- Apr 30, 2012
- 2
- 1
- First Name
- Steve
Yes, our phone lines were maxed out there for a while. We have a huge number of incoming phone lines, and last week every one was consumed by a dealer or reseller calling us. If you have trouble with the phone, either try calling again or send an e-mail. We're doing our best to keep up with you, and our Client Services staff has been staying here until the wee hours of the morning to reply to every e-mail we get.Has anyone else been able to get ahold of Home Net Today. Phone keeps saying not in service? Our stuff is all messed up...
Most of our devs and client services people were pulling 12- and 14- and 16-hour days last week. I was working until 11:30 on Saturday night fixing bugs in the export system. We had dozens of people who worked through the weekend. We even had one developer (one of the IOL2GO guys) who literally fell asleep at his keyboard on Saturday after working all night Friday night and all day Saturday. So we really are working on it; we're a little more normal here now, but nobody's resting until the major issues are all resolved.They do have everyone working on it possible,
I respectfully disagree; our management made some mistakes a few years ago at the start of the IOL 2 project, but they've done very well preparing this last year. IOL 2 is a big change, the biggest change in HomeNet's history, and the fact that things are starting to get back to normal so soon for many of you is proof of that. This launch was painful for all of us --- several of our wives haven't seen us in weeks --- but I think this launch was about as smooth as it could have been, given what it was.HomeNet IOL has been an absolute disaster! Whomever is running the show at HomeNet should be fired.
If you're still having problems --- any kind of problems --- believe me that we want to know about them. Call Client Services and get tickets filed so those tickets get to us here in development so we can fix it! We have a lot of tickets now, but that won't always be the case, and no defect is so small that it's not worthy of attention. If you're really really stuck, ask me with a private message here or a note on Twitter, and I'll see what I can do for you.We have had absolutely zero inventory online for about 4 days. We've built workarounds and links to our inventory on other sites twice and each time HomeNet releases a "fix" that doesn't work. They have no answers or solutions. Our website vendor has no answers or solutions.
I was personally involved with fixing the Cobalt export over the last few days. Is it working for you now?I have been in contact with Homenet and Cobalt, our web site provider. Our sites have not been updated since the 22nd of April.
That definitely sounds like a bug. I recall one of our QA people bumping into something about that recently, but I'm not sure what came of that. Did you call Client Services and get a ticket filed? Our bugfix process requires a formal ticket filed somewhere so we can track bugs and requests and make sure the work winds up on the right dev's desk, so if you didn't file a ticket, please call Client Services and get one filed.Homenet IOL shows that you can move vehicles between rooftops. I tried it and lost the photos, vehicle style and some copy data that I had posted. BEWARE!
Not sure what you're asking, but we did do focus groups with dealers, resellers, and some of our partners. We didn't do as many focus groups as we wanted to, but we didn't ignore you guys either. I believe the business folks want to do more focus groups in the coming months.Was there a dealer council involved?
Why didn't they run a mirror and let 20-50 dealer/resellers interact with the data prior to turning it on.
The beta-test question is one of the questions we've gotten asked the most. And, well, we wanted to --- believe me, I would have killed to be able to have a good beta program --- but for technical reasons, it was nearly impossible. We did run a beta period with some of our users where we could, starting back around last June, and an expanded beta in August.Even though it was being worked on for years there wasn't any sort of beta testing from dealers.
We did it because IOL 1 had reached the end of its lifespan. IOL 1 was originally a really simple product, designed for simple needs. We'd grown IOL 1 beyond the point where any of our developers thought it was possible to grow it, but there remained hard technical limitations in its original design that we knew could never be overcome, limitations that prevented us from doing things you guys wanted us to do. Why couldn't you sort by style matches on the list page? IOL 1 was too limited for us to be able to find a way to make that work. Why couldn't you have this feature, or this bugfix? The design just couldn't do it. You can add as many motors and fenders as you want to a bicycle, but no matter how far you go with those upgrades, you'll never turn that bicycle into a Porsche.I'm running around with my head cut off muttering "...it's not going to sell more cars, why did you do this?"
If you have any further trouble, keep making sure we know about it. We all won't rest until the phone calls stop coming in.I am happy to say that, as of this am, my inventory is looking very good. Wow, I hope this is the end of that storm.
Love the new banner ads..
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HomeNet is the Industry Leader and will remain the Industry Leader. This will be proven by IOL2 which will exceed expectations and regain its dominance in the market. I have been utilizing IOL1 for 6 years and am amazed by the power of IOL2.