The Feedback Loop

Zune HD and Zune 4.0 Launched!

Cyclometh — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:54:00 GMT

Wow, what a ride it's been so far. I've been really enjoying my new position on the Zune Services Team, and as many of you know by now we just launched Zune 4.0. :)

Here's what you should do (you don't need a Zune device):

Visit http://www.zune.net.
Download and install the Zune software.
Start Zune, sign up for the 14-day Zune pass trial.
Go to the Marketplace and find your favorite artist/album/song.
Click "Play Smart DJ Mix".

Enjoy the awesome.

Coming soon- Zune on Connect!

Cyclometh — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:28:00 GMT

I've had a little project cooking on the side since I started with the Zune Services Team last month. One of the things that many of the Zune folks do is help customers out in the Zune Forums with issues they have, answering questions and the like.

Sometimes customers report problems with content in the Zune Marketplace, like a song title being incorrect, typos and so forth. Other times we will get customers reporting problems that are actually the result of a bug we should be addressing. Right now that's a sort of ad hoc process, but I've been working on the creation of a Zune site on Connect which I hope to open up soon, in order to have a place where we can collect such reports in a way that's more structured, while leaving the forums the place to get other questions answered.

I know the Zune Forum mods are excited and I am as well to see how we can put Connect to use. What's great from my perspective is being able to bring such a great tool from my previous position over to my new one and really make a positive impact.

Cool tool: Windows 7 Problem Steps Recorder

Cyclometh — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:16:00 GMT

For those of you who have or are going to be getting Windows 7, you have a great tool built into the OS. I was playing with it earlier, and I have a strong feeling this tool will play a very significant role in product support scenarios. It's going to be especially helpful for those of us (like me) whose relatives and friends are always asking for our help with their computers.

With the Problem Steps Recorder, there's no more sitting on the phone or IM asking somone to describe their screen or a menu. If the person you're trying to help has Windows 7, simply tell them to click Start and type psr. Then they click the "Record" button and do whatever they need to do in order to make their problem or issue occur.

Once they've finished recording the steps to create a problem, click "Stop Recording" and it saves a ZIP file. Inside the ZIP file is an MHTML file containing step by step annotated screenshots of every step the user took, complete with context highlighting of the UI elements the user interacted with.

I can't say enough about how cool this is, and how much of a difference it'll make for anyone who is trying to assist someone with a problem with their computer.

Also,Chris Pirillo blogs about the PSR here and even includes some video! Check it out.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Cyclometh — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:50:00 GMT

Greetings! I know I've been somewhat quiet of late, but there's a good reason- I've been transitioning to a new position here at Microsoft! I've just joined the Zune team, working on catalog services. It's a very exciting change and a great position- I'm really amped about it.

So what does this mean for The Feedback Loop? I'm going to continue blogging here, focusing on the connection between Microsoft and its customers, but not specifically about Connect. I'm also going to start introducing more technical content along with the more general stuff I've done in the past. I'm still in a role engaged with customers, albeit in a slightly different way, but closing that loop and evangelizing customer connections are still something I'm passionate about.

I will, however, be continuing to keep up to date on what Connect is doing and try to keep you updated about it. Connect is always going to be near and dear to my heart!

Microsoft Connect Offline

Cyclometh — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:24:00 GMT

Hi folks- we're currently experiencing some problems with the Microsoft Connect site (http://connect.microsoft.com). It is offline, and our support team is fully engaged in getting it restored ASAP. There is apparently a problem at a data center, but that's all we currently know. Please bear with us as we work to get service restored and accept my apologies for the downtime.

Connect and Windows 7, Other Beta Programs

Cyclometh — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:37:00 GMT

Hey folks- just a quick note on the Windows 7 Beta. Many people have been filing feedback or making comments, votes, etc to existing feedback on the Connect connection- at http://connect.microsoft.com/Connect. The Connect Connection is meant for filing suggestions and bug reports about Connect itself, not requesting access to any other programs, betas or connections. The product teams using Connect make their own decisions on what level of access, how large their test pool is and so forth.

In any event, the Connect team has no ability or authority to get anyone into the Windows 7 Beta (or any other beta program except maybe one the Connect team runs, which we do from time to time to test new features of Connect), as each Connection is owned by their respective product groups. The Connection Directory is the place to go for what is available, access public betas and apply for closed ones that are open to be applied for.

Specific requests to join a beta program sent to the Connect team simply cannot be addressed, because frankly- there's just not enough of us to handle all the awesome people who want to help test our products! :)

As far as Windows 7 goes, for information on the public release go here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/ for all the details.

Thanks and I hope your New Year is going great so far.

