavored meat pizza to sample.  We had to record our impressions through a computerised survey questionnaire. There were 6 groups of 12 people doing this survey last night, and another set of 72 people on each of the other week nights. The company decision-makers who act on our input are nowhere near the labs either geographically or chronologically.

Now, I don't like barbecue sauce. I said said so to my neighbour, who said he wasn't keen on processed cheese. That is equivalent to Skiwi making a point in this thread and someone else adding a different point (there are, I think, only two posts in the 5 pages that say they support a point made by a previous poster).

I could have turned to the others and made my point, and I and the other 11 people could have discussed that point to conclude that we thought the sauce should be left off, or changed to a different flavour. Or the others could have said "It's a barbecue pizza - what do you expect?"  The only company people in the area were the cooks serving us the food, who might or might not have been in the room at the time and might or might not have had an opinion that they could have shared. (Just like Sparx employees monitoring - or not - the forum page). But they were not the vehicle to influence the market analysers and decision makers by commenting on my voiced opinion.

That vehicle was the computerised questionnaire (a form of Feature Request) that EACH ONE of us had to submit. Only if all 12 of us recorded on the questionnaire that the sauce was nasty, and only if a significant number of the other reviewers made the same point in the same way would the analyzers and decision makers have concluded that the point was a significant one and that a change was required in a future batch (possibly the very next batch) of pizzas to be released.

Use the forum to discuss a point and, importantly, influence your peers, but get as many of them as possible to submit a feature request if you want a change to be made. If you get only 1 feature request for a change from your 110,000 registered forum users or 350,000 license holders, would you stop what you are doing and change your product?

[qwerty]

But how do YOU get your feedback? I have never seen any kind of questionnaire. I think you must be guessing how welcome the changes are you made to the product. I see it sells. But the guys asking here are probably those caring more than the gros of users out there.

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[Graham_Moir]

This thread is SO DEPRESSING !

While I agree the report generation and template handling etc.. needed some serious attention, so does diagram usability - please let the items here be next on the list !  

And please include allowing filters to be diagram specific rather than global.

I also agree that I haven't seen any information on how customer feedback is collected and analyzed in order to determine priorities, and the bug report/feature request process still seems to be a black hole.

[skiwi]

Please realise that the views expressed on this forum (and especially this thread) are a tiny fraction of the feedback we receive from users.
...

Allow labels on entities to have much more freedom for layout

Why? What is the use case? What would you actually use it for? (Or more accurately, what portion of EA's user base do you think would find this useful?)

Simon and Roy, I do appreciate your responding, at length, to my post.
I trust you will find my post constructive.
I also appreciate the fact that some Sparx staff do monitor this forum and respond and contribute.

Firstly I note that I only evaluated my posts in this thread against EA 11, so its great to see that other user's posts got some traction.

Now I am obviously not privy to the majority of users who are sending in feature request saying 'don't enhance diagrams' or 'please don't add this feature to object formatting in diagrams'.
And I do appreciate that Sparx must receive many, and often conflicting, requests for enhancements, and that prioritisation must be a challenge.  I am curious as to how Sparx engages its user base in order to make this prioritisation.

Having said that, I believe that customers who provide you with reasoned and considered feedback on a product should be given more consideration that the 110,000 registered forum users or 350,000 license holders who choose to remain silent, precisely because these are the customers who are engaged and believe in the product, and believe it can be even better.

It seems to me that many of the requests made in this, and in similar threads are not esoteric requests to suit a limited number of users in specific situation, to me that are for basic functionality that would be of use to most, if not all users, or for usability enhancements of a similar ilk.

