This Db2 for z/OS News from the Lab blog entry was originally published on 2018-12-10.

By Rakshith Halevoor Prabhachand and Janet Figone

Your input and ideas, formalized via requests for enhancements (RFEs), are extremely valuable to the Db2 for z/OS team. This announcement describes the new tool that we'll use to collaborate on those suggestions.

If you've ever submitted an RFE to the Db2 for z/OS Development team or have ever had the experience of checking the status of an RFE, you're likely familiar with the RFE tool on IBM developerWorks. For the past six years, this has been the interface that we've relied on to gather your RFEs and to track their status. This is about to change. We were notified very recently that, as part of a movement to standardize tooling across IBM, RFE on developerWorks is being replaced by a new tool: the IBM Analytics Ideas portal powered by Aha!. Therefore, later this week we'll be migrating all of your open RFEs to this new tool, at which point RFEs will be referred to as "ideas."

Moving to this portal aligns us with the rest of IBM Data and AI by making all offering information available in a single repository. This new tool also offers best of breed product roadmap capabilities, which we'll be exploring soon after we finish migrating your open RFEs.

Here's the timeline for the migration:

• On Tuesday, December 11th, at 10:00 AM PST, IBM will set the Db2 for z/OS product in developerWorks/RFE to read-only. You'll no longer be able to open a new RFE or edit an existing RFE (i.e., add a comment) on developerWorks/RFE after this time. You will, however, be able to view them. Additionally, we'd prefer that you not update any existing RFEs on developerWorks from this point forward so that the RFE data is as current as possible at the time of migration.
• On Wednesday, December 12th, IBM will migrate all open RFEs from developerWorks/RFE to the IBM Analytics Ideas portal. However, the following sensitive information will not be migrated:
  • RFE submitter names and email addresses. All submitter names will default to "anonymous."
  • Individual voter names and email addresses. Instead, just the "total number of votes cast" will be migrated.
• We anticipate the migration and testing to be completed by December 13th, at which time you'll be able to open, edit, and view ideas on the IBM Analytics Ideas portal. For historical purposes, you'll still be able to view RFEs on developerWorks for a period of time.

And here's how you'll go about accessing the IBM Data and AI Ideas portal and creating a new idea:

1. Register your email address with the portal, which you can do by completing the instructions at the following page: https://ibm-data-and-ai.ideas.aha.io/portal_users/new.
2. After you've registered and after the migration is complete, you'll log in to the portal at https://ibm-data-and-ai.ideas.aha.io/.
3. To open a new idea in the IBM Data and AI Ideas portal, click Add a new idea and select Db2 for z/OS as the product. Then, enter the details for your idea. By default, all new ideas will be public, so don't include any confidential information.
4. When you're done, click Submit Structured Idea.

To locate existing RFEs in the Ideas portal, you can search for the original RFE number in the format nnnnnn, or you can use the FILTER BY CATEGORY > Db2 for z/OS option in the left navigation pane to display all open Db2 for z/OS ideas.

In addition to the term "RFE" being replaced by "idea," the names of several status labels have changed. The following table shows which status labels are identical and which have changed:

Thanks in advance for your patience during this transition. If you have questions about the migration or the new tool, you can send them to db2zinfo@us.ibm.com.

Rakshith Halevoor Prabhachand is the Db2 for z/OS offering manager at the IBM Silicon Valley Laboratory, and Janet Figone is a release manager for Db2 for z/OS also at the IBM Silicon Valley Laboratory.