Team Infinity... help and reassure us

[rich]

I am a relatively recent Lifetime Subscription, a relentless Entrepreneur, marketing technologies developer, and Microsoft Partner (pity me) and a veteran of almost every PIM, Project Management, GTD solution out there over 40 years. So, forget that. All I intend with that bit of history is to let you know that I have been “around the block”.I am not just a User but as a Developer, I know how hard the process can be.

I bought into Infinity, while concurrently evaluating ClickUp and still marveling in a different way at Amazing Marvin. But my money is on Infinity. I see a great many other User Suggestions here and while I am happy you got “Product Hunted”, I am beginning to lose the faith. An old, dated Roadmap and no recent communications and it starts to feel like something is going sideways at Infinity.

In lieu of a killer update, how about some updates? ClickUp may be cranking out updates at a fearsome pace, but it is looking more and more like a hodge-podge, and Users are complaining. You have the opportunity (in my view) to own much of this space. But you have to let us know what is going on… because it is starting to look like it is going sideways.

Happy to be wrong. Talk to us.

Onward…

[micck]

+1
I agree that the communication with the user through the forum and roadmap has to be re-vived, polished and maintained. Infininty gives away a lot of business by not doing this.

[Jovana]

Hello @rich, first of all, let me say that I’m really sorry you’ve had this experience with Infinity and with our community.

Secondly, to be completely honest with you, I’m a bit confused to read your post.

There was a similar post about two months ago, so I’m also going to post my answer to that post so you can check it out as well: No update since May!

As I said then, we take great pride in communicating with our community. We try to post all important updates here as well as on our Facebook community which I strongly suggest you join: https://www.facebook.com/groups/startinfinity. It is a bit more dynamic over there as I guess it’s more convenient and more popular for most people.

At the moment, my job is to post updates and to address as many community questions as I can, and I’m really trying to do that as frequently as possible (almost every day). But this community forum is not a chat platform, so it is possible that you won’t receive an answer immediately if you post here but I will always try to address your post if it’s at all in my power and my knowledge to do so. I think @micck is able to confirm that.

I would like to invite you to reach out to our support agents available almost 24/7 if you have any questions or doubts you wish to get resolved urgently.

I would also like to address one thing I addressed in the other post that I linked here. ClickUp raises millions of dollars a year, while our vision is to keep things ‘inside the family’. In other words, we are still bootstrapping (self-funded) and we are profitable, but we definitely can’t develop features at the same pace as ClickUp or some other huge names in this market. I hope you can understand that.

That being said, we are really working super hard every day to deliver new updates and new features. Our development team is still relatively small but they are real troopers and are delivering amazing improvements and updates every week (sometimes we have even several updates a week).

When those updates happen, we always add them to the Updates folder in our public roadmap. So I wouldn’t say it’s outdated as it’s being updated pretty much as soon as new updates happen. We also try to keep our Roadmap folder up to date, we update the progress of features we’re working on and we move things from one column to another as they progress.

The only ‘problematic’ part, for now, is the Community’s Voice folder which is really a handful to tackle and we might not have the right strategy for now. We receive dozens of suggestions weekly and we can’t really address each one. But the voting system is there to help us figure out which suggestions deserve more attention. And we sit down to discuss that every few weeks and decide what we can add to the roadmap. However, our roadmap is really packed already so we can’t add many more things to it until we’ve finished some of the current priorities.

Regarding some new updates, we’ve had a couple of huge ones lately. We’ve added Formulas, Trash, Form Notifications, and many many more smaller ones. And we have Multiple Select almost ready, Move Folders across Boards, Password for Public Boards, and several others in progress.

I hope I have been able to address your concerns. Sorry for the long post, but I just wanted to clear the air and hopefully reassure you.

Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.

[micck]

I know that the team is working hard and in the end always delivering what they promise. But that’s because I’m here for a pretty long time.
The problem here is that for newer members they cannot know. Thus you have to show them clearly and in every aspect that you do. (With you I mean the whole team and not you personally Jovana - you do a good job. ) You may not have the processes yet to do so, but I urge you to create them.
This is really something the infinity team seems to under estimate at least in my opinion.

[rich]

Good afternoon, Jovana. Thanks for the reply and a couple of Comments - I apologize for not catching the other thread which I have now read. I am no one special and it is more than likely that there are others here who have been involved in developing code and please believe me when I say this to you… no one appreciates the flat-out grind it can be to designing, coding and supporting a best-of-breed solution. So, I get it.

And my observations are not directed at you as a criticism because you obviously have years of experience yourself. I think I very much understand your responsibilities because you are like me… the go-between person who sits between your developers (who it appears are also your Founders) who are hard at work and the Customers out here, who have every suggestion under the sun but who may or may not entirely understand how doing “just” this little thing can have very substantial codebase implications. Not an easy spot to be in. Been there and still am. Thirty-five years and several million dollars later developing huge local and web-based marketing technologies systems, I still can’t tell one line of code from another and that’s just the way I like it and the way it should be. I am the business process guy who is supposed to think the crazy thoughts and to a point, not get bogged down in the mechanics, lest we stop innovating. Like you, I am talking to the Customers, trying to cull through the good ideas and frankly, some of the plain stupid or untimely ideas. Harsh but true.

