Jul 22, 2010 10:55 PM
MentorIdeas - What is It? What is New?
Greetings all,
Today we are introducing MentorIdeas to all users, who are not participating yet on MentorIdeas, and a number of significant improvements in MentorIdeas for those, who are familiar with it.
Firstly, what is MentorIdeas:
MentorIdeas is our standard for sharing suggestions and product enhancement ideas for the PCB design flows with the product division, BSD. This site allows you to share your ideas with other customers, and vote for them, either to promote or to demote. MentorIdeas has replaced the previous process of filing a service request and logging them with customer support or on SupportNet.
Some of the biggest benefits of MentorIdeas for you:
- Immediate and transparent interaction with all currently over 2,500 other users worldwide – and daily 5-10 more new customers joining MentorIdeas.
- Interactive discussion about your idea and possible alternatives and additional thoughts amongst users, reflected in over 16,000 page visits every month, a 300% increase every year
- Faster review and feedback on many top vote getting ideas from the product division
Mentor Ideas has been very successful since its inception over two years ago. 86% of the top Expedition ideas and 27% of all Expedition ideas suggested on the site have been reviewed, considered, planned or already implemented. A good track record!
What is New in MentorIdeas
All our customers who know MentorIdeas already, may have seen a lot of activity on the Mentor Ideas site over the last few weeks. We continue to implement your suggestions to improve Mentor Ideas. We announced in recent blogs that several upgrades are underway. Today we are pleased to introduce these changes which include:
- New Mentor Ideas sites for HyperLynx and DxDesigner & I/O Designer
- Consolidation of all DxDesigner ideas from Expedition and PADS sites to DxDesigner & I/O Designer
- A consistent look and feel for all Mentor Ideas sites
- One place to suggest product improvements for all PCB Design products
Specific details are outlined below.
Mentor Ideas is now the standard for all enhancement suggestions around PCB products, and we continue to plan further improvements. One important request that is on our radar screen is to improve search. Thank you for your participation. Please keep posting ideas, voting for others, and promoting Mentor Ideas among your colleagues.
Joe Krolla
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DETAILS OF CHANGES TO BSD MENTOR IDEAS
1. New Pages for BSD products
We have split Mentor Ideas for the PCB products into four sections. This will streamline navigation and provide consistent product categories across all flows. You can jump between pages using buttons on the top of the "View Ideas" page. Tooltips show you which products are represented under each site. The four sections are:
Mentor Ideas for DxDesigner | This is a new, unified site for all DxDesigner users, no matter whether DxD is integrated with Expedition Enterprise, PADS, or another PCB layout tools via netlist interface. Ideas are grouped based on functional areas in the design creation and setup process. There are now specific categories for printing (e.g. DxPDF) and the component selection (DxDatabook). Also included is I/O Designer, which is tightly related to DxDesigner. |
Mentor Ideas for HyperLynx | This is a new, unified site for all analog simulation, signal integrity, PI, thermal analysis (excluding FloTherm which can be found at Mentor Ideas for Mechanical Analysis), EMI/DRC and the newly acquired 3D simulation tools. This includes mainly the HyperLynx and Quiet Expert product families across all design flows |
Mentor Ideas for Expedition | This site has been expanded to add more categories and move DxDesigner ideas to Mentor Ideas for DxDesigner. We now have separate categories for BoardStation XE, DMS/Library tools, PCB flow integration, visualization and mechanical collaboration. These changes will help focus on our integrated flow and the related infrastructure. |
Mentor Ideas for PADS | The only change is to move DxDesigner ideas to the DxDesigner & I/O Designer site. |
2. Consistent Tabs
All pages group ideas consistently.
- The “Best” and “Recent” tabs list all active ideas you can review and vote on, including any new ideas you suggest.
- The “Implemented” tab shows all ideas that have been delivered in prior releases. These ideas no longer show in the “Best” or “Recent” tabs.
- The “Out of Scope” tab is for ideas that are not in our plans or not aligned with our strategy. These ideas are no longer included in “Best” and “Recent”.
- Ideas that are not receiving enough community support are in moved to the “Archive” tab for two weeks and then removed from the site. they did not find a lot of community support. You will be notified in advance if an older idea of yours has been moved so you can take action.
- The “My Favorites” tab is your personal list of ideas that you may want to track. You can add any idea to your favorites list by clicking on the star next to the idea in the "View Ideas" page.
3. Editing of Ideas
You may now edit your idea to better refine it after you have posted. Once edited, anyone who voted, commented or subscribed to the idea will receive an email notification showing the changes. This allows you to improve your description, augment use cases, or complete the justification at any point in time. Please use this function sparingly as supporters for your idea voted on the original description and if the meaning is changed enough, they can remove their vote of support.
4. No longer need to submit an SR to make a product suggestion
With all BSD products now available on Mentor Ideas , you no longer need to submit a Service Request on SupportNet and wait to have the SR dispositioned into an enhancement request. We have put internal processes in place to track top ideas and provide a timely response directly from product marketing and engineering. We will review existing enhancements linked to SRs in our planning process, but if you feel strongly about a product improvement, post it on Mentor Ideas and garner support for your idea.
5. Community Integration
We are working to integrate the community and Mentor Ideas where it makes sense. The first step is ensuring there are links between the sites. Next, we are planning to have an update of the best and recent ideas in the community in the coming months so you can introduce, discuss and promote your ideas in the Mentor communities. We strongly believe that the community will be a fast and very efficient way to find new supporters, helping your idea to make it to the top.