[AccessD] [EXTERNAL] Re: Bug in Access 365

[Shane Groff]

Hi,

I'm from the Access engineering team, and just wanted to confirm Jim's assessment.

Myself, and some of the other team members do try to monitor some of the public forums for reports of bugs or other significant issues, but obviously we can't follow everything, so we do rely on the feedback channels we have, and MVPs are definitely a great help in identifying and bringing to our attention serious issues.

Once an issue is identified, there are a lot of factors that go into determining how quickly it can be addressed.  As Jim mentions, a few of those things are the impact of the bug, whether it was recently introduced, how easily we can reproduce the issue, and so on.  There's always a lot to do, and we have to prioritize, so sometimes it takes longer than you might like for the particular issue affecting you gets addressed.

Microsoft collects data from users about application crashes, so in this case I can tell you that this particular problem is not impacting very many users, presumably because they don't hit the combination of circumstances required to hit the crash.  However, for the reasons Jim mentioned, we will fix this.

Finally, even once a fix has been made, except in the most urgent cases, it goes through a process of being gradually rolled out to successively larger audiences, starting with the Access team, through the rest of Microsoft, preview builds, until finally it is available to all users, that process can take a couple of months.  The reason for that is that if we introduce a new problem, we want to identify it before it impacts everyone (although obviously sometimes we still don't find things until they do).

 Shane Groff

-----Original Message-----
From: AccessD <accessd-bounces+shaneg=microsoft.com at databaseadvisors.com> On Behalf Of Jim Dettman via AccessD
Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2021 5:49 AM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' <accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
Cc: Jim Dettman <jimdettman at verizon.net>; 'James Button' <jamesbutton at blueyonder.co.uk>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [AccessD] Bug in Access 365

Jim,

   In terms of features (or lack thereof), your best path is to use the un-happy face up on the main title bar.

  That brings up the feedback dialog, which believe it or not, Microsoft pays close attention to.   User Voice was a great tool I thought for feature requests, but a lot of people filled it up with things that were simply not feasible, so the good stuff was getting drowned out.

  As far as bugs, the same thing applies; use the feedback dialog.   It does get floated to the right people, especially when you have something like Borge ran into.   Personally, as a small company or individual, I would not use product support as you usually you need to get to level II before it gets enough attention, and that can be a painful process.   If you are a large company (hundreds or thousands of seats), then you have volume licensing along with software assurance, and have different channels you can use to reach Microsoft.

  Then there are MVP's like myself, who Microsoft uses as a liaison between the user community at large and Microsoft.  A MVP's main "job" is to make people aware of a product and share knowledge, but because we are in so many places, it's another tool they can use to spot problems early.  It's not something we specifically are asked or told to do, but simply a by-product of being involved with the community.

   But now with the feedback dialog and the telemetry they get out of the software (that's the "Do you want to share data with Microsoft" thing), they usually know about something before we do.  We can sometimes help in getting a repo sample together as often people report a bug, but don't have a clear sense of what is causing it.

   I reached out to Microsoft on this one because it was a clearly a bug, one that was consistently reproduceable, knew it would be somewhat high on the priority list because it involves a feature just added, and causes a crash of Access.  It's one thing to have a feature not work, but another matter when it causes a crash.   Only thing that would rate higher would be something that affects data.

JimD.

   

-----Original Message-----
From: AccessD On Behalf Of James Button via AccessD
Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2021 7:34 AM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' <accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
Cc: James Button <jamesbutton at blueyonder.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Bug in Access 365

Definitely agree with Bill.

Of special note re the fixing-it was the linespacing in the lists of entries in Outlook, where the report to MS actually pointed out the glitch in the code where someone had replaced a "match the font line spacing" with a fixed line height and they still did not fix the problem.

Also my conversation with a "Feedback to the team"  person re. the problematic Onedrive Home user web facility  not allowing width setting, or scrolling (horizontally)  through the filenames to see the end of the names.
 - and vertical scrolling through a folder content only showing some of the entries in a folder.
- and showing the names of files being uploaded.
I was told that the Feedback did not go into the Dev/maintenance team database, and the person I was speaking to had no contact - oral, recorded, or written with the maintenance team, their management or their IT environment.


Sort of like when the Government says we are listening to you - Meaning there is a team setup to record WHO complained  so they could be 'dealt with' 
Not actually meaning  that the problems reported would be recorded so they could be fixed.


So - if you there is actually a feedback path where the problems will be considered and addressed, please PLEASE tell us ! 
  

JimB


-----Original Message-----
From: AccessD <accessd-bounces+jamesbutton=blueyonder.co.uk at databaseadvisors.com> On Behalf Of Bill Benson
Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2021 11:40 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving <accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
Cc: Jim Dettman <jimdettman at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Bug in Access 365

Jim out of curiosity who would you pass it along to, what will they do about it, and when?

I try to stay optimistic but it gets harder every year.

When I point out bugs to  MS product support teams they rarely promise to do anything even though they admit something is broken.

Is it about who reports the issue? -  or what gets their product teams to take action?

No one in this thread mentioned the upvote method. You know, where people report a bug fix request or feature change that is posted on a support site, and people are supposed to hope enough people upvote so attention is given. Do you have an "in" with product teams?


On Fri, Apr 9, 2021 at 4:53 AM Jim Dettman via AccessD < accessd at databaseadvisors.com> wrote:

> Borge,
>
>     I will pass it along.
>
> Jim.
>
>
--
AccessD mailing list
AccessD at databaseadvisors.com
https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdatabaseadvisors.com%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Faccessd&data=04%7C01%7Cshaneg%40microsoft.com%7Ca51aba057f1a476ceaf808d8fc1f1016%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637536557649487376%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=E4YTglsaeBr3O7p1TQUsxCz6s%2Fh3fzCTmPJ%2ByfX9b04%3D&reserved=0
Website: https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.databaseadvisors.com%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cshaneg%40microsoft.com%7Ca51aba057f1a476ceaf808d8fc1f1016%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637536557649487376%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=BdHqAjRup4UW8umyH%2BMHOMmZStSBY2Xou6uHh8dL2dc%3D&reserved=0

--
AccessD mailing list
AccessD at databaseadvisors.com
https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdatabaseadvisors.com%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Faccessd&data=04%7C01%7Cshaneg%40microsoft.com%7Ca51aba057f1a476ceaf808d8fc1f1016%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637536557649487376%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=E4YTglsaeBr3O7p1TQUsxCz6s%2Fh3fzCTmPJ%2ByfX9b04%3D&reserved=0
Website: https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.databaseadvisors.com%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cshaneg%40microsoft.com%7Ca51aba057f1a476ceaf808d8fc1f1016%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637536557649487376%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=BdHqAjRup4UW8umyH%2BMHOMmZStSBY2Xou6uHh8dL2dc%3D&reserved=0

--
AccessD mailing list
AccessD at databaseadvisors.com
https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdatabaseadvisors.com%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Faccessd&data=04%7C01%7Cshaneg%40microsoft.com%7Ca51aba057f1a476ceaf808d8fc1f1016%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637536557649487376%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=E4YTglsaeBr3O7p1TQUsxCz6s%2Fh3fzCTmPJ%2ByfX9b04%3D&reserved=0
Website: https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.databaseadvisors.com%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cshaneg%40microsoft.com%7Ca51aba057f1a476ceaf808d8fc1f1016%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637536557649487376%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=BdHqAjRup4UW8umyH%2BMHOMmZStSBY2Xou6uHh8dL2dc%3D&reserved=0