Hi Benchling Community,

Thank you for your incredible enthusiasm for the Benchling Community. We’re not even a year into this journey, and we have over 330 ideas and nearly 2,000 discussion posts. It’s amazing! 

One of my favorite parts of this job is hearing feedback directly from our customers. Sure, it’s lovely to hear what we’re doing right, but it’s invaluable to have folks who will tell you where you have missed the mark or where you need to do more. That’s why I’ve been such a huge proponent of building Community at Benchling. There is no better way for my team to connect with so many of you and get rich insights on what we can build to make your lives better. 

Now that the ideas portal has been open for a few months I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the ideas we’ve seen submitted and give you more context on where we’re saying “yes,” where we’re saying “no” — or in many cases — ”not right now.”

How we categorize your ideas
Historically, we’ve had four different status categories we use to organize your ideas but we’re adding a fifth to give you all even more clarity into idea status and timing. Let’s look at each category:

• Under construction: Good news, we’re working on your idea. Examples of ideas that moved into under construction recently include: 
  • Multi-Select with Parent Links
  • Sticky collapse/expand state in notebook entries
  • Entry Review Process
     
• Shipped: This idea has been delivered and is available in GA. Recent examples include:
  • Alignment of Circular sequences (plasmids) improvements
  • Workflows task being included in the "Home" Section

While these statuses are generally good news, I also hear community members asking, “Shawna, why did you prioritize these ideas when X or Y had more votes?” This is because we plan our roadmap three quarters at a time. As we prioritize building new functionality, as much as possible, we are taking the opportunity to “fix” things while we’re there. I don’t want my team to hold off on addressing issues just because there are ideas with more upvotes we aren’t currently able to address — and I suspect you don’t either!

This brings me to the next category: ideas we are planning to do in the future. 

• Future Roadmap will now become → “Near Term Roadmap”: We realize “future” is an inherently ambiguous word, so we’ve rebranded this category a bit to clarify timing. This category will only include ideas that are on our current, three quarter roadmap. We still reserve the right for timing to shift, but generally you can expect these ideas to be shipped in the next 12 months.

• 🟡 Not currently planned: Now, to one of the hardest parts of my job: saying no. Unfortunately, it turns out to be a big part of this job. This category is not “no, never.” Think of it instead as, “not right now.” We intend to do it all at some point, we just can’t do it all at once. For example, you have made a clear ask for In-line review comments. We agree we should do this, we just cannot take it on right now. Keep voting on these ideas. Your votes matter as we review our roadmap. Depending on the level of complexity – they may be prime for inclusion in Polish Bash, our annual event where the product team sets aside a week to deliver quality of life improvements.

We’re also introducing one final category for the cases where we are truly saying “no”:

•  Out of scope: These are ideas that do not align with our mission or, in other cases, ideas we believe have sufficient existing workarounds.

We hope this gives you more confidence in where your ideas are in the process.
 

3 ways you can continue to contribute

1. Keep voting on the ideas you're passionate about.
    
2. Elaborate on other’s ideas. Learning your unique perspective helps us understand how we can improve our current functionality and build new products to address your needs.
    
3. Come chat with us at community events. From Benchtalk in Boston and London to virtual AMAs, I’ve asked my team to dedicate time to getting involved in. Keep an eye out for some exciting opportunities like “Lunch with a PM” and a community member session at Benchtalk.

Your feedback is so important. We are incredibly grateful that you continue to give it to us, thank you! I’m hosting a virtual AMA session on Monday, August 19 where I’d love to continue discussing your ideas and hearing your feedback. I hope to see you there.