Seems to me that the notion of Collections correlates with a lot of the wants by those clamoring for “Shared Playlists”
This link has been going for almost 4 years with 830 “likes”, whats the criteria for getting a request converted into product?
Being polite and asking nicely doesn’t seem to elicit a response, other than to be shutdown. So does this process actually work or is it put here to pat us on the head?
Does anyone know how many “requests” have been turned into product change, there must be some, and does anyone know how many requests there are outstanding?
@Bacon1967 said:
This link has been going for almost 4 years with 830 “likes”, whats the criteria for getting a request converted into product?Being polite and asking nicely doesn’t seem to elicit a response, other than to be shutdown. So does this process actually work or is it put here to pat us on the head?
Does anyone know how many “requests” have been turned into product change, there must be some, and does anyone know how many requests there are outstanding?
If you want the answer to your mystical question, reading this thread end to end (sit back with a bottle of wine as it will take hours) will discuss your question in intricate, painstaking detail - including posts from one of the Plex founders strewn in here and there.
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/243872/starting-to-understand-the-teams-priorities/p1
@Bacon1967 said:
This link has been going for almost 4 years with 830 “likes”, whats the criteria for getting a request converted into product?Being polite and asking nicely doesn’t seem to elicit a response, other than to be shutdown. So does this process actually work or is it put here to pat us on the head?
Does anyone know how many “requests” have been turned into product change, there must be some, and does anyone know how many requests there are outstanding?
This post shows how many requests have become actual features in Plex as the ORIGINAL request was written: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/214180/top-feature-requests#latest Scroll to the bottom to see the list of completed requests. This does NOT include any of the discussions made in the thread for improvements or enhancements as the discussion took it’s course. This only reflects that the original request was made reality.
Notice that one of the “completed” requests was regarding a SECURITY hack known to exist for over 2 years before it was fixed. Yes, this had to be a Feature Request in order to get fixed… And took a lot of vocal commentary from many of the old timers here in @cayars infamous “Venting” thread to see the fix happen.
Plex has been making progress on Collections the past couple of updates. Not what WE as a COMMUNITY have asked for, but at least it’s some movement. Sadly, you have a choice. Collections or running the HW Transcoding beta… Can’t do both because of the place HW Transcoding forked…
As far as the CRITERIA for becoming a feature? Well, I been here over 3 years… Your guess is as good as mine…
This is the only missing feature that is stopping me from using Plex instead of Kodi. I really like Plex as it is super easy for non tech savy family to use, but not having collections makes a mess of the library. I am a current Plex pass subscriber, but won’t renew since this important and popular request hasn’t even been acknowledged.
@jmacd27 said:
This is the only missing feature that is stopping me from using Plex instead of Kodi. I really like Plex as it is super easy for non tech savy family to use, but not having collections makes a mess of the library. I am a current Plex pass subscriber, but won’t renew since this important and popular request hasn’t even been acknowledged.
Actually, if you read the notes for the last two PMS updates, you will find there has been some movement on this feature. I think it’s just a matter of time until we get the feature as has been asked for.
I’m normally the squeaky wheel on the forums, asking for these long languishing features like this. We’re getting progress made, and now it’s almost time for some kudos…
@MikeG6.5 said:
@jmacd27 said:
This is the only missing feature that is stopping me from using Plex instead of Kodi. I really like Plex as it is super easy for non tech savy family to use, but not having collections makes a mess of the library. I am a current Plex pass subscriber, but won’t renew since this important and popular request hasn’t even been acknowledged.Actually, if you read the notes for the last two PMS updates, you will find there has been some movement on this feature. I think it’s just a matter of time until we get the feature as has been asked for.
I’m normally the squeaky wheel on the forums, asking for these long languishing features like this. We’re getting progress made, and now it’s almost time for some kudos…
Mike, can you tell us precisely what those changes were? I understand now that when I type in the name of a collection in the web interface, it returns a list of movies in the collection. But when I do the same search on my Roku or any other device, the collection is not surfaced. Is that it? Is there anything more? If there is I haven’t seen it.
