GFI MailEssentials & Feature Requests (Full Version)

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David Vella -> GFI MailEssentials & Feature Requests (24.Mar.2008 4:31:23 AM)

Hi,
 
I am the person responsible for Product Management at GFI Software.  One of my team's main responsibilities at GFI is product strategies; which includes the product roadmap.
 
A factor we use to create the product roadmap is customers' feature requests.  Although we do collect feature requests from customers we are still not doing a good enough job to communicate back (close the loop) to customers that asked for a particular feature.   It is obvious that your complaints are legitimate and I would like to apologize for the inefficient way we are processing the requests.  One of the reasons that we are still not doing a good job is that we do not have an automated system which can gather and process the huge amount of requests we get.
 
One of my main projects for this year is to implement a system which will allow us to process these feature requests more efficiently and that will allow us to communicate back to the customers the status of their requests.  At this point in time we are still in the early stages however through some research I stumbled upon the salesforce.com feature request system (Digg concept) and I believe that this could be a good way for us to gather and prioritize feature requests - check out http://ideas.salesforce.com/. 
 
I would like to point out however that although we do have a problem to close the loop, this does not mean that we do not read the requests you submit.  We do read and manually prioritize as best we can.
 
-- GFI MailEssentials
 
In the second-half of 2008 we plan to release GFI MailEssentials 14.  Although it is still too early to publicly release all the features that will be present in the product I would like to mention some features that you asked for.
 
The next version of GFI MailEssentials will include the following 3 features:
 
1.  A new antispam technology that works on a honeypot concept.  This new technology will also have IP Reputation as part of the antispam arsenal.
 
2.  A quick view dashboard that will display real-time statistics on spam detection, by which engine etc.
 
3.  An option to run the Directory Harvesting antispam feature directly on the SMTP Session.  This means that when we detect spam emails we will reject the email at the SMTP protocol level without having to receive the full email.
 
We plan to release the full list of features nearer to the release.
 
Again, I would like to apologize for the lack of communication re the FRs but rest assured that we will 'fix' and improve our systems this year.  If in the meantime you have feedback or comments on the 'Digg' concept of collecting feature requests do not hesitate to post your comments in this thread.
 
Thanks regards,
 
David Vella - david@gfi.com
Director of Product Management
GFI Software - www.gfi.com
Messaging, Content Security & Network Security Software
Switch: +356 21382418 Fax: +356 21382419



Mats Bjur -> RE: GFI MailEssentials & Feature Requests (24.Mar.2008 8:43:01 AM)

Hi David
It is good to see that there is at least some form of response on customer feedback.

I started this thread in august 2007 - more or less as an act of frustatration.

The frustration lied in the fact that there's absolutely no feedback from GFI developers even though I've personally both called, e-mailed and posted in the forums about essential features that both myself and other it-professionals that I work with as well as other customers in the forums thought really needed to be added into the product. It should also be noted that I've worked with selling and installing GFI products.

For me as both customer and reseller, there are serious concerns when there seems noone responds from GFI over longer periods of time. The only explanations I can find are that the support moderators in the forums are totally detached from the rest of the company, and/or that the company simply ignores customer feedback, whatever the reasons may be.

Personally, I find the explanation that there has been a lack of a tool to track suggestions all but convincing. This could be achieved right here in the forums, by sorting & collecting mail in in Outlook or Windows explorer, or simple tracking in a Word document or a simple Excel-sheet.


To me it more seems like an acknowledgement that customer feedback indeed has been more or less ignored. Product development during the last couple of years also confirms this since nothing has ever made it into the product.

I most definetly hope that your post is the starting point of something new and better from GFI's side, and Im looking forward to the next step.



unsichtbar -> RE: GFI MailEssentials & Feature Requests (25.Mar.2008 10:54:47 AM)

Since you have done Directory Harvesting at the SMTP session level do you plan on implementing DNS blacklist checking at the session level also?



Ytsejamer1 -> RE: GFI MailEssentials & Feature Requests (25.Mar.2008 11:52:14 AM)

David, thanks for starting this thread...it is somewhat reassuring to know that someone is looking at this.  Lots of us have unique mail systems so it's hard to try and develop a "One size fits all" product. 

