I'm Sad
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SQLWish is gone. After my performance poll on Friday, I decided to send the link to the SQL team to see if they would be interested. So I sent an email to sqlwish@microsoft.com. And I got this reply:
Thank you for your feedback. Unfortunately - SQLWISH is no longer being monitored by the product team. For a more interactive feedback experience - see our new Product Feedback Center at http://labs.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback. In this center - you can see and vote on suggestions view bugs from other customers and make new suggestions or file bugs. You can also view work-arounds and sign up to receive progress updates from Microsoft on suggestions and bugs. We moved to the new system so we could directly link your feedback into our development systems.
I can understand that email might not be the best mechanism for soliciting feedback and suggestions for the product. It can be a pain to route to multiple people, reply to, etc. But it was convenient. Run into something you see could be improved, just drop an email.
Now when I go to the feedback site, I have to log in with my passport, pick the product, OS version, etc. The process was more cumbersome and took more time than I wanted to spend. If I hadn't been curious to see how they handled things, I would have bailed.
And I'll likely bail in the future from sending feedback. It's just too much of a pain now.
Steve Jones
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Steve,
Do you not think that your requests are more likely to be read and comprehended when they are submitted in a structured format (where you are forced to enter all the information required) rather than sent off into the ether via an email?
Personally I welcome the change. I was never confident when using sqlwish that my mails ever got read, much less actioned. At least with the Feedback Center you get notification when things are actioned. Other benefits that you don't get with sqlwish are:
1) Reduces duplicate entries. This sounds like a good thing for MS but if that's so then its also a good thing for us because it means our requests are less likely to get lost in a sea of correspondence
2) You can edit your submissions
3) You can solicit feedback
4) You can track an entry's progress
5) Microsoft receive all the information that they need rather than whimsical mutterings
Just my two-penneth worth!
-Jamie
Jamie Thomson
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jamie_thomson -
True, the format might indeed be better and more efficient for those receiving the requests and make no mistake many of us have also tried to implement these sort of processes and probabaly fully comprehend the reasoning behind going for such a system. However, after having to take on board the huge number of product releases (application and os) than my memory and processor can currently handle, it's always a good idea to have some sort of consistency.
It's just a pity that he human factor is also diminishing which can lead to the de-humanising of product support and customer interaction.
Max
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I personally prefer multiple ways to send feed back. I can understand that a better structured web page response would be more easily processed and therefore more likely to impact the product team.
However, assigning a moderately intelligent junior member of the product team to classify messages might be helpful.
Russel Loski, MCSE Business Intelligence, Data Platform
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"I'll likely bail in the future from sending feedback. It's just too much of a pain now."
Maybe that's idea. Dealing with all the feedback can be a pain, too. If MS want feedback they can have a consultancy run a focus group or amy they'll just have a quiet chat with a handful of selected customers (picked by Sales & Marketing?).
Or maybe I'm cynical.
Si
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I do agree that the more structured feedback is helpful to MS, and it's easier for them. It's also harder for me.
They've shifted the burden of work from their staff to me and others that wish to submit feedback. Worse, they've combined their bugs with suggestions. If I have a suggestion for SQL, it likely doesn't apply to a specific OS, service pack level, etc. I don't need to enter that in.
Also, most people aren't going to dig through their list of enhancement requests to look for duplicates. It's just not worth the time and effort. Having a small group screen the requests probably catches more duplicates.
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They do still screen the requests via the feedback center tho. Many of mine have been linked to a duplicate or something in a similar vein (another good thing in my opinion).
Sorry Steve, we'll have to agree to disagree on this one mate
-Jamie
Jamie Thomson
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jamie_thomson -
Not the first time
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I assure you the change was not made to discourage feedback. On the contrary, the feedback we receive from customers is incredibly valuable to the product team. All feedback and suggestions are read and taken into consideration when we plan service packs and future releases. In some cases, the feedback is the only data we have to work with when planning a service pack so please do not let this change discourage you from submitting it.
Some of the components I own (Agent, DB Mail, Mgmt Studio) do not receive very large customer support call volume. Generally when we scope a service pack we look at the areas that generate the largest call volumes or take the longest for our customer support team to resolve. Well, just because a component isn't a large call generator doesn't mean there aren't areas that need attention. This is where newsgroups and the feedback mechanisms come in to play. Trolling newsgroups is really difficult and quantifying the feedback is also a challenge. However, if we have a large volume of feedback through the new feedback channel, we can more easily make the case for addressing something in a service pack.
The new process, while a bit more intensive on the front end, will improve the process for managing feedback from both the MS side and the customers'. Please use it and please let us know how we should improve it. Our goal is to maintain a very high response rate on feedback - this just wasn't possible with sqlwish.
Cheers,
Dan
Lead Program Manager
SQL Server - Manageability Platform Team
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Dan,
Thanks for the clarification and I'll try to be more understanding, but I think in the interest of trying to make it better you've taken a step back. Might be better for some products, like SQL, EXchange, etc., that at business related to give them their won, simple page. If I had a SQL Server page and maybe a subsystem, plus defaults for N/A for OS stuff, it would be much easier.
Bug reporting and suggestions are two different items. Combining them seems to place a big burden on the latter, which is often a simple sentence or two.
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Some may have been concerned that via SQLWish their feedback wasn't being read. It had a better chance of being read than the feedback people now won't send!
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If people don't send feedback then its their own fault that it doesn't get acted upon. You can't blame MS for that. Its not as if its difficult to submit it after all!
Jamie Thomson
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jamie_thomson -
Just seems to be one more problem to deal with and seperation from the customer base. MS get a clue! Novell started the same crap, remember what happened to them. Even when they are/were a better network and active directory, now they can hardly give their product away.
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Whilst not agreeing with it, I accept your opinion that
a) Microsoft are seperating themselves from their customers and
b) They are creating problems for their customers
Can you please clarify why that is the case?
-Jamie
Jamie Thomson
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jamie_thomson -
To me they are putting a bigger burden on me. The feedback form is a mess.
First of all, I select a product and search. That alone makes it hard. For a bug, maybe, but a suggestion?
Then I get 5 pages of 20 results each for now. Entering some keywords makes is shorter, but still that's a lot to scan through and I only see the title. Which in and of itself could contain mispellings or be wrong. IF you want me to look through these, then once someone from MS reviews them, they should slot them and correct their references. For example, search "SQLAgent" and "SQL Agent", two different result sets. Therefore I am doing the work for MS of reviewing things and not necessarily a good job.
Then if I want to make a suggestion I have to log in with a Passport. What's with that? It's unnecessary and I almost bailed out at that point. Them terms and conditions, unnecessary. Then I have to pick the product again and search again. Both a sign of an intern-like, half a**'d application.
finally the feedback form, which isn't too bad, but they don't have "ALL" sections. Most suggestions that I've come up with over the years apply to all versions/all OS's. Picking specific ones is a waste.
It's overcomplicated and a sign of immature programming for a feedback system. It requires too many fields and places a larger burden on the user than needed.
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