[Resolved] COMMUNICATE about Changes

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[loriD]

So today I discovered that my MANY forms ALL have to be gone over and redone.
1. I have NO CLUE as to when they all broke. - if you make major changes on how content is now created EMAIL us. You email about other crap but not about having to recreate content. Some of us are business owners we don't have time to trouble shoot much less recreate content we already created cuz you guys decided to redo how things get created. You did this with maps as well and quite frankly it pissed me off. Just stop.
2. you actually invited me to be part of your new program to help others. What a joke, I can't help others I believe you hate your customers and 90% of the time I am in trouble shooting mode with your programs.
3. I regret ever buying your program. unfortunately I am in tooo deep.

I am pissed off about my forms at this moment but this applies to absolutely ANYthing you update. Just cuz you have time to reconfigure everything doesn't mean we do, and it is even worse when we don't know everything is gone to hell.

[Beda]

I am not sure what you mean by stating that we hate our clients (we don't, we make a living with this and we actually love the product, WordPress and our Clients).
I think this also shows when you browse this forum, Facebook, reviews of other blogs about Toolset, and more.

Further, we do not update our plugins so that you need to regenerate your content each time we update.
That would be a nightmare.
Sometimes, very rarely, it is required to re-save something. This is very rare.
Even rarer, is that you need to fully rebuild something. It is almost never required, please show me where you have been instructed to recreate all your content just because of our updates.

That would be a BUG and needs to get fixed.

I am also not sure what you mean with an invitation so you should help other users.
We do not expect you to, and neither we do invite people to do that, by my knowledge.
You are a Toolset user and hence, entitled to GET support, not forced or asked to PROVIDE Support.
We provided that, this is what you paid when you purchased Toolset.
I am happy to clarify anything in regard, maybe, you received an invitation to be CONTRACTOR instead?
That is not an invitation to help others, it's an invitation to make money by selling your expertise to others if you wish.
We help you to find clients, and we help our users find people who can custom code for them.
We did choose long-term users with few tickets only to invite as Contractors, as assumed to be the users with most experience.
Maybe, you mean that invitation. It is dismissable and only to your advantage if accepted.

Now, let's proceed like this:
- if you have things that do not work anymore after an update please open a support ticket for it (the issue) and we will help(solve)
- if you require a refund for any reason please use this form: https://toolset.com/buy/refund-policy/
- if you have concerns just about the quality of support: https://toolset.com/need-help-toolset/

We are happy to respond to any issue and I will also pass along the feedback about communicating better to the end users of Toolset.
We do that usually thru changelogs and blog posts when we release new versions.

[loriD]

I am not asking for a refund, that would be a NIGHTmare for me.
Clearly you do not understand how your updates or changes affect your customers.
The Maps was a perfect example. There IS even a ticket about it, if you look back in my history. You changed how your fields work for it. You changed how field work in forms. It broke all my css, I don't even bother with it anymore, cuz I couldn't get it to work again and I didn't have the time to figure out how to get the css to work much less the time to rework all my forms. These changes create a snowball affect that you clearly do not understand. This weekend I simply wanted to add something to a few forms, NOW see that somewhere along the line you changed how this is done. Now I have to trouble shoot everything and figure out how it works. Then I found out a standard form no longer is working and all the fields had to be redone. I have many, now I don't know how many more are broken. I may have broken it by trying to add your NEW field format with it's NEW coding to an old form. Why can't I just add another field. But the way your new process is HORRIBLE and lacks flexibility. I shouldn't have to keep relearning how to use your plugins, quite frankly I don't have time for it. Hence you don't like or even respect your customers or THEIR time. You think that submitting a ticket is all it takes like it is an instant fix. It clearly isn't. I am very upset with your plugin I have been from the start, it is anything BUT user friendly. Unfortunately I also can't undo all that I have of it in my website. I suggest instead of telling me how wrong I am maybe JUST maybe consider what I am saying and reevaluate how your changes affect your customers. Maybe your bootstrap coding isn't all it's cracked up to be and IF i can't mix bootstrap with old coding that is a bigger problem. ex of old code in my forms [cred_field field="post_title" post="b-endorsements" value="" urlparam=""] ex of new code i attempted to add to a form [cred_field field="meta-description-140-characters" force_type="field" class="form-control" output="bootstrap"].
I won't even get into your access download. The conflicts it has with YOUR own downloads alone has been so horrible that I refuse to even use it. Talk about a NIGHTMARE!!
So you want to talk about a NIGHTmare, yes you cause them, for your customers. You might want to really think about that, after all just look at all the tickets you have to deal with, you clearly do not realize that EACH ONE IS A NIGHTMARE for your customers. It costs us time, money, and patience. As for your contractors club, let me be more clear. THERE is NO way I would accept projects through toolset, I am clearly NOT an expert in your plugins even if you think I qualify for something, and quite frankly I wouldn't recommend anyone use it as it is, again, anything but user friendly.

