Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

mike — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 22:29:00 GMT

Very interesting. A couple of related pieces that people might be interested are Eric Lippert's entry that he titles "How many Microsoft employees does it take to change a lightbulb?", which discusses the cost to implement new features. (http://weblogs.asp.net/ericlippert/archive/2003/10/28/53298.aspx)

Also, Scott Guthrie has an entry on his blog about the process of deciding to support in ASP.NET for XHTML 1.1 and accessibility:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2003/11/25/39620.aspx

The comments for Scott's entry provide a bit of insight into how it's not always perfectly obvious how or why a feature should be implemented.

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

Benjamin J. J. Voigt — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 22:35:00 GMT

As to priorizing future features, why don't you just have someone set up a officefeatures.com site and let customers do two things:

1.) create new features
2.) priorize existing features

That would help technical marketing to find priorizations in their focus groups and market analisys, and you could even benefit from some kind of experience marketing because you are involving customers.

Probably any feedback you'd get through such channels would be baised to come from power users, but it would at least provide a hint. Feature request must be a tough business, I wonder whats the process to manage them...

... But these are just ramdon thoughts from my uneducated point of view.

It's nice to see a PM blog, I shall be following your blog closely!

P.S.: Regarding my previous post, just rate it as the attemt to give a vote for my favorite feature :)

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

Chris Pratley — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 22:47:00 GMT

Benjamin, you're right that we could collect feature ideas on a web site. In fact we do this already - there are usenet groups for OneNote we read and colect ideas from, there is mswish@microsoft.com, you can even submit feature ideas through the help system. Soon there will eba community site as well. But you're also right that this is biased information. So we can't use it directly to make decisions. It is just one of many other types of input. Also, most people are not software desingers. For example, we never used to receive requests to make a product like OneNote - that came from a software designer trying to understand needs of potential customers. Most customers can tell you things they dont like about a product that you need to fix, but only rare individuals can design new things for a product (and they should probably become software designers) But I love feedback, so keep the suggestions coming.

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

Sean Timm — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 01:43:00 GMT

I think OneNote has the potential to become something cool (for me). I'm sure it's already cool for those that find its current feature-set useful. I tried it out when it first became available. After installing it and playing around for a while, I'd find myself wanting to do something that it didn't quite support. "I'll just figure out how to create an add-in!" I thought to myself. Of course, I quickly figured out that there wasn't any API available.

Needless to say, I ran into enough missing features and lack of extensibility, that I'm anxiously awaiting the next version (instead of actively using the current one), and I hope an API makes the cut this time...for those things that you really *didn't* think of. :)

You mentioned in another post about using OneNote for blog prep. Wouldn't it be great if you could blog post, too? I'd already be able to...if an API was there. ;) So consider this a vote for an API...soon!

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

Tejas Patel — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 04:05:00 GMT

Yes, can see many postivies and negatives of what Benjamin suggest.

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

Julian Gall — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 17:39:00 GMT

I love OneNote and have used it pretty much every day since the beta came out at the beginning of March 2003. However it lacks one feature that I really miss. I find it hard to believe that someone took the decision not to implement this and it would be very interesting to hear the story behind it.

The feature is present in every word processor I can remember. It's in every text editor and every email client. It's even in a humble textarea on a web page - like the one I'm typing into right now.

It's this. When you double click on a word, the word is selected. If you leave the mouse button down and drag it, the selection area increases word by word. Why doesn't OneNote observe this universal behavior?

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

Chris Pratley — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 19:51:00 GMT

Since many of the developers who work on OneNote used to work on Word, and I also manage the Word design team, we were of course aware of the way Word handles editing. But everything costs something. It seems hard to imagine as you look at the finished product, but we had to ruthlessly remove work items from the feature list. "chunky" word selection might have been 2 hours to code the first try, but it would have been a day to check in, plus of course testing, handling some bug fixes, then what about Japanese, Thai, etc. What happened throughout the whole project was that we cut to the bone most areas, and made sure our key scenarios were met. You don't *need* chunky selection - it is a "nice to have", so along with many things it fell on the cutting room floor. Once we are out of the coding phase, we go into "polish" phase, so what you see is high quality - adding more stuff and still shipping with Office as we had to for shared code reasons would have meant lowering the overall quality, since there is a finite amount of effort we can apply. Another way to look at it is that we would have had to remove something in order to add chunky word selection, and most everything remaining was necessary we felt. In the future you will see editing niceties like this in the product.

re: OneNote genesis

Chris_Pratley's WebLog — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 23:17:00 GMT

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

MartinJ — Tue, 03 Feb 2004 04:37:00 GMT

Something that I would love to see in OneNote is the flowcharting. I like using Visio. But, If I can just draw the dang shape (well, something that looks similar to a shape) instead of remembering which stencil library it might be in and drop it on the sheet and resize it, I'd be a happy camper.