Yes it’s a hopeful sign that ‘something’ has been done but it doesn’t look like much yet to me.
I still want a top level ‘collections’ library that shows me my collections in one click from my Roku and other devices. And when looking at a movie that is in a collection there should be some kind of icon I can see both showing it is part of a collection and, if clicked, takes me to that collection.
I don’t think I would ever actually search for a collection. I want to see them all in one place.
Dale, from watching the December Roundtables and reading a bit on this forum, it seems as though a lot of people have different ideas on how they want collections displayed. But as @MikeG6.5 said, some progress has been made in recent releases. For one, collections now show up in searches on Plex/Web. But it’s not working from my Android devices yet.
If I recall correctly, Elan thinks of collections as a matter of having Plex handling them a bit like metadata, we add the movie and Plex knows how to group them for us. It’s not my version of the request but I understand his thinking behind it.
Like Kodi or Emby have, I would like folder collapsible collections. They use folder structure to recognize how you want to keep things in a collection. I also pre-process all my movies with Media Center Master and if I sort movies into a sub-folder with a basic XML file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Item> <Type>BoxSet</Type> <TMDbId></TMDbId> <Overview></Overview> </Item>
Media Center Master recognizes the parent folder as the collection name and automatically populates the rest of the XML file with the valid metadata. And within MCM I can choose to have a nested or flat view. Flat view is what Plex does now, and nested would behave like Kodi or Emby with a single icon to represent the collection, and clicking into it only displays the collection.
I hope that’s what Elan has taken from our requests for this. But what I understand is that something like this is also bigger because they’ll have to update so many clients to be compatible with it.
Actually Dale, I can’t tell you one way or another…
I’ve been running the HW transcode Beta, which isn’t merged to the main Pass version yet, so I just get to read the patch notes and comments from others on the forums. I don’t get to use any of the new Collection things yet, until HW Transcoding is merged back.
@Elan’s ideals of Collections don’t appear to be the same as many of the rank and file users. I don’t think he sees collections as a way to group similar themed movies (James Bond) or linear series (Harry Potter/Twilight/Indiana Jones/etc.) or similar genres (Star Wars/Star Trek) as much as most users would like to see it. Most of us want something similar to TV shows in our libraries. Star Wars has a single icon in the main library, until you click on it. It then opens up to a new page (like a TV show would open up to the seasons and then episodes) where individual movies are presented. This is just a guess, based on the discussions I’ve had on 2 different Roundtables now.
He doesn’t see it the same way we do, because I think his use case is different than most of ours. Just as he wouldn’t see a use for blacklists for sharing permissions, or search filters. Or like he doesn’t see a need for Per User sharing limits. He wouldn’t use them, so they aren’t a priority in his mind. If he did have a use case in his own usage of Plex, you can darned well bet all of these would have been in a long time go.
And that in a nutshell is where I think the Plex Team gets a lot of their metrics for usage of features that don’t exist… (Can’t determine how someone would use a feature if said feature isn’t in the app to begin with, can you?) It comes from talking with the other developers and members of the Team and asking if they could see a feature being used. I honestly don’t think many of the Team have the depth of experience in using their product some of us supposed “1%ers” seem to have… Or as complete an understanding of the shortcomings of the suite…
Collections DO appear to be coming. Perhaps not the way WE want them to come, but anything is better than what we have RIGHT NOW! It’s my personal hope that Collections (as we all hope it gets implemented) remains a Plex Pass feature to “reward” us with a Pass, and incentive for those without one to get in on it. But that’s not likely to happen either… 
+1
This would be nice to have.
I like the idea of collections, but I don’t like how they can only be used for filtering.
I believe that collections could really shine if they were put inline with movies.
Basically, if a collection contains only 1 movie, then just show the 1 movie.
However, if a collection contains multiple movies, then show the collection inline with the other movies/collections.
This could even be turned on/off via a filtering option. Something along the lines of an icon in the top next to the shuffle icon.
See the Alien and American Pie collections in my below screen mockup.
