Our Product Roadmap and how to submit ideas and improvements

If you have an idea for a new feature or a way to improve an existing one, we’d love to hear it. There are two ways you can share it with us:

• Submit your product idea directly in Arbor - Head to Help & Learn with Arbor in the left-hand menu > Share product idea to tell us how an existing feature could be improved, or share an idea for a new way that Arbor could save you time. Schools and trusts can submit ideas from the School and MAT MIS. Support Partners can submit ideas from their Arbor demo sites.
• Customer Satisfaction Survey - You can see full details on these here: Surveys from Arbor

We run a termly roadmap planning process. Once a term we analyse the ideas our customers have submitted and look for patterns and themes to give us an understanding of the features that would have the most impact for our customers.

Some of the popular ideas are smaller in scope and can be released quickly, while others feed into our process for considering larger innovations, which may take several terms to complete. Any ideas we aren't able to prioritise are kept in a backlog to be re-considered in the next termly roadmap planning cycle.

Because we get a lot of product feedback and suggestions, we're not able to update you individually as to whether we're working on your suggestion. 

Look out for your customer newsletter via email each month, which includes a roundup of all the features we’ve added or improved. You can also bookmarks our Change Log.

1. Open Arbor and navigate to the sidebar.
2. Click on ‘Help & Learn with Arbor’, then select ‘Share Product Idea’.

A pop-up will appear with two options:

• Improve an existing feature – Let us know how we can improve a feature or tool already in Arbor.
• Suggest a new feature – Share an idea for a new tool or functionality that would save you time.

Need immediate help instead? Tap ‘Help Centre’ to explore support options.

Once you choose an option, you’ll see a short form with four fields and an optional checkbox:

• Summary of your idea – A one-liner describing your suggestion. If possible, mention the part of Arbor it relates to.
• Description – Be as detailed as possible. Explain the reasoning behind your idea and the problem it would solve.
• Your job title – This helps us understand your perspective and needs.
• Your email – So we can follow up if needed.
• Include environment data (optional) – Checking this box allows Arbor to automatically pull relevant details (like what page of the MIS you're on), and gives us really helpful context for your idea. 

After submitting your idea, a confirmation message will appear for five seconds. Our team reviews all submissions, and your feedback is invaluable in shaping the future of Arbor.

Every term you’ll receive a quick survey from us giving you the opportunity to let us know how Arbor is impacting your day-to-day. We gather this data from all our schools to help us measure the impact we’re having more widely. 

You can see full details on these here: Surveys from Arbor

The Arbor Support Team won't be able to submit feedback on your behalf. We encourage users to submit their own feedback using one of the methods outlined above to ensure that we know exactly what you need and why.  

Because we get a lot of product feedback and suggestions, we're not able to update you individually as to whether we're working on your suggestion or whether it has been released.

Before you get in contact with us, please ask yourself these questions:

1. Have you searched or looked at the How-tos in the Help Centre to see if what you’d like to do is already possible, perhaps in a different way than in your previous MIS?
2. Have you posted in Arbor HQ to ask other schools how they manage this in Arbor?
3. Has your school booked training to learn how to tailor Arbor to your needs?

If something in Arbor is not working as it’s supposed to, please report this using the Contact Us form at the top of the page.