The other day I came across a thread in the forums yet again asking something akin to:

When is <insert issue here> going to get fixed? I’ve been waiting a long time and we desperately need this implemented. What’s taking so long? Can you give me an ETA, it’s been 6 months already!

And was just about to give the same old response I always do, but then I thought why not nip this in the butt right now. So I wrote this rather large reply on what exactly it means when something is on the Wishlist as opposed to a Milestone. Did you happen to read it? No. I figured as much — there’s probably more people reading our blog than an aging forum thread. So here’s the difference again, with a better copy editor this time around.

Take JIRA issue CHD-733 for example, you see that field under the title that says ‘Fix Version/s’ ?

As of this writing its value is Wishlist, which unfortunately implies this issue is not something we’re actively fixing for an upcoming release. That’s not to say it will never be fixed cause we don’t like you, or that it’s too difficult to do, or any other excuse you can think of. The answer is simple: the developers don’t consider it urgent enough, with the limited number of resources we have, to tackle at the moment. That feeling could very well change over time.

On the other hand you’ll know we’re working on something for the near future if it’s categorized as a Milestone. Right now we’re pushing towards Milestone #20 and barring any unforeseen setbacks, everything in that category will be fixed in the next major release. We don’t give hard dates because we can’t meet them a majority of the time — we’d eventually miss a deadline by a landslide and lose your trust completely. What you can depend on us for, is an announcement in the forums when a new release is loaded into the stable code branch.

Oh, and there’s one other value you might see in ‘Fix Version/s’. You ready for it? … ‘None‘. That’s code for “no man’s land” or as JIRA likes to call them, Unscheduled issues. Simply means we haven’t got around to putting them in Wishlist or a Milestone yet.

For future reference you can see the entire list of what we’re up to by bookmarking: Browse Cerberus Helpdesk Project Versions.

You’ll notice right now, we’ve got a whopping 55 issues we’re looking to fix for Milestone #20! And an even bigger number in the Wishlist, 179 to be exact. So how do we decide what issues from the Wishlist are moved over to the next unannounced Milestone? By your votes! Rest assured the staff here go through the list on a regular basis and evaluate issues primarily based on demand vs. design/coding time.

How do you vote? Go to an issue’s web page and look near the bottom of the left sidebar. See that “Voting” section near the bottom:

Click ‘Vote for it‘. You show your support and we schedule it for an upcoming milestone. It’s really that simple!

-joegeck@wgm