Happy New Year!

Cyclometh — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:17:00 GMT

Greetings, Programs!

I've been extraordinarily busy both at work and away from it and we've all been working hard on the next major version of Connect- 4.0. Apologies for not having more content here lately, but as a New Year's resolution I'll update more frequently. :)

So what's been going on? We've been working on the next version of Connect, currently slated for deployment in the first half of 2009- I'll have more details on what you can expect, when you can expect it, and what we're working on next in upcoming posts.

What I've been focused on almost exclusively for a while now is enabling Connect to work with Team Foundation Server. As many of you may know, Microsoft has used a tool called Product Studio for tracking bugs and issues for years, but with the advent of Team Foundation Server and its much richer feature set, we're working hard to enable the feedback you submit to be managed within our TFS systems internally- we already have some support for it, but we're not yet hitting the real deep value we can derive from Team Foundation Server.

I've also been taking quite a few of the lessons we learned from how we receive feedback, bugs and suggestions and closing the loop with our customers (you folks!) and working them into the next generation of our product. A major challenge has always been- "how do you enable a relatively small dev team to communicate effectively with customers numbering in the tens of thousands?" Certainly, there's no easy answer to that question, but there's a lot we can do, and I'm confident everyone who uses Connect will appreciate what we're doing in that regard.

Look in the next few days for some discussions of what we're bringing to the table- RSS is coming, as are tools for more effective collaboration between MS staff and customers submitting feedback. And thanks for using Connect!

Still Here, Yes

Cyclometh — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:54:00 GMT

First, apologies for not keeping my blog up to date. It always seems like there's some fire to put out, and blogging keeps taking a back seat. Well, no more.

So, on to current events. If you haven't yet seen the new Connect Site, you should check it out. The latest release was officially "Connect 3.0", and involved a large number of changes to the Connect web site as well as to the Connect team. We've reorganized the team and now have a group of talented folks whose entire job is to focus on the user experience. Credit them for the bulk of the user interface improvements made in Connect 3.0. The rest of the team works on what we call the "Connect platform", which basically means we focus on the technology that drives the site and the related internal services.

If you have any feedback or suggestions on the new site, please let us know at the Connect Web Site Improvement site at http://connect.microsoft.com/Connect.

We're already working on Connect 3.2, our next point release, containing a few focused updates, performance improvements and bug fixes. In fact, we're winding down on the development cycle for that release, and it should be ready for prime time in the next few weeks. I'll let you know when we have a more specific update.

Further down the road, the next external release is Connect 3.5, which will be a larger release but still focused on improvements and fixes, with only a limited set of new functionality. That's not fully baked in terms of schedule, so I'll let you know when I have more information on it.

And in the dim and misty distance, the next major update to Connect- Connect 4.0- is already in planning. We've got some exciting stuff planned, and I'll be talking about some of it here over the next few posts.

As for me, one reason I've been somewhat quiet on this front of late is that I've had my head down on a major internal Connect update to our internal feedback tracking systems- in other words, the code that routes your feedback and suggestions to the proper folks here.

Connect 3.0 Beta- first impressions?

Cyclometh — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 22:30:00 GMT

So I'm curious what people think of the new look and feel of the Connect 3.0 beta site. We've seen some activity and a few suggestions/bugs filed (thanks!), but I'm interested in general feedback on the site. What do you like, not like, etc?

Connect 3.0 Beta- Check it out!

Cyclometh — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 01:47:00 GMT

The new Microsoft Connect site, which we've been working at for months, is now in public beta at http://connectbeta.microsoft.com.

Head on over and check out some of the new features:

A Dashboard showing all your activity (across all your connections)!
Totally revised "My Participation" integrated into the Dashboard. You can now remove old Connections from your list and more.
Recent bug reports and activity on the homepage, and on your dashboard.
A totally revamped "Available Connections" page- sorting, categories, and more!
More tools to manage your Connect experience.
Improved forum integration!
Performance improvements across the board.
And much much more.

We're all very excited about this release of Connect. It's expected to go to the main production site within a few weeks after our shakedown cruise and some opportunity for public feedback.

Remember, this is a beta site- localization is not yet completed so the site is in English only, users with browsers set to other languages may see missing resources or incorrect text. Also, because this is a beta site, the database it uses is separate and data you enter will not be sent or integrated to the main production site.

If you find any bugs with the site, please file them at http://connect.microsoft.com/Connect/Feedback - this is the current Connect production site and the place to file bugs about Connect itself. We want to hear your feedback, positive or negative- especially with bugs or unexpected behavior.