[Beda]

Great, thank you for the feedback.

I will pass this along to our Support Manager, and eventually, you will get in touch with each other, as this is not the place to discuss such issues.

Here, we spend the time to help the Users use Toolset and gather technical issues so to solve them.

Other concerns can be forwarded to either of the above-linked Forums or as mentioned when there is no forum fitting for the topic I forward the issue to the support Team leader who will organize contact with you.

Thank you.

[loriD]

I entered this as a "suggestion for improvement". I clicked that tab. Where is went is 100% on your system. I didn't ask for help!!!

[Beda]

Yes, I am aware of this and have forwarded your contents to Amit, the Support Team Leader, and he will be in touch after reading the suggestions.

Thank you.

[Juan]

Hi Lori

This is Juan, the Toolset development team leader. Thanks for your feedback.

I a really sorry that you feel frustrated by working with Toolset, and I can promise you that we are doing huge efforts into improving our usability, making things easier to understand and perform, and include features as our users demand them. I would like to try to better understand the cause of that frustration and do my and our best to minimize it.

I have been checking your history on support, and I do want to thak you for the years you have been with us. I see that you already had another kind of support thread like this one some time ago:
https://toolset.com/forums/topic/general-input-due-to-absolute-frustration/

I would like to highlight some general things.

We consider backwards compatibility a must. Not a priority, but a must. This means that we do test things to make sure they do nto break existing sites, and that forces us to maintain and keep some pieces of code that we would really love to redo, or even delete. But we have a responsibility in not breaking existig sites, and when something happens, because sometimes things slip under our radar, we promptly solve them. I can link to hotfix releases done to all the plugins in the Toolset family to address small compatibility issues that were not on our tested cases, and that caused us to include them as another test step.

I see that your first comment here is that suddenly forms stopped working, or went broken. I would really appreciate some more details over it, because we have released several number of updates to Forms recently, including a hotfix release last week, and we did test it to the ground, and we did not get any wave of users claiming that their forms were broken.

We did not make any change on how a form content is translated from your backend shortcodes to the frontend HTML that the form includes. We have a specific tool that compares the outcome of several elements created by Toolset, including forms, and we use that tool on every plugin release, to make sure that we do not even change the order of classnames in frontend items. We do make changes, and plan to do more changes, in how you create the backend editor for a form, or for a View, or for a Content Template, because we are never satisfied with the user experience we provide if that experience includes a barebones editor that you need to adjust with HTML and CSS. Our goal is to empower people without knowledge to create beautiful and perfect sites.

I see in your tickets record that this is not the first time something seemed to be broken, and then the reason was a little different. From maps not showing due to an exceeded quota from Google, to forms not working properly because they lack a required attribute in one of the key shortcodes.

Please get me right on this:this all belog to the list of our faults, or at least in the list we can and need to improve. If something is mandatory, we should not let you walk without it. If there is an error with a quota from a third party service, we beter have a proper and meaningful error mssage for you so you can solve the thing. I am taking your input and transforming it into actionable tasks for our team.