One thing I asked some technical support reps at GFI via the online chat was a way to tag and forward email...i saw this was suggested by other people as well on this forum.  This seems like a somewhat basic feature to add.  I was told it couldn't be done and that was that.  By looking into it further, we've manually done it ourselves.  All we had to do is edit the strings.xml file to tag any email alongside the action we chose in the modules (forwarding to a spam-catchall mailbox).  This allows our mail archiving system to pickup on those tags and put those spam emails in an appropriate archive which we can purge on any schedule we want versus that of our regular email archive which we want to keep indefinitely.  Being that 97% of our mail is spam, we don't want to (and can't afford the space) to keep spam forever. :)

My other request is based on a need for a little bit more flexability with the modules (whitelisting to be more specific).  It'd be great to have a primary email whitelist that we can add some of our important domain email addresses to it...like sales@biz.corp.  We have our keyword checking module up fairly high...it catches a large number of things and we're always tweaking it.  It'd be great if there were a separate module for high priority email addresses...  Common practice on these forums is to blacklist our own domain.  We have a few emails addresses that we'd like to let in due to the importance.  The users have understood that they'll get tons of spam and it's up to them to fish through the garbage mails to find the legit ones.  I know it kind of sounds retarded to have two whitelists, but it's just a flexability issue here...



David Vella -> RE: GFI MailEssentials & Feature Requests (26.Mar.2008 4:19:23 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mats Bjur

Hi David
It is good to see that there is at least some form of response on customer feedback.

I started this thread in august 2007 - more or less as an act of frustatration.

The frustration lied in the fact that there's absolutely no feedback from GFI developers even though I've personally both called, e-mailed and posted in the forums about essential features that both myself and other it-professionals that I work with as well as other customers in the forums thought really needed to be added into the product. It should also be noted that I've worked with selling and installing GFI products.

For me as both customer and reseller, there are serious concerns when there seems noone responds from GFI over longer periods of time. The only explanations I can find are that the support moderators in the forums are totally detached from the rest of the company, and/or that the company simply ignores customer feedback, whatever the reasons may be.

Personally, I find the explanation that there has been a lack of a tool to track suggestions all but convincing. This could be achieved right here in the forums, by sorting & collecting mail in in Outlook or Windows explorer, or simple tracking in a Word document or a simple Excel-sheet.


To me it more seems like an acknowledgement that customer feedback indeed has been more or less ignored. Product development during the last couple of years also confirms this since nothing has ever made it into the product.

I most definetly hope that your post is the starting point of something new and better from GFI's side, and Im looking forward to the next step.


Hi Mats,

We did actually collect feature requests from the forum, tech support and sales and we did implement certain feature requests; however we still didn't do a good enough job on them - I grant you that.  Specifically we never really closed the loop to give feedback to the customer on the requested features.

With the increase focus on customer engagement and a new FR system as detailed in my previous post we will be able to close the loop and have a proper way how we can analyze and prioritize requests and increase customer satsifaction.

Mats - I would like to thank you for taking your time to actually answer my post.  I appreciate that.

regards,

David Vella - david@gfi.com
Director of Product Management
GFI Software - www.gfi.com
Messaging, Content Security & Network Security Software
Switch: +356 21382418 Fax: +356 21382419



David Vella -> RE: GFI MailEssentials & Feature Requests (26.Mar.2008 8:12:14 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: unsichtbar

Since you have done Directory Harvesting at the SMTP session level do you plan on implementing DNS blacklist checking at the session level also?


We have confirmed that Directory Harvesting will work on the SMTP session level however we will include the DNSBL features if we manage to fit it in for the release.

Unfortunately at this point in time I cannot commit to having the DNSBL on the SMTP session as it is still too early.



shield -> RE: GFI MailEssentials & Feature Requests (28.Mar.2008 6:57:31 AM)

Hello David,
Thank you for the positive information. Speaking about the ME 14 - we are still using version 12, what about version 13? Is it some internal build, which will remain unpublished?



remushociota -> RE: GFI MailEssentials & Feature Requests (28.Mar.2008 10:21:06 AM)

Or just the old superstition around number 13 :)



Sven Berger -> RE: GFI MailEssentials & Feature Requests (31.Mar.2008 5:50:09 AM)

Correct!  [:)]



bsimpsonky -> RE: GFI MailEssentials & Feature Requests (31.Mar.2008 8:14:30 AM)

As the administrator of our company Network and a Reseller of GFI Products there are some features that need to be considered in the next update:

1. Some of the issues with SPAM getting through can be avoided if the Whitelist and the Blacklist was automatically alphabetized.  Along those same lines, the program should not allow duplicate entries.

2.  Some of the technical bulletins should become updates to the program.  For instance, you shouldn't have to enter your domains in the Blacklist to keep them from being spoofed.  The program already knows your domains.  It should automatically handle this. The same is true for email addresses in the whitelist.  If this causes a problem with SPAM, then internal domains should be restricted from entry.  You may come back and say, "What if you want to block an internal email address?".  My reply to that is remove it from the list of emailboxes.

