What features would you like to see in the next release of VSM?

[jfiranzi]

Hello all,

While discussing features requests for VSM 7.(next) with members of TAC and the BU, it dawned on me that we are missing a fantastic opportunity here by not asking our partners and customers what is on your wish list of "I really wish VSM 7 had this cool feature."  Yes, Cisco like many companies does invite partners and customers to focus group events to discuss what the company and product is doing right and where we could improve, but it would be a shame to miss asking the active community here on the CSC forums - so here's your chance.

If you have an idea how we can improve the product, please reply to this thread and post your suggestions.  Tell us what features you love, which ones you hate, how we can improve those features which already exist, and then give us your best pie in the sky wish list of, "Gee, if only it could do this!"

I promise you that this thread will be read by and discussed by TAC engineers and BU marketing and development - and I will go a step further and promise to champion those improvements which seem reachable within the upcoming product development cycle and see how far we can push this product.

I hope to hear from you,

Jim Firanzi              

[Sergey Muravjev]

Hi,

In my opinion are:

1. Display box around the image in which the motion detection place occurred.

2. VSOM Redundancy, like VSM component.

3. Trackbol and keyboard full support like Axis T8310 or other. Joystick is not enough.

[Jason Rossi]

1) I echo redundant VSOM would be nice.

2) Ability to view events which have occurred (or at least run an event query similar to 6.x) via VSOM

3) Drivers for cameras and encoders supported in 6.x. We are extremely happy with VSM 7, and just like has been stated almost universally in this forum "it is night and day compared to 6.x". But I really miss the rich support 6.x had for mainstream cameras. Cameras last a really long time, much longer in fact than a lot of other technology. We need to be able to protect that investment by being able to use in 7.x what we were using in 6.x (and I'll happily pay the license fee).

I would add IPICS support but I think that lives in a different BU.

Thanks for asking for the feedback Jim!

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[Scott Donahue]

Hi,

I appreciate your willingness to listen to those of us using the system on a daily basis and... you asked so here is a few of my observations since upgrading to version 7.0, which I will add is a HUGE improvement over 6.3.2.

1. Make it easier to save a clip of a defined point of time.  Currently very confusing for non-technical people, this is most of my end users, to figure out how to create a clip.  Too many steps and using Shift or Ctrl + Click just to get to the Date and Time Selector even though a bookmark was already used (unnecessary step in my opinion).  Please find a way to simplify this entire process as it is something that is used A LOT.

2. Allow more than just 4 cameras to be viewed at a time in VSOM and easier to navigate the views.

3. Add a graphic map for location of cameras in VSOM.  Yes I know it's available in SASD but most of our users are using VSOM and a map is a much quicker way to find a camera in question when in a hurry especially if you are looking through hundreds of cameras.

4. Speaking of SASD and the Map Centric Workspace, please update the camera icons to make it more obvious as to the direction the camera is pointing.  Currently the icon is really small and the if you have more than one camera near each other the text description of the camera gets blocked out by other camera text.  Give the ability to move, hide, or rename text overlay.  Also there is no way to distinguish a PTZ camera from a fixed camera based on the icon.

5. When clicking double clicking on a camera from the map you can view that camera and even resize the window but you can only view one camera.  Would like to be able to open more than one camera at a time from the map view.  If you right click it will give a .jpg image but if you do that with more than one camera near another you cannot move the popup box so it just covers over the previous opened image.

6. When using a PTZ camera have a way to use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out along with or in place of having to hold down the Shift key.

7. Integrate VSOM/SASD with CPAM.

8. Support more browsers and browser versions, preferably Chrome.

9. Mobile version for both Apple and Android phones and tablets, preferably Android which is what 90% of our users has.

Thanks,

Scott

[Vance Krier]

Hey Scott,

All great points.  I did want to give you a quick heads up regarding #2, requesting more than 4 cameras per view in VSOM.  This is actually available in 7.0.1 when using 64bit IE.