Now, you mention a "maps example" and point our supporters to your tickets history. Isee several tickets related to Maps in your history:
- https://toolset.com/forums/topic/after-update-maps-isnt-showing-the-maps/ about maps not workin gafter an upgrade. As stated in the ticket, the root cause was an API key that was restricted.
- https://toolset.com/forums/topic/frontend-map-is-not-reflecting-backend-map/ about displaying maps in the frontend, which got resolved once stated that a map and a marker are two separated entities, wach with its own shortcode.
- https://toolset.com/forums/topic/this-is-in-regards-to-maps-which-isnt-on-the-list/ about using address fields, without any answer or acivity in the last months.
- https://toolset.com/forums/topic/this-page-didnt-load-google-maps-correctly-see-the-javascript-console-for-tech/ about Maps not working after an update; it was abandoned after the supporter asked some questions, in July, so of course if there is anythign broken here we probably can not knwo how to see it.

That covers all the Maps topics I can see until back July. I do not see anything here getting broken because one of our updates, I am sorry to say:
- we did not change how address fields work. They still have the autocomplete and preview in the backend, and the mechanism to add a map with markers in the frontend is the same since we first launched Maps.
- we even addressed problems with Google charging way too much suddently for using its Maps API and introduced alternatives, like Microsoft Azure maps.
- we did not change how fields work in forms. We chnaged hw you add fields to forms. We do think that the new way is more visual, gives you much more control of the outcome. Of course they should have no effect whatsoever over your CSS or styling.
- we are going to continue improving how workflows work on all Toolset plugins. We understand that changes in how things are done force changes in how to do things, but we are not going to keep dialogs with textareas where you can barely see anything if we can include a nice drag&drop interface instead. Every and all software evolves their GUIs and the workflows to make them easier, more flexible and more powerful. We are and will do the same, because we do respect ou users time, efforts and business, and because we want all existing and new users to be able to use the best tool with the best user interface and experience, and that means chnage and iteration.
- even in the event of shortcodes getting generated in a way that you do not like or do not meet your requirements, we have extensive documentation on every shortcode, stating its mandatory and optional attributes, so you can always add them manually without using our evolving GUIs. All it takes is copy and paste an existing shortcode and adjust the attribute that you need to adjust.

Finally, I would like to say that we sent invitations to some users as to become contractors for others, based on several criteria including the amount of time using Toolset. This is of course an optional and voluntary activity to promote the developers out there that can create or help others with their sites. As you stated above, you do not consider yourself a developer, so I think it is fine and fair that you decline that offer. Instead, you might want to consider having a contractor close to check updates, make adjustemnts or extend existing elements that you already created with Toolset.

I am subscribing to this ticket to get any answer. I am indeed interesting in knowing what happened to your forms and maps with our latest updates.

Regards.

[loriD]

Thank you for your reply.
I will concede the Maps issues have been addressed and resolved, at least as far as I know.
However, I am still working on dealing with my forms. You mentioned documentation. Unfortunately I have found over and over again outdated documentation. Which is a HUGE part of my frustration, to the point I find it pointless to even bother with it. The entire Maps fiasco would have been avoided if your documentation would have been updated at the time. I understand this is a huge undertaking but if you don't want to do it than don't make major changes. Also if you are going to change completely how things are done like you did in forms then you should send emails out. I will agree the drop and drag may work well for creating new forms. However, I knew nothing about that until I wanted to go in and add a field or two to some forms. I still haven't figured out how to do it easily. For one you have what looks like required fields that cannot be unlocked. That restricts me and my flexibility, that is a huge problem. It is one thing to relearn how you are now doing things it is completely another to try to relearn and do work arounds to get what you want. I JUST want to add a field or 2 to a form. it really shouldn't have generated this entire dialog. seriously what a waist of time for both of us. And truthfully I am so frustrated with the entire process I put it on the back burner. I dread seeing your updates. I dread knowing that most likely something has changed in a major way that I will now have to trouble shoot. You may have all kinds of fancy programing but the bottom line is you are clearly not working from our stand point. Part of the frustration is I am TRYING to help you help us and it often falls on deaf ears. The bottom line is IF you change HOW things are done you really should figure out how to let your users know. You MUST update your documentation and include how your changes go along with the old way of doing things. As an example you changed how the forms get created and now I'm having issues adding new form items to forms I already created and use. Is there a "special" way to do this? I shouldn't have to dig for this answer, YOU are the ones who changed how this works. IF you are so much about your customers and the capability of your changes with their sites YOU would let us know. I have been 100% consistent on this complaint. Your documentation has ALWAYS been lacking, to the point where it is usually a waist of time.

