Re: [Fed-Talk] Fwd: Advice for customers to provide Entourage feedback to Microsoft
Re: [Fed-Talk] Fwd: Advice for customers to provide Entourage feedback to Microsoft
- Subject: Re: [Fed-Talk] Fwd: Advice for customers to provide Entourage feedback to Microsoft
- From: Michael Pike <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2006 13:08:25 -0600
Wow.... looks like they care about the app!
I use Apple Mail myself, I just flat out don't like exchange or
entourage... but it's good to see MS cares about it.
On Sep 29, 2006, at 7:47 AM, Dave Hale wrote:
Read and heed.
Begin forwarded message:
From: Andy Ruff <email@hidden>
Date: September 28, 2006 12:52:27 PM CDT
To: email@hidden
Subject: Re: Entourage Opinions
Reply-To: Mac OS X enterprise deployment project
<email@hidden>
Hey folks,
I'm the Lead Program Manager for Entourage in Microsoft's
Macintosh Business
Unit (MacBU). I've been a member of this list for some time and
presented
the June MacEnterprise Webcast on Exchange and Entourage. There
are quite a
few members from across the product teams in the MacBU on this
list--we are
listening in, despite the lack of responses.
I am not going to make excuses. I know that previous versions of
Entourage
have been unreliable and difficult. Heck, prior to Entourage
2004 SP2,
downloading the public folder hierarchy inside Microsoft took a
whopping
nine hours (compared to the many orgs I've seen, we don't have
that many
public folders)! Don't think that I sat in my office within
Microsoft back
in 2004 satisfied that my PowerBook was unable to share my
calendar with
other members of the team.
We fixed these problems and we'll continue to fix issues with our
current
design while also aiming to provide additional Exchange
functionality.
Exchange support in Entourage is an iterative process of
improvement. We
are not aiming to be Outlook, but we are aiming to solve your
problems. In
the three years I've been with the team, we've shipped four major
versions
(as determined by the engineering work involved, not the app's
version
number). Each of these has added Exchange functionality. Each
of these has
brought about greater reliability. We're not a big team, but we
are hard
working.
It's also important to note that Entourage first shipped in 2001
and was not
an Exchange client. Exchange users are important, but they
certainly are
not our only users. We have to balance our decisions and
resources such
that we deliver value for both sets of users. It's my belief we
can do this
in a win-win manner, such as the 11.2.5 release earlier this year
that
provided Sync Services and Spotlight support--features that
benefit all
users. Nonetheless, while I'd love to solve each and every
problem for each
and every user, we simply cannot do so.
Here is a bit of insight--we make decisions on what we are going
to do by
gathering your feedback. Generally, we make better decisions if
you provide
a priortized list of your needs and an idea of what trade-offs
you'd make
(e.g. if you could have A and B but not C, would you rather just
have C).
While not every user's needs are equal, we have a farily
sophisticated
process for aggregating this feedback and determining how we can
deliver the
most benefit to the largest number of users. Last year's Service
Pack 2 is
a solid example of this: among other things, we added full
delegation
support, permissions, sharing, stronger calendaring, better GAL
support,
while fixing a large number of poor design decisions from the
past. All of
these were at the top of nearly every bit of prioritized feedback we
received. Your lists aren't empty now, but, for many of you,
what once was
request #8 is now #2.
So, what's the best way to provide feedback? I don't think this
list is the
place to do so--Mac Enterprise is a great community for
practicing Mac
enterprise experts. MacBUers are reading here to get an idea of
your
issues, but generally not responding as to avoid hijacking the
value of this
community. Instead, here are some suggestions (the
appropriateness of each
varies depeneding on the feedback):
1. Account Reps, if you have them
2. Product support (for problems with existing behavior)
3. Entourage newsgroups on microsoft.com
4. Entourage Talk mailing list
5. We're always at WWDC and MacWorld SF
I also read every blog post with the word "Entourage" in it via
Technorati
(yes, I read a lot about the TV show). There are a lot of ways
to share
feedback--you may not always get a response, but that hardly
means we didn't
hear nor consider it. We want to make Entourage a great
product. But we're
not the judge of that, you are. We can only get there by knowing
what you
want.
-Andy
---
Andy Ruff (email@hidden)
Lead Program Manager, Entourage
Macintosh Business Unit, Microsoft
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