Arena... Shelby's red-headed step child

jmills6
Offline 3 months ago

Is it just me or does it seem like Shelby is slowly letting Arena die? After sitting on the last webinar, which was probably 75% everything but Arena, I feel like I should be looking for something else. Even the new "product owner" didn't have much to say except that they are fixing bugs and the buttons in the GLT (and his personal blog he touts is 100% Shelby Next Financials).  How about we see an update on the Giving interface and getting that more in line with current trends? One of my co-workers just asked about a Shelby Systems email they got about Worship Planning, not understanding that it seems ALL Shelby emails refer to Next products, not Arena... In fact, looking at their website, Arena is not even listed as a product anymore. The only place I found it was under the support tab. I'd love to be proven wrong about this. Please, someone make me feel better about the investment we made 4 years ago.

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  • Offline 3 months ago

    Thank each and every one of you for being long time Shelby clients and taking the time to share your thoughts and concerns regarding Arena. Also, thank you for the kind words regarding our history together, our support teams, and the dedication we’ve historically exhibited in helping our customers.

    There is no intention to stop supporting or developing on the Arena platform. Arena is a go forward platform and no end of maintenance has been discussed.

    And while the advances in the platform may have slowed, development and quality assurance resources are still dedicated to the Arena platform.

    An update is scheduled for next week. Look for a future announcements that include release details.

    Development now also includes reducing the gaps for our headquarter customers and addressing known issues.

  • Offline 3 months ago in reply to Alfred Johnson

    . Thanks for chiming in.  While many of us would like to believe that development is still happening, your words of dealing with HQ and bug fixes doesn't really give off warm fuzzies about moving the application forward.  I'd love to see/hear some dedicated information or a roadmap for development.  As you've seen in this conversation, users need to understand Shelby's development plan, or know if we need to be leaning on folks like KFS to provide updated environments (which is somewhat irritating to some folks), or even if we need to be looking at other, more modern ChMS solutions.

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  • Offline 3 months ago in reply to jmills6

    I agree with jmills6 - without a roadmap, we don't know where the product is headed, if anywhere.  There's no longer a vote function for feature requests so we even know what might be in the queue.  For all we know, any such requests go into a black hole and never come out.  There are even just niggly little fixes that don't get addressed. 

    I very much appreciate the product and improvements that have been made, for example, the new ability to include certain relationships for selection in event registration.  And as others have said, the customer support folks are always helpful.  But it would be reassuring to know specifically where the product is headed and that users have a voice in that direction.

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