Introducing: Release Notes

by Kate Mueller

Over the last two years, we've greatly expanded the ways we let you know about changes in the software. We're excited to announce a new addition to this: Release Notes. We also wanted to take the opportunity to remind you of all the ways you can stay up to date on what's happening with us.

Release Notes

We make changes to the software almost every day. In the last year, I've tried to highlight a lot of these smaller changes using monthly or seasonal round-up blog posts. But these aren't very timely and it's easy to lose the update in the midst of all the text. So we're introducing a new way to see continuous updates to your DevResults site: Release Notes.

Release Notes capture all the small to medium changes that we make to the software on a regular basis: small changes to wording or functionality; tweaks to behavior to make things more intuitive; performance improvements; and so on.

You can access our Release Notes in two ways from within the Help menu:

  1. New Release Notes: When new Release Notes are available, you'll see a red circle with a number in it to the left of the Release Notes entry.

    You can click on that number to see a pop-up summary of the new changes, and click any summary to see more detail:
  2. All Release Notes: At any time, you can click the Release Notes header in the Help Menu to view the full Release Notes page with a list of all changes.

Get Notifications From Us

As a reminder, in your User Profile, you can opt in to two notification groups under the Additional Communication section:

  • Beta Testers
  • Advanced Notification

For both groups, you can add or remove yourself at any time.

Beta Testers

How It Works: For brand new features or major overhauls of existing features, we create a copy of your DevResults site on a separate server and add the new feature there so that you can test it out and provide us feedback.

Why You Want It: This is one of the fastest ways to hear about new features. Plus, you get to provide us with your input on what you like, don't like, or would still like to see added to the new functionality. We want you to try to break it and to let us know what you think of the functionality, the layout, the design--all of it!

What It Means: If you enroll in the beta testers group, you'll receive an email with information when a new feature is available for beta testing, login information for the beta site, and at least one week of access to test it and provide feedback. We generally don't release more than one feature into beta testing per month, and you are not required to provide feedback on beta features.

Advanced Notification

How It Works: For changes to features, labels, or navigation (regardless of whether the feature went into beta testing), we will email you at least a week in advance of these changes.

Why You Want It: We send this notification for any changes that might impact your workflow, documentation, etc. This gives you more lead time to make adjustments to processes and documentation than waiting to see a blog post or announcement once the change is already live.

What It Means: You'll get, on average, no more than 2 emails a month from us with advanced notice of these types of changes. You do not need to reply to them; they are just a courtesy so you're aware of the changes.