Feature Request experience

[nextgenhappines]

Hello,

How many of the community members have submitted feature request(s) and implemented ?  How long did it take for the FR to get implemented ?

Thanks for sharing,

[jdprovine]

I submitted one along time ago and  as far as I know it was not implemented

[Brandon_Wertz]

Features are released on Major (7.0 to 8.0) or Minor releases  (7.0 to 7.1) would contain your FR.  (From what I've seen these are released every 6 months or so.  I don't think there's a specific release cycle.)

Bugs / Break/fix patches 7.1.0 to 7.1.1 contain no feature enhancements meaning when they're released they're not going to contain your FR.  (These follow a 5-6 week release cycle depending upon the severity of the needed fix.)

How quickly your FR potentially gets included in a release, I would think, is going to  depend upon the value Palo sees in putting engineering effort into integrating it into the platform as well as user interest. 

I'm not certain, but when my company was looking into Palo, back in PAN-OS 5 we voiced desire to see things like "user-agent" and other HTTP fields in the user logs.  It was about 8-10 months before we saw it releaed in PAN-OS 6.0 I think.  So I'm not certain if we were the first to request this FR, but that was our timeline.

[nextgenhappines]

Well, we filed the FR for "Reconnaissance Protection SourceAddress Exclusion" about almost 5 years ago. (back in PANOS 5.0 released), it is finally deliveryed in PANOS 8.0.   

[Brandon_Wertz]

Well there you go...Better late than never!  haha

[nextgenhappines]

@Brandon_Wertz  True, that is why I want to find out from other members about their experience.

[jvalentine]

Yes, but @nextgenhappines asked for a Zone Name length increase from 15 characters to 31 and got it the same day, so that brings the average from 5yrs to 2.5, right?  

[santonic]

I've submitted many FRs. Some were eventualy included, some still aren't. I guess it depends on usual factors: ease of implementation, popularity and usefulness.

Following PA through years I thnk they are adding the right features and I'm very happy the way PA is going.

[TerjeLundbo]

I would like the FR process to be more public. Today you have to go through a PA partner to register a request, and there is no public list of suggested features that you can add your vote to (not that I know of).

[nextgenhappines]

@jvalentine   That was FR#2085,  our name was added to that FR in March 2013, at that time, The PM said not planned to fix.  That is why I am surprise it was incldued in 8.0.

[Brandon_Wertz]

I agree with PA doing ok in their current FR process.  

Since they're not an open source product making public every FR and turning it into the "get 100,000 signatures and the White House will respond" kind of envirornment (I think) would probably be detramental to PA's over-all business.

Sometimes some secrecy is more benificial.

[nextgenhappines]

I agree with @TerjeLundbo , if PAN can improve the transparency of feature request process and bugs tracking of the released software that are being investigate  on ETAC or Engineering level as well and provide the known work arounds.   That will be helpful.

I think Palo Alto Network is doing a great job of adding new features.   At the same time,  they need to able to able to tweak existing features to adapt it to their customer needs as well.    

[sean.herman@nbexcellence.org]

I'm not sure what better way there is to find out what people want than by having a feature request tracking system people can upvote on. I am, however, quite certain that there is nothing less helpful than not knowing if a critical issue (missing feature) you have is even being considered for future development and that's where I'm at now.

If Microsoft and Google and Salesforce and Cisco, for example, all have feature request tracking or public documentation about upcoming features it seems like it can't be a terribly crazy idea.

I've only seen one of my FR's get implemented and I only knew it was implemented _after_ it was released so I couldn't plan for it as I was deciding if I needed to switch vendors.

[BPry]

@Brandon_Wertz I know that you can put in a 'private' FR on Cisco's website so that it's never displayed elsewhere. I agree that some changes need transparacy but from what I've heard from our SE it isn't even that useful of a system on their end, as they have to search for open FR requests to add your weight towards before opening a new one. It seems like they could do things a lot better than what they do now as far as FRs go.