Cheers!

Vance

[Scott Donahue]

Vance,

Great to hear, will be upgrading to 7.0.1 next month when the schools are out for summer vacation. 

One other feature that would be nice to have in SASD that is in VSOM is thumbnail search so you wouln't have to switch to VSOM when needed to look over hours of video.

Thanks,

Scott

[jfiranzi]

Thank you for pointing this feature out, Vance.  I love it when the support community comes together like this.

Keep up the great work,

Jim

[Scott Olsen]

1) Ability to move / customize OSD settings on feeds.  Many times VSOMs OSD stomps all over the cameras OSD.

2) More granular permissions regarding archive access. 

I know this is probably a niche case, but we have clients where operators should only be allowed to review a fixed retention period of video (say -1hr as an example), without the ability to go weeks or months back into an archive.

I also agree with every other request listed in this thread thus far.  Especially;

"

Make  it easier to save a clip of a defined point of time.  Currently very  confusing for non-technical people, this is most of my end users, to  figure out how to create a clip.  Too many steps and using Shift or Ctrl  + Click just to get to the Date and Time Selector even though a  bookmark was already used (unnecessary step in my opinion).  Please find  a way to simplify this entire process as it is something that is used A  LOT.

"

This was the one thing in VSM 7 that's left a bad taste in my mouth so far.

I'm sure I'll think of other things and I'll be coming back to this thread most likely :-P

[cjhollenbeck2010]

Live feedback from the camera to the VSM motion detection page as to the amount of motion sensitivity the camera is seeing. This will help dial in motion detection settings faster.

The ability to change the port to which email gets sent from VSM. We have some customers who use gmail for their districts I believe gmail is not port 25.

If motion detection is selected on the templates page then only the motion storage value should be allowed to changed. If the continuous recording selection is chosen then that storage value should only be allowed to be changed. Grey out the values that shouldn't be available respectively.

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[Vance Krier]

1. Need some of the old event engine back. The ability to fire email notifications based on analytic or motion events. The ability to trigger multiple actions, such as PTZ move actions from an input or trigger not associated with that camera. I occasionally use PIR motion detectors connected to cameras on a different building that might trigger a ptz to move to cover the area where the motion was triggered, etc.

2. I 2nd, 3rd, and 4th that the clipping method is bad. This needs to be fixed asap. I find myself tap dancing and avoiding demo'ing that functionality now where it was so easy in 6.x.

3. The mouse based current ptz controls are much better than 6.x. I would love to see the ability to also draw a square over an object (back of a car in a parking lot, for instance) and have the camera zoom to that area. With the mouse, at least for me, this takes severa iterations of zoom, pan, zoom, pan, etc.

4. I think this is already coming, but the ability to move or dynamically allocate new/expanded storage to existing archives would be very helpful.

5. Mobile Clients!! ...not IPICS...

6. Windows 8 support

I'm sure there are others, but those are top of mind for me.

Thanks!

Vance

[jfiranzi]

Wow, thank you all for some great feedback!  I have been away for a week, and it's nice to see many of the more active members of this community contribute.

If I can find the bandwidth,  I would like to host a partner and end customer focal group meeting (possibly late June) to discuss feature requests and bug fix priority before the next execute commit cycle is reached for VSM beyond 7.2.  If any our contributors are interested, please post and you will receive a webex invite when time to finalize requests for the next release cycle.

Thank you for your participation!

Jim

[Scott Donahue]

Hi Jim,

Please include me on the webex invite.

Thanks,

Scott

[jfiranzi]

Thank you, Scott.  Consider yourself added.

Jim

[Vance Krier]

Please count me in as well.

And ditto on Scott's feature request of thumbnail search in SASD.  I definitely want that as well...

Thanks!

Vance

[jfiranzi]

You are quite welcome, and I appreciate your willingness to participate.

Added!

Jim