As much as we love writing web parts and tool for SharePoint at the end of the day we do write them for other peoples usage and hopefully they find them useful enough to purchase. Generally I think our web parts and tools so far have been pretty good - sure some have sold better than others - but we've not built one that hasn't got a number of satisfied customers yet! But of course we want to continue that trend, and rather than guess what people want we need to get closer to our customers/users to make sure we build what it is you want. So I'm very happy to announce:
Connect.LightningTools.com
If you do use one of our bits or have a general interest in SharePoint take 2 mins to see what we're trying to accomplish by reading the first page. Here's a quick overview though:
1, Use wikis to capture ideas and build up specs
2, Free for everybody to edit specs and add ideas (you will need to register and login though)
3, Get free consultancy :) - submit a requirement and we may build it for you
4, Track/Submit bugs
5, Vote on future features and functionality of products.
There are two real gauges of success for Connect.Lightningtools.com, one being internal and one external
1, Internal success - Lightning Tools team members use it to track features/bugs etc - I think this is a given as at the moment we use a mixture of my whiteboard and email
2, External success - External customers get involved and submit product ideas and get involved in feedback/specification generation.
Number two is definitely harder to achieve, but just accomplishing number 1 will be a large step in the correct direction. At the end of the day we want to be building things that you guys want so if you do want to get involved, we'll be happy to welcome you! There's instructions on the front page of how to get going, or if you are very keen email me over the username you have registered at www.lightningtools.com and I'll set you up.