Of course, I also love to sketch. I'd love something similar to ImageComposer that cleans up my shaky lines and curves. I'd probably get an informal comic strip up and running at work.

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

mjweber — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 20:44:00 GMT

I use OneNote daily and see you are sincere. In my opinion the release of OneNote without rudimentary features like hyperlinking and online support was a bit premature.

Here's my X feature list.

Hyperlinking
Office XP/2003 integration
Infinite customizable Note Flags
Note Flag groups for different folders
tables
context sensitive font control
rudimetary word processing features
online support

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

Chris_Pratley — Tue, 10 Feb 2004 01:10:00 GMT

mjweber,
Writing a version 1 application is a challenge. When is it done? How much functionality has to be in the first release before it is acceptable? Since we have to design for all possible users, what does it mean when individuals say that they need feature X, and the product is not useful without it? Does it mean that we must have feature X before we can release the product?

In aggregate, if we collected all comments like that, we would never ship the product because there will always be another person who "needs" word count, or format painter, or vertically merged table cells, etc. The criteria we use is therefore driven more by a sense of whether we have enough to make the product useful in the core scenarios we are targeting. That necessarily means some people will feel we left out some features. Is it useless without them? Some might say yes, but if we did our job, many more will disagree - it is useful the way it is (although they would sure like to have more capabilities).

BTW, could you clarify what you mean by "online support"? Also, we do have "rudimentary" word processing capabilities - the minimum for note taking - is there something you are looking for specifically? We do integrate somewhat with Outlook 2003, although we could do much more, and also integrate with other apps.

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

bill — Tue, 10 Feb 2004 01:47:00 GMT

I'd have liked it if you had included that new-fangled OLE stuff. Being able to drop a spreadsheet / visio chart / etc into the thing would have made it near perfect.

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

Chris_Pratley — Tue, 10 Feb 2004 05:05:00 GMT

bill,
OLE would be nice. Cost was high for v.1 compared to (undeniable) benefit. Building v.1 is like packing your knapsack for a move across the country - an unbelievable number of valuable and useful things cannot be packed in it, yet if you do it right, there is no question the contents of that knapsack are very valuable if you choose wisely.

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

mjweber — Tue, 10 Feb 2004 19:11:00 GMT

Chris,
FYI/I use OneNote on a laptop, not a tablet PC. Although a tablet-centric mentality was implemented in the development of v1 I view OneNote as an application headed for a much broader audience. I veiw it as the missing link between Word, Excel, Outlook, and Visio, which is why I'm so enthusiastic about it. I just wrote a chapter about Bill Gate's business formula in my new book and to my recollection OneNote is the first original product released in Microsoft's 20+ year history. You and BG are to be congratulated.

Microsoft offers no online support for OneNote @ http://support.microsoft.com. It offers online support for vitually
every other MS app including Infopath. Conseqently I had to waste an hour on the phone in a muzak queue to get an incident # assigned the other day.

My issue, that I can't delete MSOCache using the prescribed MS method -- Disk Cleanup to remove Office setup files -- is still unresolved.

As for Word processing, I'd like to select text and move or copy it by pressing the Ctrl or Shift keys for example. I'd also like to change case with a click or two.

Thanks Chris!

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

Chris_Pratley — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 05:26:00 GMT

mjweber, you might want to take a look at some of the other posts in my blog to get some history on how OneNote was developed and what the target was. It most definitely was not "tablet-centric" (See the post called "The Myth"). Our view was rather that we are text and ink agnostic - the goal is larger than simply supporting a particular device. I certainly agree with you on the potential. As for being the first original product, thank you for the compliment but - well, it depends on your criteria. There are people out there determined to prove that Microsoft never produces anything original, but they do not apply the same rigor to any other company. On the other hand, by any objective measure, I think Microsoft has produced numerous original products, whether they be significant improvements on others or "new".

