RSS feed for Service Packs and Patches is MIA

BryanKelley · ‎02-24-2016

Some time during last week (2/15/16), the RSS feed that announced updates to the service packs and patches to software was removed or moved elsewhere. The old RSS URL is 'http://rss.esri.com/support/patchesandservicepacks. There was a RSS icon on the service pack and patches webpage on the right-hand side of the screen (see screen shot). This older blog article described the steps to subscribe to the feed 'https://blogs.esri.com/esri/supportcenter/2012/07/13/subscribing-to-an-rss-feed-for-patches-and-serv....
Did anyone else experience this?

JoshuaBixby · ‎05-10-2016

This transition is being bungled, but I can't say I am surprised seeing how the transition to My Esri or just about any other "new and improved" Esri administrative site has gone in the past year or two. But we shouldn't worry, they will get all the kinks out just in time to replace it by something else so we get to start over yet again.

Sadly, I think Esri is abandoning RSS for patch and service pack notification. As Joseph Mayfield stated, they are moving to a "new subscription system." Why have a publically available RSS feed when you can smother the information through extra process and subscriptions?

It gets worse, the subscription system appears to be bogged down in minutia. I found the "Subscribe" button after I followed some Download links. I clicked it and appeared to get subscribed, although I have no confirmation of that subscription and am not sure if I will ever get a notification from subscribing. Suspending disbelief and assuming I will eventually get a notification, it appears my subscription was only to Desktop > ArcGIS for Desktop > ArcGIS for Desktop > 10.4. If I want to subscribe to Desktop > ArcGIS for Desktop > ArcGIS for Desktop > 10.3.x or Desktop > ArcGIS for Desktop > ArcGIS Pro > 1.1.1 (yes, 1.1 is separate from 1.1.1 or 1.2), I need to hit the "Subscribe" button again. Marvelous, absolutely marvelous. I can't wait to subscribe to dozens or hundreds of subscriptions instead of a single RSS feed.

Who knows, maybe the site is simply broken and my one subscription covers multiple products but it just appears not to. I think in this case, I will hope for a broken site instead of believing Esri really wants subscriptions to be available only at such a fine level.

tempJosephMayfield · ‎05-10-2016

Joshua Bixby David Coley Bryan Kelley

Thanks for your feedback on the patch and software updates notifications. I understand that this is important functionality that is needed on the site, and we are working to build a solution that meets these requirements. The subscription service for the beta version of the new Support site is still being refined. We are currently updating the backend process and expect to roll out the improvements in the next few days. When it is launched, the new subscription service will be introduced and explained on the Support Blog.

AndrewWilson99 · ‎05-18-2016

Regarding no longer supporting RSS and replacing it with a subscription service with kinks: I am not really excited with having to have yet another point solution hanging on to the periphery of things once again presented as the "new and better way".