Improving Orion

I've mentioned this before to sales with no results so I'll post it here for the community to review.

Ways to improve the Orion experience.

1) Make it easy for us to tell what revision AND patch level Orion is running at. Put that information in a "hotfix" field next to the version on the home page so at a glance we know we're good. (Update: Fixed in Service Pack 3, wow you guys are quick )

2) Fix the website to clearly state what the current patch level is! In example under Hot fixes there is a line for Orion hot fixes for v8.5. so what does that tell me? Do I need to log in EVERY DAY and start a patch download to see what version is out? Put the current version name there even Micro$oft got this right.

3) Notify us via email when a patch is out! You can send me adverts about products so why not include FYI's that there's a new update!

I'm sick of updating apps and versions just to find out the next day in production that I missed another patch for something else because there's no way to quickly tell what the hell I'm running.

I love Orion but I hate the Web support page (Thwack rocks!), I rate it as one of the worst I've seen in 15 years.

Come on Solarwinds this is easy and makes our lives and yours so much better!

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Accepted answers

qle

Here's a suggestion for "gripe" #3. You could subscribe to the "SolarWinds Announcements" forum so that you receive an e-mail notification whenever a new post is created in that forum. Since only SolarWinds staff can post in that forum you'll probably only get a notification once every week, sometimes only once a month.

I know it's not your preferred solution and perhaps they are working on something better. I've used this method for over six months now and it has kept me up to date with new releases and patches that are made available for my SolarWinds products.

Along the same vein, if you use an RSS reader, you could add the RSS feed for the "SolarWinds Announcements" forum as another method of notification.

All comments

qle

RonCHenry

Gracis qle!

That's all I needed to resolve my issue regarding notification.

2 down 1 to go!

FormerMember

I agree with subscribing to the Announcements forum.

"Fix the website to clearly state what the current patch level is!"

We did this in SP3. If you look at Orion 8.5.1 SP3, you can see the service pack level in the footer of the web console.
- "SolarWinds Orion Network Performance Monitor 8.5.1 SP3 1995-2007 All Rights Reserved

RonCHenry

Strange I had actually commented on my orignal post that I saw the fix had been implemented in SP3. Hence the 2 down ref. I highlighted my remark for easier ref.

Thanks