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

mjweber — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 18:02:00 GMT

I just found your blog the other day and am working my way through the various threads. Thanks, I enjoy the dialougue. When I refer to "original" I mean applications with no former precedent; i.e. Windows derived from Xerox PARC, IE from Mosaic, Excel from Visicalc, Word from Wordstar, etc.

OneNote is the first MS procuct I can think of that breaks that mold. Are there any other apps with a tab/notebook paradigm? OneNote sort of reminds me of InfoSelect but as my website spouts, "ideas are like radio waves".

At some point I'd like to interview you about all this. I'm thinking of writing a magazine or newspaper piece about OneNote. My new book "Invasion of Privacy was just released. You can check out its site @ "http://www.mjweber.com/iop/privacy.htm

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

Chris_Pratley — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 08:37:00 GMT

I can't say I know everything that has come before, but those new smart watches seem pretty original - unless you count Dick Tracy.

OneNote sort of popped into my mind more or less fully formed (well, in its original incarnation in Jan 2001) as I described, mainly from thinking about the broad information management problem people seemed to have. Later I found that there have been many other attempts to do similar or not-so-similar things. There are cardfile apps, contact managers, outliners, mind mappers, hypercard, quotation managers, etc. I have seen some of those over the past two years, and I think the main difference from OneNote is that most of them were designed by an individual (at least at first) to solve a problem that individual was having. As a result, they tend to be thin on features, have a central "thing" they do, and kind of assume that you work the way they do. But I really haven't done an exhaustive analysis of the field since we've been pretty busy. Also I can't claim that OneNote is not flawed in similar ways.

You have my email so if you want to discuss an interview that would be fine with me.

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

James Clarke — Fri, 13 Feb 2004 04:25:00 GMT

1) synchronising notebooks between different machines easily

2) an API so I can use Onenote as an ink posting tool to my blog

Internationalization and .NET

Ramblings of a Code Monkey — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 02:01:00 GMT

There was an article talking about the basics of .NET internationalization in the latest issue of MSDN Magazine (it's the "Bugslayer" article; I'd link directly to it, except it's not online just yet). The author mainly discussed how to use...

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

milbertus — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 23:05:00 GMT

James, if you use dasBlog, you can already post from OneNote. Jim Blizzard (http://snowstormlife.com/blogs/bliz/PermaLink.aspx?guid=89012cbf-5c0d-4f83-88f5-f59b178264e4) does this all of the time.

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

mjweber — Wed, 18 Feb 2004 23:55:00 GMT

Chris - Been traveling and haven't had much Web access lately. I'm amused by how many people seek OneNote instructions and/or templates. As I explained to a friend, if you don't have "ideas" to organize, OneNote can be pretty daunting. If you do have "ideas" to organize you don't need instructions or templates.

I see MS as a changed company since the Trustworthy Computing Initiative of 2002. It was the first business plan in the company's history that preceded a product. Until that point MS developed products first and business plans last leading to marketing fiascos like .NET. OneNote/SPOT - the vetting of Windows 2003 Server code - these are indications of a new era at MS.

I'm interested in writing an article on this subject but it'll have to wait until I finish those I'm currently writing. I'll be in touch.

Keep up the good work...
Michael J. Weber

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

Scott B — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 13:02:00 GMT

Chris,
I just want to thank you and Microsoft for a great product. In the past, I have never been an avid note taker.OneNote has provided me with a tool to quickly develop this habit. It is amazing how much I log and keep track of now. One current feature that I use extensively is the audio recording feature. The ability to sync audio with notes is very compelling. One think I like to do is watch webcasts on Microsoft.com/usa and sync my notes as I record the audio. This is extremely helpful to me to "bookmark" and interesting point that came up. The time shifting aspect is genius! It is amazing how OneNote can judge the time delay between hearing something and generating the idea.
One feature (I am sure you guys thought of)is to extend the audio recording feature to video files or Live meeting recording/webcasts. This idea of combining and syncing your notes with different forms of media is astounding. In fact it would be very cool if OneNote could be an embedded into other apps. For instance, IE has the discussion option for web pages. A similar option could be placed in IE, Word, Excel, etc to allow side notes that are linked to the media. A sort of side note feature that could be placed on the research pane... (just thinking out loud). The benefit of this approach would be that the side notes are still stored in the centric OneNote host app for global searching but also can be retrieved by accessing the document, webpage, spreadsheet, etc. This allows the user to access their notes from several different logical avenues, increasing reuse.

