Overview

IBM has had a process for years to accept product enhancement suggestions from their customers. It was called a Request for Enhancement or RFE and had to be submitted by your friendly IBMer. With the advent of the web IBM created a website where customers could directly submit requirements. Then recently they changed the process, while renaming it, to the IBM Ideas Portal.

Since the 1970's the major IBM user groups have provided a way to submit requirements using the groups' requirement process. This resulted in many IBM product announcement letters containing a list of satisfied requirements.

Today the user group requirement process has effectively ceased to exist, mostly (IMHO) because it is so easy for the customer to use the ideas.ibm.com site to enter their product enhancement suggestions.

Note that the Ideas portal is just the starting place. It is where you enter your product suggestion, where you can find other ideas for particular products, and vote for Ideas. You can also add your comments to existing requirements if you care to add additional justification for the developers to consider when reviewing the Idea.

It is NOT the place to report product or documentation issues. Product issues are opened as IBM Cases and documentation issues, formerly called Reader Comment Forms (RCF), are submitted from the web using the thumbs up/down icons. Both are outside the scope of this article.

To get started you need to have a userid on the IBM portal. Then you need to determine how you wish to authenticate - you can use an Authenticator App, the IBM Verify app, or e-mail.

Creating an Idea

Why submit a product enhancement Idea to IBM? The answer is because your Idea may improve the IBM product, providing a feature or function that will reduce costs, improve productivity, improve some process, or just make it easier to use the product. Typically this is prompted by your use of the product where you encounter a deficiency.

For all these reasons, and more, it is worth taking a few minutes of your day to submit an IBM Idea.

Be sure to provide an explanation of the Idea and why it is important for IBM to deliver it. Feel free to provide a proposed solution if you have one.

And IBM does listen - sometimes. An Idea can be tagged by IBM as:

• Delivered
• Functionality already exists
• Future consideration
• Not under consideration
• Planned for future release
• Submitted
• Under review

Of course IBM reserves the right to change an Ideas' status at any time up to when it is delivered, and that means that a Not under consideration could change to delivered in the blink of an eye (just don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen - but it could).

Don't be discouraged if your Idea is not accepted immediately. IBM has their internal processes and different teams work on different schedules. If your Idea fits something already in the plan then you're a genius and your Idea will be delivered sooner, or it may take a few years, or more, before you see it. That may sound discouraging but I've seen RFE's (now Ideas) that were in an under consideration status for years suddenly appear in an announcement letter.