On behalf of the Connect team let me say I'm very excited to see this going out and we hope you enjoy it. Now go forth and break it so we can make sure it's working perfectly when we release it! :)

Known Issues

Here's a list of known issues with the beta- if you run into these, we're already aware of them and working on them!

Dashboard
- Some feedback items on your Feedback Watchlist don't show up on See All Your Watchlist page
- The number of votes, validations, workarounds and comments is not correct in the bug listed under Your Bugs section
- On Connection Recommendations section the text "No recommendations are suggested" is displayed, even when recommendations are being displayed.
- A program does not disappear from dashboard UI when remove link is clicked. The page needs to be refreshed. An authorization exception is thrown if you try to access the program after having having removed it.
- Page not found error displayed when dashboard is accessed by URL directly
- Header of "Activity in All Connections Since Your Last Visit" section does not change based on the customization options available.
Newsgroups
- Page background is shown on middle pane
- Both "Add to watchlist" button and "Revome from watchlist" button don't toggle until page is refreshed
Help
- The help page still refers to the legacy pages "My Participation" and "Available Connections"
Feedback
- UI overlapping and misalignment problems when using 120 DPI font size

More detail about the new features is here.

Recent Connect Stability Issues

Cyclometh — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 21:45:00 GMT

Recently there have been a number of short, isolated outages with Connect. These have occured at generally random times of day and have usually been short, less than 10 minutes. We've been working hard to isolate the problem. I can't go into specific details, obviously, but the problem has been isolated to a specific section of our system and seems to be related to a bug or issue outside of Connect itself.

The Connect admin team and support staff have engaged on this issue and are continuing to work on tracking down the root cause of the problem. Apologies to anyone affected by these issues, they're as frustrating for us as anyone. ;)

Coming changes to Connect's development team

Cyclometh — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 21:29:00 GMT

With the recent release of Connect 2.4, the Connect team is beginning a phase of more regular releases, in a hopefully dependable rhythm that we can continue to rely on. The Connect team has grown somewhat as Connect has grown.

The Connect team is reorganizing slightly to improve our ability to create a quality experience for the folks who use Connect. The biggest change, and one I'm sure many of you will be excited to hear, is that we are creating a dedicated User Experience (UX) team. In the past, we've had resources devoted to UX, but now we're really focusing hard on it, staffing an entire group within Connect with development, PM and test resources and giving that team full control of the user interface and user experience.

With a dedicated UX team devoted to just the web interface, we're also changing the rest of the team's structure somewhat- both to reflect the growth of the team and to be more effective in general. For example- I'm going to continue being the primary Feedback developer- and many will be very happy to hear that we've added a new SDE to the feedback team (yay!), but we'll have less direct impact on the user interface and more on the "backend". The same restructuring is occuring throughout the team, with the folks who have worked on the features used in Connect continuing to work on those features, but instead of being directly responsible for the UX and UI, the previously mentioned team will be coordinating these efforts.

In the end we believe this will have a huge impact on our ability to create a consistent, usable experience and continuously improve the Connect user interface. We've talked about something like this for quite some time but we kept coming back to the fact that we just weren't large enough a team for such a structure to work. While we haven't grown by orders of magnitude or anything, we have grown somewhat- and the application is much more mature than it was when the idea was first floated, which enables us to take what we all think is a great step for Connect and our customers.

ZOMG Connect was down!

Cyclometh — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 22:43:00 GMT

Sadly, it's true. At about 9:30 AM Pacific time, the Connect site and our internal management tools for it began having problems, and shortly after went down. We've added some new monitoring tools and process to the system recently, and they informed us right away that a problem had occured. The site was down for about 20 minutes and we quickly isolated the issue to one of our DB servers, which was removed from service and is being looked at now by our crackerjack ops team.

Apologies for any inconvenience you may have experienced during this brief outage.

Connect 2.3 QFE 1

Cyclometh — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 21:52:00 GMT

Hey there! Last night we deployed the first set of patches to Connect 2.3. Nearly all of these were what would be termed "backend" fixes for problems we encountered with the new user profile store. I did work out some changes for issues like this one and this one, both of which were annoying and frustrating for our users.

I modiied the popup "hover" code to add a delay and improve the action when moving the mouse away to hide the hovering summary. There's still a few nits with it which I'm working on for the next round of patches, but this should go a long way to improving your experience- or at least I hope it will! :)

Connect 2.3 is up!

Cyclometh — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 02:00:00 GMT

After what I understand was a very uneventful upgrade procedure, the Connect site is back up at http://connect.microsoft.com. Please take a look. Also be sure to check out http://connectbeta.microsoft.com for a look at our upcoming 2.4 release!