My point with this is not to give you my resume but to say I “get it” - so, my bad for not seeing the earlier May thread. I think I speak for many of your early adopters when I say that there is a good sense for how Infinity is designed and where it will end up. I don’t think anyone doubts Infinity’s commitment to the mission but even when you guys are in a pinch point and there is no “ta-da” announcement to make, then just say so?

Even if all you are able to give us is the weather report from Belgrade, or some crazy thing that Ivan M, Ivan S, Stephan or Aleksandar may have done, keep it coming. I’m thinking that there has to be more than one good story from Aleksandar in particular, because any guy who names one of his ventures “KickAssGrowth” has to have a sense of humor

Two last thought and then I have to get some fun work done. Regarding ClickUp - stick to your philosophy as I know you will. Their Venture Capital money infusion is a potential curse. VC investors rarely understand much more than the 30-40% return they will demand in the next 1-3 years and in my experience with three technology start-ups they can kill your business. Secondly, while they may be cranking out feature-set improvements at a crazy pace, there are many on ClickUp complaining that ClickUp is overwhelming and less and less intuitive in terms of program flow. You and they are a Productivity solution. If any program is fighting me and my ability to produce because I am stuck in a “Where’s Waldo” mini-maze with a lack of intuitive “tab flow” and field/action placement, especially when I have to deal with a low-contrast color palette and font sizes or loaded up with a bunch of “features” I don’t really need, then you have done nothing for me. That’s why after working with it for a couple of weeks I am back to Infinity. .

OK, thanks, for the time, keep pushing and we are looking forward. I realize this response crosses through a number of Topics/threads. Sorry about that. Feels free to break it up/move it as you see fit.

Oh, and right on with your Community Forum “Rules”. Somebody at Infinity must have read First Lady, Elenor Roosevelt’s famous quote: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people”*. Never more needed than today!.

Onward…

– Rich –

[Jovana]

Hi @rich, thanks for the detailed response and for sharing your background with me. It seems you do understand my point of view and daily struggles.

I’m going to keep my response short and sweet this time.

Basically the point I want to make is that we are lucky to have community members such as you, who are really knowledgeable and passionate about the product. And I know your first post was coming from a good place as well and I appreciate you speaking your mind and also understanding our point of view.

The second point I want to make is that Infinity is far from a finished product and far from perfect but, we’ll be damned if we don’t give it our best shot to get there one day. And I believe we’re doing just that - doing our best to build this product day by day and turn it into something truly valuable for a great number of people. But we have a lot of work ahead of us.

And just like our developers are doing everything they can to polish Infinity, we in the customer team are also working every day to polish our customer service. We’re planning many new great improvements in the following months and one of them is also to communicate more often, to engage the community even more and overall offer better customer experience and service.

Well, that wasn’t so short after all, but the intention was there.

Cheers!

[rich]

Jovana, we have a older and very colloquial, American English expression that you may or may not recognize… and in today’s landscape, out of date, although it has never been meant in a sexist/misogynist way. It goes like this: Here’s “attaboys” to Team Infinity. Keep pushing. We’re out here looking forward…

[Derrick]

Jovana, You mention the facebook group as a place to keep on top of news, but it only works if you accept our request to join. I requested to join when I first bought infinity then forgot about it months later it is still pending.

[micck]

And it only works when you have a Facebook account …

[Jovana]

Hi @Derrick, I’m sorry to hear that.

We had a few situations of people who had nothing to do with Infinity join our group only to spam with ads and irrelevant content, so we decided to limit the access to only people who have an Infinity account. Perhaps at the time, you answered that you didn’t have an account?

Anyway, could you please write to our chat support to tell us your full name so we can see what happened with your request? Thank you!

[Derrick]

Maybe I will just cancel the request and ask again, it doesn’t look like it was denied just never actioned.

[Derrick]

Just requested again, now.

[Jovana]

Thanks for sending another request, Derrick. I have asked Stefan (our CEO) to approve it as soon as he can.

[BaiJie]

Hi all (especially @rich),

I think there was a splintering of communication flow that occurred a little while ago, and I may have been the center of it…

I don’t think it was wrong, but it probably deserves mentioning, in the hopes that improvement can be discovered through understanding.

I pushed really hard for a roadmap, and then pushed for it to be bigger and bigger, with more functionality promoted over there. I was thinking that it could replace the community website (this one). When it came out, I was elated! It looked good, and it pushed development of some new features to the forefront.

At about that time, @coa stepped aside in pursuit of new efforts (Congrats by the way!). And then, because the roadmap was still developing, and there were things here that weren’t there (and vice-versa), the updates became split. I’m also not on Facebook, so I am sure I’m missing other information. The website is also getting regular updates, but I almost never get on now that I’m a member with boards.

