It seems that the industry standard behind feature requests is opaque at best. We at Thunderbird wish to be as transparent as possible, so we wanted to give you a clear view of how we review, arbitrate, and build the ideas that are submitted.
First, here is a basic flowchart of the overall process for each idea as moderated by the Thunderbird Support team:
Here is a detailed guide of each status shown above with additional details and timeframes:
New idea
An initial triage queue.
Moderators view the submission to make sure it is on-topic and not a duplicate request or a feature already in progress. If it’s a duplicate, they will merge your idea into the existing one and communicate when that has been done. If the submission is unique and good to go, they give the item an “Open for Discussion” status to continue or an “Off-Topic” status if this board isn’t the correct spot for the idea.
Reviewed daily.
Open for discussion
We want to see what the community thinks by voting and chiming in!
This is the status that moderators will initially use for the majority of submitted ideas - we want to set aside our “insider” bias to allow input from the broader community before we bring anything to our product teams. Please upvote this item if you are interested and discuss its impact in the comments! Based on activity, this idea will be open for no longer than 6 to 12 months before being moved to a different status.
Reviewed quarterly, looking at the top 5-10 most upvoted ideas to keep our process scalable. If an item is trending heavily, we may consider it more quickly.
Exploring the idea
We really like this! We’re figuring out how it could fit. Expect a firm yes or no within the year.
Our product teams will consider, research, or even experiment with this idea, but there is no ETA given. We expect to make a final decision about this item within the next 12 months after this status is assigned. We want to be fully transparent - If we end up deciding to move this idea to "No for Now," we will share a very clear explanation of why that ended up being the case.
Reviewed annually, looking at the top 5-10 most upvoted ideas.
Great idea; not yet
We agree this is a fit, but our queue is full at the moment.
Ideas could stay in this status for longer than 12 months while we work on more popular items that were already approved. We do take into account which ideas have the most interest from the community, so get those upvotes!
Reviewed quarterly, looking at the top 5-10 most upvoted ideas.
On the roadmap
It’s a commitment. We’ve added it to GitHub and plan to start building within 12 months.
It’s time to get excited and engaged! The GitHub issue is linked in the idea so you can follow along. The initial work from our product teams will soon begin.
In flight
Our engineers are officially writing the code right now!
The feature or improvement is underway. We will update the idea if we are taking more time than expected or if we get stuck along the way for whatever reason.
Landed!
It’s ready for you to use! Go ahead and take it for a spin.
When the feature or improvement is live, an automated sync from GitHub will update the idea with this status.
No for now
This idea doesn't fit our current vision or roadmap.
We’ve examined this item closely and had an internal discussion about it. We do not plan to work on it in the foreseeable future.
Reviewed annually.
Off-topic
This board isn’t the right place for the idea.
This item is for the desktop, Android, or iOS app, or it’s better seen by a different team. While it’s not a fit here, we will point you in the right direction! After we have replied, we will lock these ideas (including the comments) to avoid confusion.