You may not have changed field s "THIS" time that affected css but you did at one time. I had a ticket in about it that the resolution was removing ALL css from my forms. So again you may not have this time but you did in the past. I don't feel that is acceptable either. I again don't have time to trouble shoot every last thing.

I get trying to make things better but you seriously need to stop making things complicated. you have a VERY complicated set of plugins to begin with. Just please please make it user friendly or just stop making major changes on how to do things.

Lori

[Juan]

Hi there, Lori

I appreciate that we get to specific points that will allow us to improve our workflows and actions.

We have improved our syncronization between changes in documentation in the last weeks and months. We have a dedicated team that works together with developers to get the documentation for new features and chnages out as those features arrive.

Regarding Forms, there are two thinks I would like to highlight:
- First, ou documentation on shortcodes is still accurate. We have not introduced any major change in shortcodes in the recent months, and we worked quite hard to make sure that we keep them working as they did on previous versions once we started updating how they are managed internally. I am talking about this specific page: https://toolset.com/documentation/user-guides/cred-shortcodes/
- Second, yes we indeed changed how to add fields to a form, but we replaced what we already had with something more powerful. By the way you are describing your issue I assume we did not make it entirely clear, though.

Forms have a scaffold button, labelled as "auto-generate form", used mainly to generate the form anew, for newly created forms. It contains all the fields that a post can take, and some of them are marked as required, because they are declared as such. Only Types fields created as required, plus the Submit button, are marked as required items.

But anyway, for adding individual fields, you should probably head to the Add Fields button over the form editor. There, you can select and insert individual fields, even setting optional parameter values in a visual way. And if what you need are external, additional fields, then you should use the Generic Fields button.

But this has not changed. In the past, we had a Scaffold button, which offered a complete form with all its available fields, and you were forced to edit it in a tiny textarea inside a popup, and not you have an auto-generator with dra and drop, field attriibutes, and easy ways to skip nor mandatory items. In the past we had an Add ields button, where you could add individual fields that belong to the current post type, and we still have the same, but looking even better and with support for options in a visual way. And in the past we had a way to add generic fields, adn we keep on having it, with accurate options per field type.

I see no workaround needed here, and while I see some re-learning, reality is that we kept what we had and just put a layer of better usability over it.

As a final word, we do and will continue doing chnages in our plugins, precisely to make them easier to use. We do think that having a visual clue of your fields when you create a form is way easier than getting a scaffold generated on a small textarea inside a popup, and we do think that having a drag&drop editor is even better than what we have now, so we are working towards it. And it will bring chnage. We can not make our products better and easier to use without doing changed, and without updating our documentation along with it.

I will be extremely happy to assist and help you getting used with the way to add fields to a form, even though as I stated before we just changed one button label and expanded the control that you have over what gets generated.

Hope it helps.

Regards.

[loriD]

Here we go again.

