Microsoft prove they’re listening
You might remember a couple of weeks back I received a fantastic letter from the Office team confirming they’d received the Fix Outlook mosaic and had even hung it on their wall. Today they took their message of “we’re listening” a step further by sending me photographic proof that they’re doing just that.
The first shot features William Kennedy, VP of Office and Jeanne Sheldon, VP of Word (nice shirt Jeanne) hanging out next to the mosaic’s new home in the Office team’s hallway.
This second photo was taken at the entrance to the Microsoft campus and includes a number of Word and Outlook team members who have worked on HTML rendering in Office over the years.
I’ve got to give Microsoft an enormous amount of credit for this. They could have ignored our feedback completely, but instead proved they are genuinely listening to our feedback and are prepared to have a bit of fun doing it. Add to this the recent launch of MakeOfficeBetter.com by two Microsoft employees, and it becomes clear that these guys really do care about giving their customers the best experience possible.
While there is still no confirmation about what impact this will have on the rendering in Outlook, this is a big step for the Office team to take publicly. William and the rest of the Office team have assured me they will keep in touch as they plan their next release. You guys will be the first to hear if we have any news to share. In the mean time, let’s keep the feedback going by adding your vote for better HTML support.
Bravo Microsoft.
Such a great feeling seeing this. Well done Microsoft!
This is really great to see - but i hope that it translates into something more than just a nice PR move.
Maybe the tide is turning for the better with Microsoft.
Well if they don’t make any changes on the next release they know now that we users & developers will never give up the fight!
Thank you Microsoft!..... wow i never thought those 3 words would ever be used in a sentence.
I’ll hold off on getting excited until I see some action.
This was such a creative initiative! It’s equally impressive to see it paying off with this seemingly genuine gesture form Microsoft!
Keep up the good work ESP :)
I don’t understand why all the excitement. Let’s get real and stop being so thankful that MS hung the mosaic on their walls. Let’s get excited when we see results. These photos of MS employees with the mosaic mean almost nothing. We want results, not just pretty pictures…
I’m with George on this - MS should either do something or make some solid commitment to do something rather than take photographs.
I wish you success and thank you for sharing. We’ll talk to them sometimes and I’ll share this article with my friends from ediğindiğim information.
Now, if you could only get them to use Firefox instead of IE to render HTML in Outlook, all would be good. Long shot though. ;-)
IE is an upgrade compared to Word, no doubt. Never thought I’d get to say such a nice thing about IE.
Microsoft really needs to get their act together and take action on these issues. I am being nice here because I want to say more but can’t do it with diplomacy.
I really love how that lady is wearing that twitter shirt (the image you get when you don’t have a default image.) Aside from that distraction, bravo!
They are just good @ business.
Their interest is to keep Outlook closed and linked to Exchange, not to allow Outlook capable of “exchanging” with a Postfix server !
Quite possible, Philip, but that is not a smart business strategy for the web in the long run, especially as our generation more and more becomes the leaders of these industries.
First time I’ve said it in a while, bravo Microsoft, an excellent display that you’re listening! I hope you act on it too; there are Art & IT Directors like me (I know, odd combination, but it has value) that have been actively moving all of our worldwide staff bentlyenterprises.com off Outlook for this very reason. I look forward to seeing it fixed in the next 12 months, you may very well see a 300+ user purchase then.
Good to know they are listening, and hilarious way to get their attention :D
Tis is overall good advertising for Microsoft.
And e-mail standard defenders are doing the buzz for them.
I always said they were bad at programming but excellent at advertising.
Really, Phillip? I hate to say it, but their advertising has been the butt of jokes in my industry for years; they talk a lot, sure, but can’t ever deliver a solid, cohesive message.
A good initiative.
This is total PR. Outlook 2010 will roll out with only a fraction of the changes people asked for. MS will then respond by saying something like, “We are so committed to making ALL these issues right that we just couldn’t get them all done in time for the 2010 release. But 2015 is already in development and it’s gonna be awesome!” I’m not holding my breath.
If you recognize your Twitter picture in the mosaic please let me know. I’m trying to put together a Twitter picture locator for this fantastic initiative. More info: http://vincent.vanscherpenseel.nl/web/fixoutlook-mosaic-avatar-finder/
Update concerning my quest for avatars: http://vincent.vanscherpenseel.nl/web/fixoutlook-mosaic-avatar-finder-part-2/
If you located yourself, please let me know :)
I am very happy, although it is a bit of a slap in the face if Outlook still isn’t fixed. “We got your message, but we won’t do anything about it.”, I am glad they’re listening, but how many people have to complain before they take action?
Rather than convince Microsoft to fix Outlook, I think time would be better spent in educating users to use web-based email access, like Web Outlook, Gmail etc…
I think this will produce results faster, the average user has no idea that Outlook is rubbish at rendering, just like they don’t know that Internet Explorer is also very rubbish at rendering (not to mention slow).
When I put users on Webmail in Firefox, they always say that they wondered how on earth they ever managed with Outlook/IE for so long!