Announcement: Introducing Cato Connect's new Idea Hub
We’re excited to introduce the Idea Hub to Cato Connect! This is a space where you can share your ideas, collaborate with fellow members, and vote on suggestions that resonate with you. What is the Idea Hub? The Idea Hub is a forum for brainstorming and discussing ideas that could enhance our products, services, or overall customer experience. Explain your use-case and issue in detail so your fellow Cato Connect members can expound on the idea or even share workaround or solutions. By voting and commenting, we can surface the ideas that are truly important to our community with context and relevant use cases and examples. What happens once an idea is created? The Idea Hub is the beginning of a journey - a starting point for a discussion. Once you have submitted an idea to the Idea Hub, your fellow Cato Connect members will vote and comment on the idea. Perhaps they might even offer a solution or a workaround, or point you to another idea in the Hub about a similar problem to the one you noticed. Each comment and vote creates a more robust story for the Cato Networks Team to discuss, so don't skimp on the details. How Does It Differ from RFEs (Requests for Enhancements)? Idea Hub: A collaborative space for discussion, exploration, and voting on ideas. It’s designed to capture a wide range of feedback and innovation. RFEs: A formal process for submitting specific, detailed enhancement requests - opened by Cato Networks Employees on behalf of customers in certain circumstances. By keeping these two processes separate, we ensure that both can operate effectively to meet your needs. Further FAQs can be found here. Thank you for contributing to this new initiative! We can’t wait to see your creativity and insights in action. Stay SASE - Your Cato Networks TeamCato Connect Idea Hub FAQ
What should I include when posting an Idea? When sharing your Idea, be sure to include: Your use case The problem you’re trying to solve The benefit you hope to gain Any workarounds you’ve tried For example: "I’d love it if the logo could be pink. Our team is often confused because our company branding is pink, and we try to customize the rest of our software to match. I’d like the logo in the Cato Management Application to be pink. I’ve tried other customization options and even retrained our end users, but I still get questions." (Yes, I know this is a silly example—I just like pink.) What do the Idea statuses mean? Idea statuses in the Idea Hub reflect where an idea is in its journey. Here’s what you might see: Crowdsourcing Feedback– This idea is open for discussion! Vote and add your thoughts. The more nuanced the conversation, the more valuable it is to the team. Community Favorite – This idea is generating buzz. Look at all those votes and comments! Exploring Potential – Lots of discussion, but not as many votes. What do we think? Should this gain more traction? We’re Working On It – This idea has made it onto the roadmap. Delivered – The idea has been implemented—woohoo! Not Right Now – This idea doesn’t align with our current vision. Duplicate – This idea has already been brought up. *Note that your ideas may hang out with the same status for a long time – that’s ok! We keep an eye on all ideas, and we want to give them all a chance. How can I weigh in on other people’s Ideas? This space thrives on collaboration! You can: Vote – Click the vote button to show support. Comment – Add your use case, questions, insights, or workarounds. The richer the discussion, the better! Share – If you see a discussion that connects to an Idea, drop the link and invite others to join in. Will my Idea be implemented if it has a lot of votes? While we love seeing highly voted Ideas, implementation depends on many factors—vision, engineering effort, priorities, and, of course, community input. A lot of votes help an Idea get noticed, but they don’t guarantee delivery. That said, we are always discussing and assessing Ideas, so keep them coming! What happens if my Idea is closed? Even if an Idea is closed, it’s still part of the conversation. It may not be the right time for Cato to act on it, but it could spark future discussions, inspire new ideas, or even be revisited later. Don’t let a closed Idea stop you from sharing more! How is the Cato Networks team involved in the Idea process? Our team is actively monitoring and engaging with Ideas. Employees from various teams across Cato participate in the community, and we see everything that gets posted. The Community team collaborates closely with Product to maintain this space and facilitate internal discussions. You may even see a Cato employee jump into a thread to ask questions or share thoughts! How do I increase the visibility of my Idea? Want more votes? Here’s how to get more eyes on your Idea: Find related discussions in the community and drop a link to your Idea. Engage in the comments—every new comment boosts visibility! Encourage teammates who use the Cato software to log in and vote. Share with peers in your network who are Cato clients. I need more help/My Idea is urgent. If you need further assistance, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager. For general inquiries, you can also contact the Community team at community@catonetworks.comNotifications on Cato Connect
If you’d like to change your notification settings, just click on your avatar, choose “my settings” Then click on "Follow & Notifications" Then make the changes you would like to make to your notification settings. If you’d like to receive email notifications, make sure this button is toggled on. Otherwise, your notifications will be only in the bell icon on Cato Connect. Everything here is set to immediate, but you can choose to get a daily or even weekly digest of information, totally up to you. Don’t forget to check out the advanced options at the very bottom of the page. We’re glad you’re here and we want to make Cato Connect as useful and engaging as possible. Start a discussion or email us with any ideas or questions!Following on Cato Connect, so many options!
