ENTER THE ONLINE ENHANCEMENT REQUEST TOOL NOW - You'll see some from Quest's Technology SIG, one of our pilot program groups, that have been pre-populated for the entire community to review. Go ahead and submit your ideas today!

Before you get started - Download Quest's how-to for our online tool, and read through the FAQ below to get all your initial questions answered.

What is the Enhancement Request Process?

The program outlines a process that gives Quest's community a way to submit and discuss their ideas and proposals for enhancement request to the Oracle products they use. It involves Quest's affiliated special interest (SIG), industry (IUG) and product (PUG) user groups and their Oracle points of contact who will be active in helping our affiliated groups move potential requests through the process.

What's so special about Quest's process?
Everything, really. Customers just like you worked directly with Oracle representatives to define the process and how it should work – that buy-in alone guarantees your requests are going to carry more weight than anywhere else. The way we collect, prioritize and submit the requests to Oracle is a direct result of their feedback on how it's easiest for them to accept.

When a user submits an enhancement request, it's going to eventually get prioritized by Quest's membership – that’s where you come in. Our members telling Oracle what's most important to them is the only way to guarantee your priorities and Oracle's become more closely aligned. And it's easier to get your ideas heard if you've got the support of your fellow customers.

We piloted the entire process with a select group of our most active volunteers – so we know it works. Yet another reason we're going to be making a difference in the products that end up at your organization. 

Finally, our process ties in with Oracle's Applications Unlimited strategy. Because Oracle has made a commitment that there will be continued releases of many existing product lines, it's important for customers to be involved in that process. Find out more about Applications Unlimited.

Key participants in our enhancement request process are:

• Enhancement champions - the people who submit the requests or feel passionately about them.
• Quest's special interest, product and industry users groups
• Customers
• Oracle's points of contact, who are each assigned a SIG, PUG or IUG
• Oracle's development teams

It's important to keep in mind that Quest's enhancement process isn't the only way to submit your ideas. You can still get your ideas heard by Oracle through participation in focus groups, by contacting Global Support, and using the traditional services offered by Metalink and Customer Connection. 

How does it work? Download a PDF of the process diagram below. 

1. Enhancement requests can be submitted online using the online tool by any customer in the Quest community – members and subscribers.

2. When a customer submits his or her request, he/she will assign it to one of Quest’s SIGs, IUGs or PUGs, depending on which one(s) he/she is familiar with or which one(s) he/she believes it is most appropriate for.

3. Each SIG, IUG or PUG has a committee of leaders who will review on a frequent and ongoing basis all the requests submitted to them, with the help of their Oracle point of contact. It will be the responsibility of this committee to review the request, confirm its status as a true product enhancement, check that it is not already in the system, and follow up with the submitter in the event that no further information is needed. After committee review, and provided the request has passed, the users group leaders will open the request to Quest members for prioritizing.

4. Quest members will have the chance to review the request and give it a priority based on a one-to-five scale. At the same time, the entire user community (including Quest's subscribers) will have the chance to review the request and discuss its merits in an open forum style.

5. After review and prioritization, the review committee will go back to the request. If the request has garnered enough support from Quest membership, the committee will begin the process of formally passing it along to Oracle.

6. The customer who submitted the request or another customer who has become a "champion" for the request is asked by the committee to put together a final white paper for the request, detailing some information such as the business case for the request and its support from the community.

7. Once that paper is complete, it is passed along to Oracle for review. This is the formal submission of the request for consideration and possible inclusion into future product releases.

8. The committee continues to follow the request through updates from its Oracle point of contact, and updates any status changes online.

9. Users will be able to follow the request through status updates, letting them know if and when the request is considered for future product development.

How can I participate?

First and foremost, you can submit requests. Your valuable ideas are going to drive Oracle's participation. Secondly, users can view requests that have been opened for Quest members to prioritize. As a request is opened for prioritization, any Quest member or subscriber can "subscribe" to that request to follow its progress through the entire system, and participate in discussion on the validity of the request in forums for each individual request online. If you're a Quest customer member, you will have the additional privilege of prioritizing the requests -- ranking them according to what's most important to you for Oracle to see. Why members only? It's a privilege for active participation in Quest, and a security measure in dealing with potential ideas to be included in future Oracle product releases.

Finally, another great way of being involved is to get active in your SIG, IUG or PUG. They're easy to join -- after you've logged in to QuestDirect, simply select one from our online list, and when you get to their individual page, hit the "Subscribe to..." button the right side of the page. This will put you on their announcement list, and give you the ability to connect with the committees from each group who will be reviewing each request submission.

Are issues tied to specific development cycles? How much support does an issue need before it's passed along to Oracle?

Issues are not tied to specific development cycles. Getting things to Oracle in a timely manner is where the Oracle points of contact for each user group will be invaluable. Because we'll be accepting enhancements on an ongoing basis, and because members will be prioritizing them on an ongoing basis, it's important for us not to halt the process and to continually feed them to Oracle.

There's no set limit or value we can place on an enhancement's support -- each SIG, IUG and PUG's leadership will work closely with their Oracle liaisons to pass along popular requests when Oracle needs them. That's why it's so important that users provide their feedback in the discussion forums for each enhancement, and that our members prioritize as many as they can, so they'll be ready when Oracle is.

If my company has a corporate membership, does that mean we each have a say?
Essentially, yes. Each individual person listed as a Quest member has the ability to prioritize requests, whether they're individual members or part of a corporate membership. If you're on a corporate membership, all ten people from your company have the ability to individually prioritize requests.

How do we know Oracle is participating?

Oracle's points of contact are the most active Oracle participants in the process. Without their feedback, our SIGs, IUGs and PUGs will have more of a challenge evaluating enhancements to open for prioritization. Because of this important step, Oracle has assigned a point of contact to each of those groups, and we'll be monitoring their progress and activity to help ensure we have active participation each point along the way.