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<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">To the EnergyPlus and OpenStudio user communities,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">For the past two and a half years, DOE has been using a service called UserVoice to collect ideas on how to improve the EnergyPlus energy
modeling engine. <a href="https://energyplus.uservoice.com/">https://energyplus.uservoice.com/</a> has been available through the
<a href="https://energyplus.net/">https://energyplus.net/</a> Feedback tab. The EnergyPlus development team has received over 100 enhancement suggestions through this service and has also posted internally generated suggestions to collect feedback. UserVoice
voting feature has been used to help prioritize new feature development. The OpenStudio development team has used UserVoice in a similar way.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">Although UserVoice has been useful in EnergyPlus and OpenStudio development planning, lack of integration with GitHub—the hosting and version
management service used by both projects—has resulted in awkward manual copying of information from UserVoice to GitHub and back. With some recent updates to GitHub itself, we feel it is time to consolidate and streamline the communication channels for these
projects.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="mso-margin-top-alt:20.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;margin-left:0in">
<span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">GitHub Issues and Reactions</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">GitHub is a popular environment for software projects, especially open-source ones. Targeted at developers, GitHub is accessible to everyone
and increasingly caters to users. One useful and GitHub feature is <b>Issues</b> which is used to collect, sort, assign, and track bug reports. Here is this morning’s snapshot of the EnergyPlus GitHub Issues page
<a href="https://github.com/nrel/energyplus/issues/">https://github.com/nrel/energyplus/issues/</a>.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"><img border="0" width="504" height="293" id="Picture_x0020_3" src="cid:image004.png@01D3AFC0.67AD7940"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">Issues can also be used to discuss and track new feature requests in addition to bugs. Unbeknownst to you, or perhaps beknownst to you
<i>[Ed: how can there possibly be an unbeknownst without a beknownst?]</i>, the EnergyPlus and OpenStudio teams have been replicating UserVoice suggestions as GitHub Issues so they can track all of their tasks in one central location.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">When you click on an Issue, you are taken to a page that contains a description, code examples, and ensuing discussion. Here is the page
for the first issue in the list. The picture highlights one of GitHub’s new features,
<b>Reactions</b>, which allows users to register their feelings with … of course … an emoji.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"><img border="0" width="499" height="320" id="Picture_x0020_5" src="cid:image006.png@01D3AFC0.67AD7940"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">Issues can be sorted by number of reactions of different types, creating a mechanism for voting. Here is this morning’s list of open Issues
filtered by the label “New Feature” and sorted by the highest number of “Thumbs up” reactions.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"><img border="0" width="498" height="228" id="Picture_x0020_6" src="cid:image007.png@01D3AFC0.67AD7940"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">And here is the same list in
</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><a href="https://github.com/NREL/EnergyPlus/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Areactions-%2B1-desc+label%3ANewFeature"><span style="color:#1155CC">real time</span></a><span style="color:black">.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="mso-margin-top-alt:20.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;margin-left:0in">
<span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">Migration</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">With Reaction-based sorting providing a suitable replacement for UserVoice voting, the EnergyPlus and OpenStudio projects will be migrating
away from UserVoice over the next month. The existing suggestions on the UserVoice sites will be migrated to GitHub. The site administrator will provide a link to the new GitHub issue in the comments for each UserVoice suggestion, triggering an alert for everyone
following the issue.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">
<span style="color:black">The UserVoice sites will no longer be accessible after March 31, 2018 and are closed to new content effective immediately. If you want to suggest a New Feature, you will need to create in GitHub Issues.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">Registering reactions and creating new issues requires a GitHub account, so if you don’t already have one please create one now. GitHub is
a free, no-spam service. When creating a new issue—either a bug report or a request for new capability—please follow the provided template to thoroughly describe your suggestion. Members from the respective development teams will work with you to help clarify
and categorize/label your idea.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">Thanks for your continued interest in these projects!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">On behalf of the EnergyPlus and OpenStudio development teams,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">-Amir<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Amir Roth, Ph.D.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Technology Manager, Building Energy Modeling<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Building Technologies Office / EERE / US DOE<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">O: 202.287.1694<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://energy.gov/eere/buildings/building-energy-modeling/">http://energy.gov/eere/buildings/building-energy-modeling/</a>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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