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How do we pass product feedback to Microsoft?
How do we pass product feedback to Microsoft?
- I'd really really like some way of communicating a wish list to Microsoft, maybe with some sort of voting system. We're all out here on the front line trying to use .Net and the various technologies and I think we're pretty well placed to find areas of improvement. It would be of benefit to us, and to Microsoft in helping improve their products and give them competitive edge.
I'd like to see all the development and end-user technologies covered, including .Net, the languages, Office, Sharepoint, Biztalk, CRM etc etc.
There are some things I'd really like to see addressed, but I have no way of communicating it and knowing that at least someone has read it and passed it to the right group. Does such a mechanism exist already?
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That's what Microsoft Connect is for:
https://connect.microsoft.com/default.aspx
For .NET and Visual Studio, there's a Feedback Center on Microsoft Connect where you can post bug reports and suggestions:
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio
There does not appear to be a general Office feedback site but the Connection Directory lists a few feedback sites for individual Office programs:
https://connect.microsoft.com/directory/- Chris,
Thanks for the links . I have been to Microsoft Connect before.
I guess what I'm suggesting is a single point of contact where developers can make suggestions to MS across the whole raft of products.
LJ.
- The reality is that there is no one place for this. The best way to comment on a single product is to that product team. If your problem is with PowerShell (as unlikely at that might be!), contact the PowerShell team. If you have suggestions for the OCS team, talk to them. There is no real over-arching cross-MS place any more (if indeed there ever was) - you need to talk to the individual teams. But be warned, some teams are willing to listen, engage and take your feedback on, others are less helpful. It depends on the team
HTH.
Thomas Lee - The issue comes when the problem is across teams. I tried adding something to the connect site which was a suggestion that spanned both the .Net framework and office and they just closed it because it mentioned office and connect does not deal with that.
It seems like there should be a feedback aggregator. I know it must be a hard task dealing with all the feedback, but I'd have thought some sort of easy to use across-product suggestion site with user voting would allow Microsoft to pick off the top ones.
It'd be good for MS (more competitive products) and good for us.
- Laughing John said:
The issue comes when the problem is across teams. I tried adding something to the connect site which was a suggestion that spanned both the .Net framework and office and they just closed it because it mentioned office and connect does not deal with that.
It seems like there should be a feedback aggregator. I know it must be a hard task dealing with all the feedback, but I'd have thought some sort of easy to use across-product suggestion site with user voting would allow Microsoft to pick off the top ones.
It'd be good for MS (more competitive products) and good for us.
As I said in an earlier post, there is a degree of silo-mentality in most MS teams. For good reason (to keep focus) and I'm kind of glad they go this way but sometimes things get lost or there's duplicate effort (do you remember having 6 different patch management tools to get all of MS products?). To get the teams' attention, you need to get both groups interested. Either that, or get Walt Mossberg or Mary Jo to complain on their blog <grin>. Better yet, get a PM in the group interested in your idea/issue.
Also just because they've closed it, doesn't meant it can't be re-opened and/or voted on. If, for the sake of argument, 500 people voted on your suggestion, then maybe the teams would take a 2nd look. I don't know what the numbers need to be, so 500 is just a random guess. But if enough "important" folks or other users ask, then MS tends to re-think things.
HTH!
Thomas Lee - Hey there. I will tell you what we are thinking about and you can tell me what you think.
We are trying to use forums as a great way to discuss technology as well as get answers to questions. In my mind - if that is where the discussion is happening - AND - you discover along the way that you have actually found a BUG or have a product suggestion - THEN - you should not have to leave forums to do that. We plan to add product feedback (bugs and suggestions) to forums for MSDN, TechNet and Expression. We also plan to then provide a way for the community to vote and prioritize the top feedback being submitted to the respective team. This will also then make forums the place where our product teams and support participate in discussion and submissions.
In terms of having "one place" - I agree. Yhe team that runs Connect recently joined ours and we will integrate with them such that you should be able to view feedback submitted via MSDN also on the Connect site in the even you are part of the "connection" (e.g. TAP program) for a technology not related to MSDN.
Does this make sense?
Dan Truax - I think there should be only one forums, which is then categorized as deep as is necessary. Also I don't think that Msdn forums are categorized properly at the moment. I have a post about it somewhere already. But for example if under "Development" is some random sub categories like "Microsoft ESP Platform Development" and "Server Core Developers" but nothing else, that is weird. Why not add SQL Server 2005 development under it and all the rest too? Better would be to fix the categorization and not keep some random categories around. If I wanted to search for Server Core development, I might check all the technologies not knowing that its under "Development". Then again if I spot the development category, I browse through it and notice that there is nothing but couple of random technologies.
Why there is .Net Development and C# at the same level? Shouldn't there be like .Net Development and Languages at the same level? And shouldn't .Net Development be under Development I talked about above?
I can't think that fixing categories is that hard. Just move bunches of threads around and think up new names? They aren't hard coded, right? You could provide permalinks to threads and posts and just fix the categories. Also lots of days have passed and many categories are still on the old Msdn-forums.
Microsoft Connect has been really slow. I mean, it can't be anything more than putting things into database, optimize the queries and index the tables and it works. Why the slowness? If you can't handle as simple things as forums and bug databases, how can you produce Database Servers (like SQL Server is) to the world as a leading technology and as a leading technology vendor? (Oh, yes, you bought it originally...) Msdn is part of Microsoft so what ever you produce there gives the feeling how successful Microsoft products are in general.
Maybe its because when things are being built, they use scaffolding around the building. The scaffolding isn't pretty and there are lots of project managers running around yelling each other and what is measured is the end product (eg. SQL Server) quality. But I think Msdn is part of Microsoft's customer experience "end product", which should be polished and functioning like production code of some industrial facility. Or better yet, like some advanced innovative several steps ahead successful market share hogging industrial facility.
Where do I submit Windows XP bugs?
- Dan's suggestions seem right on the money - if he delivers on providing a mechanism within forums to provide feedback - then great. And even better, I'd like to see some expectations set (and delivered on) with respect of how long it shoudl take to get an issue recognised and actively being investigated. The expectations need to be set reasonably, balancing the poster's burning desire to get something fixed, with the product team's ability to triage and move forward (and their bar for accepting new work items).
Silvercode's comments about tagging are good also. I see a couple of issues with the current tagging:
1. It _appears_ that the tagging done in forum and the tagging done in social bookmarks and community content are not aggregated
2. The tags are siloed (MSDN, TechNet) and there is no cross over.
3. Tags, at least in community content are single words (eg Server, or Server2008 vs "Windows Server 2008" - sans quote marks). Providing multi-word tags might help with focus.
4. I have real problems simply logging onto connect. For some reason "http://connect.microsoft.com" simply does not work - from different browsers on multiple systems and from multiple networks. I realise that that's my problem - but it's a prob I do not have here!
Dan - when are you likely to be adding Product Team Connections to the Forums/Community Pages?
Thomas Lee