I still think using Infinity as a Roadmap is perfect, and just about everything from here could be moved over there. There definitely needs to be some kind of funneling of information, so that everyone gets to see everything that they want to see. What’s the best way to do that right now? I’m still not 100% sure…

I wonder if some of the more active members could be listed as VIP’s, or admin-type people on the roadmap to describe progress, combine votes and copies of suggestions, and organize bugs/questions that people have. I think a bugs list could also be very helpful on the roadmap. I also think an Infinity features introduction on the roadmap could be really cool. Thoughts anyone?

[CodeKnight]

@BaiJie Great post!

I think there are a lot of suggestions coming through on how to improve the community roadmap but no one place to actually capture these ideas and some key person to work on them?

Here are some other suggestions and ideas to improve the road map

Infinity Product Roadmap

@stefan When can we hope for the consolidation of ideas on the public roadmap community voice? This needs to result in a cleanup of suggestions in the community voice. A big improvement to this board would be making the most recent suggestions the default view in community voice section. Unfortunately as suggestion quantity increases and items are ranked by most votes, the items with most votes will be at the top of the list meaning they receive the most views and subsequently most new votes as…

@Jovana your responses are rivalling that of @coa thank you for filling this gap, he was instrumental at keeping everyone patient and hopeful for the future of infinity.

[Jovana]

Hello @CodeKnight! First of all, thank you for the kind words! As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ll be trying to fill Coa’s shoes but it would be a challenge.

When it comes to the public roadmap and improving how it works (especially the Community’s Voice), this should be a joined effort by me and some other colleagues from the team, but it’s quite a challenge to figure out how to do this. I’ve been hesitant to join the discussion on the ‘Infinity Product Roadmap’ topic precisely because of this - but there are some great ideas there that we will definitely implement.

Another, let’s say, ‘issue’ here is that the team members who need to focus on updating the roadmap and figuring out some better solutions for managing it are also super busy with other things (the ‘task force’ includes our product manager Jana, and Stefan - our CEO), so you can imagine there are some hurdles with finding the best time to focus on this.

But, I’ll try to implement some solutions to improve the roadmap a bit, at least as a start: I’ll make sure to fix (or improve, because certain issues will persist here), the ‘invalid date’ issue following @micck’s advice, and put the focus on the newest items in the first tab of the Community’s Voice. I will also try to go through all the suggestions and consolidate duplicates (but there is another problem there if two similar or same ideas have some votes on each)… So yes, I have a big task ahead of me.

I will try to do at least some of it this week and then continue in the weeks to come.

[CodeKnight]

I wait in anticipation @Jovana I am sure you will achieve great things!

[micck]

If you implement this it will solve the votes issue:

Infinity Product Roadmap

Great posts @CodeKnight This additional idea to boost roadmap participation came to my mind: Using two columns: “absolute number of votes” and “recent votes” Here´s how it works: In the same turn (maybe once a month) when the infinity team consolidates all new suggestions, the number of “recent votes” is added to the “absolute number of votes”. The “recent votes” are set to zero, so that every active community member can vote again. This will bring members back who have already voted so t…

Also eagerly looking forward to what the next magic the infinity team will do

[coa]

I hear y’all.

Hey guys! Oh, I miss you so much.

First of all, hugs and kudos to @Jovana for handling so much work at Infinity, including various community channels. She’s a beast.

Second of all; I have a couple of words about the product, which will hopefully reassure everyone here.

From the very beginning of the Infinity, I know that the Co-Founders and the core team has been focusing on the community and suggestions to build this product based on your feedback and ideas.

The challenge into getting into this kind of market was no ordinary one (and the team can feel all the struggles as we speak), but it all comes easier working with the community just like this one – ready to suggest, criticise, help and build together.

I remember @stefan saying ‘Coa, just imagine how many people will actually get their chance to share their struggles in organising their work and life. And us, being their safe spot, listening to their issues, and offering a solution through this product’. That’s what bought me at the first place (I know it sounds cliché, but yeah – that’s the thing.

Yes, the product was young when it was released. Yes, it doesn’t have ALL the features comparing to other tools (yet). Yes, the team is still bootstrapping (which is hard AF), and while the things seem to be slow at one point, just look at the bigger picture, and see how far the product has grown. I mean, I know that the numbers and results say that. Just looking at the number of features, functionalities and new use cases being born with Infinity, new problems solved…

I’ve left the team on June 1st. And since then (4 months, wow!), I can see LOTS of new updates including Trash/Archive, new Help Centre, Formulas attribute, Multiple Select, huge UX/UI improvements, etc.

While I truly understand that some things aren’t here yet, what is important here is that the team is constantly caring and thinking about making everyone satisfied with their Infinity account and their custom setup/organisation with everything this team has built so far. And yeah, still caring and listening after 2 years of launching a beta! Come on, I mean… This is one of the most selfless teams ever.

Also, you can take a look at this matter from a very different perspective. We all know that scaling is hard. The thing here is that: The more (active) community members there are, the team will take more time, energy and resources to keep everyone up to date and perfectly fine with everything going on. Which means that, if sometimes, the team seems to be silent or inactive with the updates and activities, they’re really busting their assess to handle the #1 priority in the whole company: you guys, the community.