3.  The Bayesian filter is suppose to be effective in learning what is SPAM and what is not.  It would be nice if it evaluated your system to also determine the best order of the filters for your environment.

4. There needs to be a way to have user specific filters.  For instance, some people who use eBay, should get email from ebay while others who don't can block it. At the risk of over simplifying, a complicated process, the program is getting feedback in the form of Legitimate/Whitelists from those that want the email and SPAM/Blacklist from those that don't.  What currently happens is one day your email comes through and another it is SPAM.



wrabbit -> RE: GFI MailEssentials & Feature Requests (31.Mar.2008 10:10:37 AM)

Thanks for starting this thread.  It has been a long held frustration that we make requests, we're told they're added to the request list but then nothing comes of them.  Or you encounter a something that you know that a small change would make a vast improvement - and on searching the forums you find others have made similar requests months (and sometimes years) ago.

I've had a look at ideas.saleforce.com and it seems a good system.  The one thing I don't know if it can do is ensure that duplicate ideas aren't added.  You would need to ensure that before someone posts a new request that they search existing requests - or on submitting a new request they are prompted to check out similar requests already added and decide if their idea is suitably novel.

You would also need to review the comments on each request as the bare bones of the initial request may be built on by other contributions to improve it's usefulness - and obviously feedback.

With regard to what I personally need to see GFI delivery, here's my priorities:

1) Full/improved LDAP integration for disclaimers.  I don't want to have to get my users to setup their own signatures and trust them to do it correctly.  I should be able to do it centrally, pulling the DDI and job title from active directory.  The limited name and e-mail doesn't cut it - just look at your own signatures in the forum.

2) Improved header filtering.  Allow us to build header based filters, possibly using RegEx expressions.  I don't think I've every received a legitimate e-mail sent via The Bat!.  Being able to build header filters based on the client, or attachment names often helps when there's a new wave of specific spam.  I'd also like to see the language blocks broken out from the header filtering.  If an e-mail is in most foreign character sets it's spam.  End of story.  I just want to delete it.  Unfortunately I can't do that to the headers check filter due to potential false positives from some of the other checks eg maximum mime numbers, embedded gifs.

3) 2 level keyword checking.  This is purely to ease my admin and keep my users happier.  Most spam we filter to a central spam trap for review and deletion.  However if I had 2 level keywords I could set the most obvious words and combinations to auto delete eg viagra, cialis, rolex, pharmacy etc.  The second tier I could simply either forward or even tag - and it's up to the user to deal with eg affiliate, free etc.  The keywords should be easier to administer/search too.  At the moment I have to export them, search the text file to see if a certain keyword already exists, then add or edit it.

4) Improved methods for dealing with backscatter NDR spam.  We're getting swamped with this at several sites and the current solutions are cutting it.  If I'm going to convince companies to upgrade to v14 they need to know that the 100s of mails a day they're getting via NDRs are going to stop.

We work in software development and we're well aware that often the best ideas come from our users - they're the ones using the software and dealing with things at the coalface.  They often need a solution to things that we would never have thought of or a better way of implementing an existing idea.  We're happy to be used - so use us!



rcon -> RE: GFI MailEssentials & Feature Requests (2.Apr.2008 7:13:27 AM)

 
I discussed here about ME12 on standalone x64 SMTP relay. New build is out with no luck. :(
Though product is called GFI MailEssentials for Exchange/SMTP (in install wizard too) x64 version is dedicated to Exchange only!



HPC_User -> RE: GFI MailEssentials & Feature Requests (5.Apr.2008 3:01:35 PM)

I second the request for x64 version of Mail Essentials 12/SMTP - I've tried installing each of the 32 and 64 bit versions on W2k3 SP2 x64 (with NO exchange) and neither will install - do we have any expectations yet when we can get a 64 bit version of Mail Essentials?

Thanks,



Imaginos -> RE: GFI MailEssentials & Feature Requests (5.Apr.2008 7:41:17 PM)

With you gents on the x64 front.  I can't do a thing with it on an x64 Server2008 w/Exchange 2007.



liljon -> RE: GFI MailEssentials & Feature Requests (6.Apr.2008 9:25:34 AM)

How about "Time of day filtering"? - heavier weighting based on Time of day/day of week.

- User selectable periods
- User created list of domains of local ISPs (would allow out-of-hours emails from local clients/customers to be unaffected by this filter)

Would help knock out some more of that "after-hours spam" that's currently making
it through.



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