The Feedback Loop : Feedback

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.

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! :)

It really is a small world

Cyclometh — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 20:35:00 GMT

This morning, I received an email forwarded to me, originally from one of the folks on the OneNote team. It was basically forwarding a link to a blog entry by someone with the nom de guerre of Yivvits, a character in the Star Wars: Galaxies MMO who, in his real life, also uses OneNote and Connect. He was kind enough to say some very positive things about Microsoft Connect in his post. The email and his blog entry have been forwarded to the entire Connect Team, and I just wanted to say that we all appreciate the comments.

However, all preening aside, the real reason I posted this is because I used to play SWG myself- I had a character for quite a while. Back when I was still a very active player (this was long before I came to Microsoft), I wrote a community article on how to submit good bug reports for SWG. I just found the coincidence entertaining.

Connect 2.2 Feedback

Cyclometh — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 20:24:00 GMT

For those of you that have taken the time to look at Connect 2.2 on the ConnectBeta site, thanks!

Connect 2.2 is in lockdown at the moment, which means we don't make any changes that we don't consider absolutely necessary for the site to function. This is a critical phase of stabilization, because we have to reduce code churn as much as we possibly can. That means the bar is set pretty high for bug fixes to make it into Connect 2.2.

However, at least one person has filed a bug on the Connect Product Improvement site, which we just fixed for Connect 2.2. Thanks go out to AlconicCF, who filed this bug on the Connect Product Improvement site against Connect 2.2. The problem was primarily a display one; when the first comment is added by the feedback author, the region that shows them wasn't being updated to be visible. If you refresh the page, the comment is added again. The workaround was to go back to the overview page and come back to the feedback item (ugh).

Since the fix was pretty minor and the bug severe enough (customer experience issues are given a lot of weight), we triaged and fixed it this morning.

I'd encourage others to take a look at the Connect 2.2 site on http://connectbeta.microsoft.com. If you find bugs, please file them on the live Connect site at http://connect.microsoft.com/Connect/Feedback. At this point, the bar is set very high, and only what we would call "ship-blocking" bugs will be considered for implementation in 2.2.

I'd still like you to file any bugs, even minor ones and nits, if you find them. That way we can get them in the pipeline for hotfix releases or another point release, or assess them for fix in a major release. Your feedback is valuable to us!

Some issues identified by the Connect beta site I'd like to answer here:

Comments are not searchable in Connect 2.2. We're going to be working on making comments, vote text, validations, workarounds, and all other data associated with a feedback item searchable in the future.
Feedback search doesn't do a lot of stemming in the search, and generally relies on exact matches- ie, you won't find "software" if you enter "softwares". You can use an asterisk as a wildcard for searching words- i.e., "soft* would find both "software" and "softwares".
The index may lag a few minutes behind when you entered your feedback. Generally we don't think this will occur often on the production site, as the hardware used there is much more powerful and should be able to keep up. However, at times feedback submissions are very heavy, and in times like that the search index may take time to snarf up your submission.
The display issue with "post a comment to Microsoft" has been corrected, as above.

Connect 2.2 Preview

Cyclometh — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 23:11:00 GMT

Is finally here! Go to https://connectbeta.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=3 and take a look around. You can do most of the things you can on the main Connect site, although you'll find that the available programs list is pretty limited. None of the feedback or sites from the production site are available here, with the exception of the Connect demo site.

Please take a look around and see what you think. After you sign in, click the "Manage My Profile" link at the bottom and fill out your profile data in order to be able to submit feedback. Keep in mind that this is a beta site, so the feedback isn't going to be processed or resolved. Don't enter your real bugs here- or do, but enter them on the real Connect site as well!

After you've taken a look around, if you have any comments you can file a feedback or suggestion form on the main Connect site at http://connect.microsoft.com/Connect/Feedback.

A couple of notes about the beta site; some issues were found after the deployment to the beta site and have already been resolved internally.