If you want to know when new content is posting to your favorite forum: go to the forum, and click the bell with the plus sign to follow. This will ensure that you receive notifications (based on your settings) for every new post on the forum. If you want to know when a new comment is posted to an interesting conversation you didn’t start: on that conversation thread, click that same bell with the plus sign to receive a notification when a new comment is posted. You may also want to follow an entire space – for example, say you’re REALLY interested in Cato Networks API (us, too, tbh), you can follow the whole category and receive notifications on any post on the forum or best practices area – this will also include future forums or areas that are added. A one-and-done approach. When you click that same bell button on the main page for Cato API, you’ll see a pop up that will allow you to choose what boards to follow. And last but not least, you can follow tags. If you click on the tag at the bottom of a discussion, article, or anything else, Cato Connect will take you to the tag page, where you can see all topics with the same label. Here you will find (you guessed it) an icon of a bell with a plus sign that will send notifications when a post receives that tag. If you have any further questions or would like clarification… or if you just want to chat, write up a post for us, and don’t worry, we’re following.Community Guidelines
Welcome to Cato Connect! We’re excited to have you here. Cato Networks created the Cato Connect community to give our customers, partners, and employees a place to discuss and collaborate on Cato and SASE. In order to keep everything running smoothly, we’re following these guidelines and are expecting users to do the same: Do: Stay respectful and be nice – we are all here to problem-solve and learn, keep your comments respectful and avoid vulgar or derogatory speech. Keep it on topic – Cato Networks and SASE provide us plenty of fodder for conversations, let’s stick to those on Cato Connect. Protect your privacy – keep your network and API keys to yourselves, people! Along with your emails, your addresses, or anything you wouldn’t otherwise plaster on the internet. Protect other people’s privacy as well and don’t post it online. I know you know this, but it bears repeating. Keep in mind that this content is user generated – Many of the solutions you’ll find here may very well work for you (and yay), but sometimes, people have their software configured differently. Use your good judgement when implementing solutions found here. Don’t: Post anything illegal – respect the rules of your organization, copyrights, trade secrets, and any nondisclosure agreements you’re beholden to. Lawyers are expensive. Spam – while some forms of spamming may be obvious (we’ve all seen those condo or printer ads on software communities before), some might be a little more obscure. Please refrain from posting your question in multiple forums or the same comment on multiple threads if it’s not relevant. Please do not send unsolicited private messages that are off topic. We will know, and we will moderate you. Solicit business – keep our community clear of posts that are for advertising and soliciting business, trust that if you make yourself famous by answering questions and participating in the community, our smart and attentive members will notice and reach out if they’d like to work with you. Get weird with images – keep images clean and safe-for-work. Inappropriate language or visuals in images are a no-no and we will remove them. We are over the moon that you’ve joined and want to make this experience the best for you! If you see spam or inappropriate behavior, report it. If you need help, come find us. And if you have suggestions for the community, post them here! By participating in these forums, you agree to the Terms of Service for the Cato Connect Community.