Just a few thoughts. This product is really great and I am looking forward to see what the next version holds.
Thanks again,

Scott

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

Chris_Pratley — Thu, 11 Mar 2004 09:22:00 GMT

Scott, we're definitely on the same wavelength.

Mac Word Notes View and OneNote

Buggin' My Life Away — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 00:19:00 GMT

Mac Word Notes View and OneNote

Buggin' My Life Away — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 00:19:00 GMT

Thanks for your openness

Adam Lasnik — Sun, 21 Mar 2004 08:21:00 GMT

Hi Chris,

I've just recently discovered and downloaded OneNote and have found it a delight to use. While I'm admittedly still deciding between OneNote and InfoSelect and a few other Information Managers, one thing is for certain: your friendly and informative writing here is much appreciated. You and Robert Scoble (and, I'm sure, other folks I haven't yet 'met' online) are really an asset to Microsoft and to geeks in general.

Design a blogging feature for OneNote

Chris_Pratley's WebLog — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 11:08:00 GMT

Design a blogging feature for OneNote

Chris_Pratley's WebLog — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 11:35:00 GMT

Word Myths and Feedback

Chris_Pratley's WebLog — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 16:15:00 GMT

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

Robert Björn — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 22:32:00 GMT

mjweber, I thought your book sounded interesting so I looked at the webpage. However, as I opened it in Firefox none of the links worked. It appears all buttons are actually Java applets. This seems very restrictive and unnecessary to me (even aside from the fact that not everyone have Java VMs installed). The page also makes heavy use of frames, for no apparent benefit (but plenty of drawbacks, like inability to link to individual pages, inability to make full use of the screen, etc). From a marketing perspective, annoying things like this can mean the difference between leaving the page or making the effort to read it in some way (at least, it was for me). Just my view, take it with a pinch of salt. :) Sorry for the off-topic post.

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

Compiler — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 17:32:00 GMT

Perhaps it's just your point of view, but I see a problem with OneNote process. Hopefully your "list" of features is actually a DAG (directed acyclic graph) of features and technology nodes. And, hopefully again, you look at not just what features are "demanded" but also the features that come for "free" (or at low cost) with the associated technology nodes. In other words, I hope you're optimizing globally rather than locally.

How many Microsoft employees does it take to change a lightbulb?

Fabulous Adventures In Coding — Thu, 13 May 2004 18:29:00 GMT

Any new feature which does not serve a large percentage of users is essentially stealing valuable resources that could be spent implementing features, fixing bugs or looking for security vulnerabilities that DO impact the lives of millions of people.

re: How do you use OneNote?

Chris_Pratley's WebLog — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 14:05:00 GMT

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

Ian Stanley — Tue, 29 Jun 2004 09:21:00 GMT

> mjweber Are there any other apps with a tab/notebook paradigm?

Yeah, I have been using a product called Circus Ponies' Notebook (http://www.circusponies.com) that has been around since April'03 - very similar product.

Those who click on links immediately will know that this is a mac product.

My personal machine is a mac and I have often found certain software or software features do not have the equivalent on the PC (yes I know it's true the other way as well). I was glad when I found OneNote - a windows version of a program that I use heavily on the Mac. Though OneNote is from a different company probably around 95% of the features are there.
Still a 1.0 release it is reasonably polished but expect a good few addins to come with the next update

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

John — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 10:43:22 GMT

Hi Chris,
nice blog.
I was wondeinrg, we see a lot of activity from the Office PMs (you, Steven etc). Is there some blog which can give me a perspective on what a PM in the MSN Search and MSN mobile devices dvision does? I have been unable to find blogs by PMs in those divisions - would love it if you could point me to some sources!
Thanks :)

re: Why Doesn't OneNote have Feature X?

Chris_Pratley — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 08:43:28 GMT

John: I don't know exactly. You might ask this fellow: http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/default.aspx

Good stuff in many blogs all around

Mike Fried's Blog — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 01:01:47 GMT

A collection of some good posts by other Microsoft bloggers to tell a tale about quality in software development.

Good stuff in many blogs all around

Mike Fried's Blog — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 02:19:26 GMT

A collection of some good posts by other Microsoft bloggers to tell a tale about quality in software development.