Finally, what would be of benefit is some sort of feedback loop between Sparx, and those who submit feature requests, bug reports, and contribute to this forum.
As someone who has been a member of this forum since 7.5 it is interesting to note that there are certain questions and usability and functionality that are repeated over time.
I'd suggest that it would be worth considering whether the lack of a feedback loop contributes to the low level of contribution to the forums (110,000 registered users - but how many a) contribute (e.g. posted in the last 12 months), and b) access it (e.g. logged in the in last 12 months)).

yours constructively

Simon

[Eve]

Now I am obviously not privy to the majority of users who are sending in feature request saying 'don't enhance diagrams' or 'please don't add this feature to object formatting in diagrams'.
And I do appreciate that Sparx must receive many, and often conflicting, requests for enhancements, and that prioritisation must be a challenge.  I am curious as to how Sparx engages its user base in order to make this prioritisation.

I don't think I said anyone has requested that we don't do it. But as you say, it's about prioritisation. Ultimately the priorities given by a few users here aren't supported by other sources of feedback like our network of trainers and other partners.

Having said that, I believe that customers who provide you with reasoned and considered feedback on a product should be given more consideration that the 110,000 registered forum users or 350,000 license holders who choose to remain silent, precisely because these are the customers who are engaged and believe in the product, and believe it can be even better.

You're almost arguing my point for me here. I mentioned getting feedback from our network of trainers and other partners. By their very nature these people fit your description much better than people who are active on an internet forum. Importantly, they are actively engaged, in the workplaces of more EA users than the people you'll find in this forum.

I value this forum, but it's not because I expect to read anything reasoned and considered, I wouldn't go anywhere on the net for that, but because it provides raw feedback that I either wouldn't get otherwise or I get faster because I come here. I take what I read here back to inform development. But it's more in terms of an understanding of what users are trying to do than in terms of individual feature requests.

As someone who has been a member of this forum since 7.5 it is interesting to note that there are certain questions and usability and functionality that are repeated over time.

I've been a member of this forum since 4.0. Yes, there are useability issues that are ongoing, but there are so many that we have addressed as well. I hope that you can agree that Enterprise Architect has been constantly improved over those years.

[qwerty]

I guess the answer to above questions is quite simple. Sparx has a single God. And that God's name also starts with G.

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[Graham_Moir]

I'm not sure that a "network of trainers" is the right user population in order to receive rounded feedback, especially on usability.  

In my experience, trainers do not immerse themselves in EA in the same way that a project team tasked with delivering a real solution does.  Trainers are generally theoretical, project teams are practical.  We had a trainer that was absolutely fantastic with regard to UML and good with regard to getting started with EA,  but did not have the in depth knowledge that is gained through day to day intimate usage of the tool.   Only after the trainer had long gone did we start to come up against the little usability things that drag what could be a truly excellent tool down.  

Basically it is the project team that comes up against the constraints on their productivity that are introduced by the user interface of EA, especially with regard to diagramming which this thread is about.   Even little things matter in this context.  Something which irritates and may only take seconds to workaround can result in mandays or weeks lost over the course of a sizable project.  

The people on this board are seasoned practitioners, and from my reading of the posts, actively involved in trying to use EA for real.  I really can't understand why Sparx would exclude this experienced community from their feedback process.   Whichever way you look at it, solely canvassing feedback from trainers and partner companies results in a very blinkered view of the world.    

[RoyC]

We don't take customer/user input from any one source. Our Marketing Analysts perhaps more actively canvas the existing and potential markets, trainers, partners, standards groups and customer support groups, because those sources have a more global view of the needs and strategies of current and future customers. Their input comes in a different form to, for example, yours.

And the form in which we solicit YOUR input is, once again, the FEATURE REQUEST. That is the official notification of a coal-face user's requirement, which is logged, reviewed, assessed and - if appropriate - acted on. If it is not acted on (or does not appear to have been acted on) there are many reasons why, but primarily it is because not enough people have asked for that change or feature.

This forum page is for the users to discuss a possible feature or change prior to submitting a FEATURE REQUEST. And it is noticible that some of these discussions actually do include a post that says "No, that change would make life harder for me; I don't want it." A request raised on these pages is not necessarily a good thing, according to your peers' responses or, more often, lack of response.

[qwerty]

I'm sure the important issues marked here were sent as FR as well.

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