File uploads may not work correctly with Firefox 1.5. This is known and has been corrected in a later internal build.
Feedback should work with both Opera and Firefox, although some display elements may not be correctly placed or visible in non-IE browsers. These issues have been largely eliminated in our internal builds.
After attaching files, you may notice that the "attached files count" on the Feedback Details page always remains 0. This has been corrected in our latest builds.

I look forward to hearing what you think.

Connect and File Attachments

Cyclometh — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 00:26:00 GMT

Recently, an email exchange occured between myself and a Connect user. This person was wondering why Connect didn't allow users to download files attached from other users. An example scenario would be that when a user files a bug, they might attach a screenshot. This type of data would be very useful for other users, in that they could verify if they are experiencing the same problem.

So, given that file attachments are useful not only to the developers attempting to reproduce and diagnose your bugs but potentially to other testers, why don't we allow file attachments to be downloaded?

The answer is that file uploads provided to Connect are not allowed to be downloaded for a myriad of reasons, some technical, several policy-related.

One major issue is security; even screenshots can contain sensitive data and we don't wish to take a risk of exposing that data to other people, whether by accident or design. Also, many of our beta programs involve pre-release software, and exposing screenshots, memory dumps, debug logs and stack traces of bugs being diagnosed is not a good way to keep either customer information or intellectual property safe.

Microsoft takes personally identifiable information extremely seriously (you should see the training and lectures we get about it). The risk of exposure of personal data, such as that which might be found in a memory dump, or in a screenshot, is one we simply cannot take. Frankly, I like my job and don't want to lose it because I did something that caused a customer's personal data to be compromised.

Also, providing the ability to fetch files that have been attached to feedback items means keeping those items in a state where they can be retrieved. Once a file is attached it is no longer available to the web servers, for security reasons and because we don't really want to attach that much storage to the web servers- the volume of file attachments we process is pretty significant.

Another major issue with such a feature is the potential for abuse; it's not hard to come up with several scenarios that would not look good for Microsoft if we allowed file attachments to be retrieved by users after they've been uploaded. Imagine what one person who wanted to embarrass Microsoft could do if screenshots or other file attachments could be fetched by users other than the one who submitted them. It would be quite simple to label something quite unsavory or even illegal as a screenshot, attach it to a bug report and then notify the media and/or tech websites and blogs.

The short answer is that Connect is not a file-sharing system and the potential for abuse far outweighs any utility we might realize from it.

Having said all this- We're working on features to make it possible for testers to share data with each other in more effective ways. We want to increase your coordination with other testers because that increases the quality of bug reports and reduces the number of duplicates. But we are absolutely constrained to do that in a responsible manner which safeguards your personal information and Microsoft's intellectual property.

I'm not really able to discuss the specifics of these features right nowo mostly because we're still brainstorming them, but they're all geared toward making the experience of working with Connect both more interactive and connect you with other testers and their activities. If you have suggestions, I encourage you to file them at http://connect.microsoft.com/Connect/feedback.

Preview Update

Cyclometh — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 20:55:00 GMT

Hey folks- sorry I didn't come through on the details of the 2.2 preview. We had some UX changes to implement and those kept me pretty busy the last few days. On the plus side, the new changes look great and hopefully we can get them in front of you folks pretty soon on the Connect beta site. I'll post some screenshots as well- I think you'll be pleased.

Connect 2.2, currently slated for deployment at the end of October or early November, is primarily a bug fix and stabilization release. We deliberately decided not to take on new feature work in this release- there are some new features, but they're not major ones and there's not many- and focus exclusively on bug fixes, performance improvements, and stabilization. In terms of look and feel, you'll find a number of significant changes in the Feedback area, and in terms of performance, we've made some serious improvements- especially in searching feedback, a primary pain point for Connect.

Moving forward, we're going to be continuing to stabilize and begin getting some new features into play. I have some pretty exciting ones on my plate for the Feedback area, and I'm looking forward to being able to share them with you.