Feature Requests: Dark Mode & SyncroMSP Billing Integration

[gMSP-Mike]

So, Dark Mode/Dark Theme has been requested numerous times over the past 4 years, but now with 12 out and it still not here I actually asked my Account Manager to bring it up to management. That should be relatively easy, low hanging fruit. Nuke the white background for a darker grey/gray or something. I do a lot at 2-3am, and I'm light sensitive as it is.

The second is, Veeam wants me to move my entire N-Able backup over to them, which means a huge $$$ growth for Veeam but I need Integration with my PSA for that. I have a mandatory 2023 partner requirement that all partners have SyncroMSP billing integration by 12/2023. The head backup nerd at N-Able had one hacked up with PowerShell in about 20 minutes. Apparently Syncro's published API is the best people have seen in terms of how well it is presented. $50 says you guys can have it done in 15 flat. Veeam management wants Syncro to do it, but Syncro is super cheap so you get what you pay for, so they won't. I won't pay for it because I did it with Vembu and lost $40k in that deal, I refuse to pay for it again. That and if you guys want me to move what I have with another company to your platform then you should pay for it. You are asking me to make you more money.

[Gostev]

Last time I checked with designers it was unfortunately a very high hanging fruit requiring to recreate all thousands of icons we have.

You may want to post the second part of your feedback in the Veeam Service Provider Console forum, as this would be a place for any such MSP-specific integrations. You should apply to the Cloud & Service Providers forum group if you don't see one.

[gMSP-Mike]

I don't think so. Forget the icons, just make the background in the middle portion. You already have a grey in the rest, just make that middle a grey also. And if the icons are properly made with transparency, you can tick down a few notches to a more darker grey. You do not need to go full inverse. Just make it less bright.

You may want to post the second part of your feedback in the Veeam Service Provider Console forum, as this would be a place for any such MSP-specific integrations. You should apply to the Cloud & Service Providers forum group if you don't see one.

I do not see a way to reach that or apply for it.

[Gostev]

The very problem is that most of the older icons are not "properly made" AFAIR.

It's in the your User Control Panel under User Groups. You have to be registered with Veeam as a VCSP, the script will approve requests automatically.

[Mgamerz]

As someone who writes WPF applications, I assure you a dark theme is a ton of work, especially if you didn't design the app to support themes! It's far from just changing the background color, you have to make sure all fonts are colored correctly - which is a pain if you aren't always using black/white (such as red), refreshing the entire UI when the user changes it... it's almost all edge cases.

I think it is definitely not low hanging fruit

Still would be nice though.

[gMSP-Mike]

I was the lead software architect at a pharmaceutical company before starting an MSP. I managed a team of developers. Yes, if not done correctly - but that is the grave you essentially dug yourself (or the last person dug for you). Normally in a software development lifecycle, we would have Best Practices code reviews even on legacy code. If something wasn't done as a best practice then that code would have to be fixed and we had resources set aside to move those along. Our software had to undergo Computer System Validation that we would have to submit to the FDA. Dark Mode wasn't a thing back then, but these sorts of things are Best Practices today.

I also currently act as the lead consultant for a sister company of mine which produces legal software for elder law and estate planning. Same thing applies just significantly smaller budgets and no feds breathing down our neck. We just did a dark mode in 2020, we hired a UI/UX designer for this project and she coordinated everything with our graphical designers (3rd party company) who handled it. But with the person we hired and our graphical designer contractor we had it done in only 30 billable hours. That was also our old interface, the new version will be entirely web-based (even the desktop app which is just a browser in disguise) and we built theming in by default but that is all css.

Granted I haven't written code in 23 years, I'm just a director, but something big like that I would have just hired someone. It's not 100% apples to apples, but when my company went paperless, we had a 40' hallway with 6' tall filing cabinets on either side the entire length and then dozens of banker boxes in the basement. I went to a temp agency and hired a gaggle of High School students on summer break to enter all of it into my previous PSA Autotask. They had it done in a few weeks. Gave them all laptops an stuck them in the conference room and fed them pizza and energy drinks.