I now have a website developer helping me improve my website. He wants me to use the fusion builder in the avada theme.
1. the Theme YOU (toolset) recommends in your Documentation
2. a theme your DOCUMENTATION said would work!!! (yes I looked at your documentation first)
3. FUSION NEVER worked for me, of course. (i switched to it about a year ago) I didn't want to deal with all of these issues I now have to deal with so I just used the theme pretty much like I did all the other ones I tried. Now my hand is being forced and of course it still doesn't work
4. I DEACTIVATED ALL my plugins (cuz I know the drill) and found Avada conflicts with toolset views - do you think I am shocked. NOT AT ALL
5. seriously can't anything be easy? can't anything just work. now I have to jump through the hoops. Despite me saying right off the bat that I deactivated everything I am being told to do it again. Oh and get rid of the child theme. that NEVER worked. (oh and it didn't fix anything) cuz i need to get rid of css (I HAVE NONE) why is that difficult to understand. I have no CSS.
6. IF you recommend a theme to be used with your plugins there shouldn't be a conflict. like I said it didn't work from the beginning.
7. NOW i have to make a test site?!?!? my experience with duplicating a site is it doesn't duplicate completely!!! I don't have time to fix a duplicate site so you can test it. a perfect example of not being user friendly.

I just wanted a theme that worked with toolset so I wouldn't have these problems, that is why when I went hunting AGAIN for a theme I looked at what you recommended first. seriously frustrated. I don't have the time or patience for this anymore. I just want my site to do what it is supposed to.

[Juan]

Hi Lori

Thanks for the feedback.

I really do not want to turn this ticket into a discussion or a generic place for using uppercase when you find a problem with a layout that can be solved with some CSS. So I would appreciate if we can calm down, and try to report issues in a proper way.

I see that you opened a bug report for this Avada and Views issue, here:
https://toolset.com/forums/topic/i-want-to-be-able-to-use-avada-and-toolset-tools-specifically-views/

In it, you do not describe much of a compatibility issue. Nothing is broken. Our supporter reviewed it and saw that some inline styles, which do not seem to come from Views, but might be the case, affect the layout. I am sure the developer you are working on is also able to detect the source of this kind of problems, and of course the steps he will follow to isolate the root cause will sound quite similar to the ones our support staff requires. And if Views is causing this, we will isolate, debug, and eventually fix the issue, of course.

But there is no PHP error, no console error, no log error: just a style that does not look right due to some inline styles. Of course we can help you find them and propose a solution, but we should not get an uppercase claim that Avada does not work with Views.

Besides this, one important thing to consider is that things change and evolve. Yes, themes too. And we do claim compatibility with a theme because we do test agaist it. We can not test against every single minor change somebody using the theme performs, like custom styles, and of course we do our best to test when the theme gets an update, but sometimes themes do get updates that affect our integration and we do need to adjust thigs in our side.

WordPress, with dozens of plugins plus a custom theme, is a complex piece. Updating each of them might have side efects: this is why staging sites are used for to check updates in a safe environment before pushing buttons in production sites.

Finally, I am really sorry that you are feeling frustrated, and I prmise I and our team will do our best to make you feel better.

[loriD]

and here I thought you actually wanted to help. guess not. like I said it didn't work from the beginning I never could use fusion.
the only way I get it to work is not having views.
the only css that could possibly be the issue is through avada.

but clearly i miss understood you wanting to get communications.
I will attempt to supply a copy of my site, hopefully it will duplicate 100% so the person helping can find the issue.

spin my wheels spin my wheel.

[Juan]

Hi Lori

Thanks for your feedback.

I am sorry that you feel that I do not want to help or get proper and honest feedback, because I want, and I want both. I do not appreciate turning this into a personal discussion, and I will not have that. That is a red line I will not cross.

I will be more than happy to get descriptions about problems and turn them into debug actions, changes in our products, and releases that fix and address those issues, if needed. I am, we are indeed here to help and to turn right whatever could be wrong.

Regards.

[loriD]

I apologize you had implied you where willing to help out with issues I had.
I will no longer bother you.
I am still spinning and spinning.
logic isn't playing out.
we are now on day 4 but I won't bother you with it any longer
no need to reply. I know my place.

[Amit Kvint]

Closing here