I just used some random google image search for the icon… You guys are better at that stuff than me 
@MattWeiler said:
Pretty much everything you are suggesting has been suggested many times before if you read through the many many posts on Collections. It doesn’t have to be ‘either/or’. Some what collections inline. Others (me) want a separate top level collections tab similar to a library where we can see all our collections in one place because I’m NEVER going to scroll through thousands of individual movies to find my collections.
Your approach would work well on smallisn sub 500 movie libraries. I think Plex would be well-advised to do both. See my mock-up here:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/225961/quick-acces-to-collections-genres-etc-suggestion
Unlike your icon below idea I think it more likely that Plex would place an orange circle with a white number in it on top of the collection icon - just like they do for TV shows (ie: how many are in a season) with the number indicating how many movies are in the identified collection.
A fundamental problem with your inline idea (that I have pointed out a half dozen times in the various threads) is what happens for movie collections like the ‘Dollars’ trilogy. None of the movies are titled ‘Dollars’? Do you put the collection icon in the ‘D’ movies, or do you put the collection in “F” where the 'Fist Full of Dollars" stand alone movie would be and another in ‘G’ for 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" etc. There are tons of collections with official names that aren’t the same as the movie title. Hell, there is no “James Bond” movie with the name James Bond int it. Where do you put that icon it the collections are inline with movie titles? That’s another reason why I want a separate/optional top-level Collections tab.
I also want a separate/optional 'genre’s top level tab and one for directors and favorite actors too … but for now I’d be happy just to have Collections solved.
And, ya, pretty much everyone agrees that if you only have one movie from a collection that movie should not be identified as a collection of one movie - the way Plex does it now. Just fills up the collections list with a bunch of non-collections.
…Dale
@elan, @MattWeiler’s mockup is pretty much exactly what I’m hoping for.
I’d even say the “group” icon can be simpler. Two triangles in where our “viewed” or “unviewed” watched status is using the same footprint size as the existing triangle. I don’t have Photoshop so excuse the MS Paint mockup here. But fully watched collections, no triangle like our normal watched status. (No mockup necessary.) Partially watched has a half-filled triangle …and completely unwatched has two orange triangles.
And one more addition – Where you change the view to “Grid view” or “List view”? That would be a perfect place to put a option to switch between flattened or nested collection views.
@DaleDietrich said:
Pretty much everything you are suggesting has been suggested many times before if you read through the many many posts on Collections. It doesn’t have to be ‘either/or’. Some what collections inline. Others (me) want a separate top level collections tab similar to a library where we can see all our collections in one place because I’m NEVER going to scroll through thousands of individual movies to find my collections. Your approach works well on smallisn sub 500 movie libraries. I think Plex would be well-advised to do both.
Dale, this probably could go under the “View” options as well. “Nested, Flattened, Collections only”
Collections by genre would be nice as well. Similar to a playlist, for example. Christmas Collection would include Christmas/holiday movies when you click on it. Would be on the main page in a separate section for actual “recommendations” or “collections”. It would be visible to every user that has access to my library and would give the main page a more feature rich look to it. I support this idea a lot and hope that it get’s taken into account when adding new features.
@MattWeiler said:
I like the idea of collections, but I don’t like how they can only be used for filtering.
I believe that collections could really shine if they were put inline with movies.Basically, if a collection contains only 1 movie, then just show the 1 movie.
However, if a collection contains multiple movies, then show the collection inline with the other movies/collections.This could even be turned on/off via a filtering option. Something along the lines of an icon in the top next to the shuffle icon.
See the Alien and American Pie collections in my below screen mockup.
I just used some random google image search for the icon… You guys are better at that stuff than me
Can you tell me how you put all American Pie together?
I’ve got all divided.
They didn’t. It’s a mock-up of what they would like to see.
@MovieFan.Plex said:
They didn’t. It’s a mock-up of what we would all like to see.
There, I fixed the typo for you 
@MovieFan.Plex said:
They didn’t. It’s a mock-up of what they would like to see.
Ah, ok.
I hoped it would be possible 
It’s pretty ridiculous that this has existed since 2013, I clicked on the second page and saw a member quoting a post of mine from 2014 where I was expressing the exact same sentiment…
This has to be one of the oldest and most liked feature requests.
