Help me know instantly what Tracing Mode is via a rename

Today I showed at NDC Oslo how to build a bot manually with C# and Blazor using the Azure OpenAI GPT services.

Then I showed how to do the same thing automatically with the new PVAs.

At the end I did a poll of the audience (about 300 people) – the Norwegians vote was about 80% saying they preferred the PVA solution.

Well done – the 1st impression is awesome ⭐

Keep the $ attainable please… it is the danger point for adoption.

Little UX suggestion… Regarding this “Tracing Mode” screen.
I reckon I would rename it to “Query Execution Plan” or maybe just “Execution Plan”

Then you keep the same name as you have in SQL Server:

SharePoint App – Help Solve Readability Issues

There are accessibility problems.
E.g. I am having some of the 50 year olds in SSW reporting that they cannot even use the SharePoint app.
Reason – they can’t read anything!
Suggestion #1: below
Suggestion #2: below

Note: it is not only the SharePoint app

❌ Same issue on the Dynamics app

✅ The Teams app has fixed this issue

✅ The Outlook app has fixed this issue

Figure: Android default is too hard to read for some.

Suggestion #1: Fix this accessibility problem by adding pinch to zoom (users expect the same as the web page)

Figure: Android Settings

Suggestion #2 – add a Cogs button that would take the user to Settings | Font Size and Style where they can increase the system font size! People don’t want to use this setting because it changes everything on your phone.

Figure: Android after increasing the size on Settings

Suggestion #2 is magic UX – see it is broadly fixed (❌ the top “News” is weird)

iOS seems to have a different problem

Figure: iOS normal view

 

Figure: iOS accessibility settings

 

Figure: ❌ Broken – Nothing increased except for the Search box (which is overlapping)

 

Microsoft Forms results should show in SharePoint news

There are a couple things that frustrate me about SharePoint News. I believe that Microsoft Forms results should be shown in SharePoint news. By fixing this, SharePoint news will be more useful.

I see 2 problems:
❌ SharePoint News is not used a lot in most companies I work with
❌ Not many people in a company know when is the right time to read a Forms survey results…. Or even that you can.

Suggestion:
✅ When you are looking through the results of a Microsoft form, it would be great if there was an easy option to show the results in SharePoint News.

✅✅ Even better would be a way that the Form owner who reviews the comments, could add their own commentary to give context, before the others get to read them.

Help me improve the experience of writing hands-free emails on Outlook and Word with Dictate

Things I have problems with:

  1. Clunky with list items – You have to slow down a lot to make sure it recognises your commands like “next line”
  2. Can’t do any Alt commands
    • E.g. Can’t add email signature (Alt NAS)
    • E.g. Can’t track in CRM (Alt HY1)
  3. Won’t recognise autocorrects
  4. UI – Can’t easily see that you’re mid-dictation like you can with Siri (the movement to on the icon to recognise noises)

Help me to see how many staff are accessing SharePoint with the mobile Apps

I am very interested in how people are accessing our services.  I especially like how I can see that our users are accessing Dynamics 365 on their mobile app.  

  1. SharePoint should display similar results.  I would like to see how many of our SharePoint users are accessing our intranet via the ‘SharePoint app’ and also SharePoint Lists via the ‘Lists’ app.
Figure: Dynamics usage report shows that a number of people are using the Sales app to access Dynamics
Figure: SharePoint usage report should show the same things
Figure: Office365 Power BI app shows Outlook Mobile and Teams but doesn’t have SharePoint stats

Help me have a better initial experience (🏠 The home page + featured links)

I use the browser for SharePoint a lot but love the SharePoint Mobile app more.

The initial experience is very different and it should be the same. The mobile app is better, and the start screen could be even better.

At the moment on my mobile, under the “find” tab, we see 4 groups:

  • Frequent Sites
  • People
  • Recent Files
  • Featured Links
Figure: The mobile app displays content well, but it could be improved

#1 Suggestion for Mobile app – Make sections consistent and change from 4 groups to 6 groups

I want to see what I am using, and what the rest of the company is using, therefore I’d love to see this:

  • My Recent Sites – i.e. sites that current user has been browsing, renamed from “Frequent” to “Recent” for consistency
  • (New) Popular Sites – i.e. sites popular across the organization
  • My Recent People – i.e. rename current “People”
  • (New) Popular People – i.e. people with highest stats
  • My Recent Files – i.e. Documents that current user has been opening
  • (New) Popular Files – ie. Most used files across the organization

#2 Suggestion for Web app – Make SharePoint WebApp Start Page consistent

This is the first experience when people reach an intranet home – everyone clicks that 🏠home icon (see red arrow).

Many users first notice the horrible URL, e.g. https://sswcom.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx

More importantly the page’s content is pretty bad, i.e. it shows different sections and even different content compared to the mobile app.

Figure: This is the SharePoint “Home page” and it needs improving – make it consistent with the mobile app

I would love to see the same categories described above in Suggestion #1 (i.e. Sites, People, then Files).

In short, the content should be the same – whether I use the browser or mobile app
(e.g. today even just the Frequent Sites I see on the browser and on the mobile app are different – how??).

Cheers,

Outlook – All-Day Events from another time zone do not display consistently

If I view an all-day event in my Outlook calendar that:

  • Was created in a different time zone
  • Goes for multiple days
  • Has all-day event ticked

The event will show as one day shorter than the actual event. The hover preview shows the same (incorrect) number of days. If I open the event, it displays correctly.

Please fix this inconsistency.

Figure: Test event, created in a different time zone for Monday to Thursday – shows as Monday to Wednesday
Figure: The same event (correctly) shows as Monday to Thursday when opened

Suggestion: Teams – Auto remove people from the chat at the end of a call


I am not sure if this is an edge case…. I’d love to know how others work.

On some calls – for example a managers meeting – you want to temporarily add in someone just for a quick question. You don’t want them to remain after the call. It is kind of a security or privacy issue if you don’t remove them.

So I find it really annoying when I forgot to remove them after the call and they probably find it annoying when they get our messages after the call.  So I would prefer not to have to remove the person manually.

Suggestion – next to “Add people”, I think it would be really cool to add a person via an option “Add people (temporarily)”.

Cool suggestion?

Figure: Add new option “Add people (temporarily)”

Teams – ‘Hide’ is in the wrong spot

Little Suggestion:

We have a new feature “Delete” a chat. I’d love to know if people will use it.

I’m not sure I will use it as I like history in chats, but I regularly use ‘Hide” to remove a chat conversation (I am always aiming for a 0 inbox and a 0 chat list).

On the right click menu, notice the last 2 are about getting rid of a chat…. And so is “Hide” chat. Therefore it is in the wrong place.

Please can you move “Hide” with the bottom 2 menu items. Those 3 are related.

Figure: Teams’ Delete Chat Feature

Help me quickly add the likely members of a new chat group

I have another fantastic idea 😊

We all love Microsoft Teams and I think this UI looks like it is about to be clever, but it is not.

When starting a new chat… 
If I pick 1 person… please attempt to guess the 2nd person I will add to the chat.
People are often related and I know it would be a nice for all Microsoft Teams users if the people picker showed the like people that I will chat with together. 

Today, it doesn’t matter who I pick first in the chat, the search always shows the same people.

Figure: I type ‘Gert’ it pops open people, if I pick ‘Bob’ it pops open the *same* people!

Suggestion

Please pick who I will probably pick next … it should change the people based on who I am adding.

More info:
Delve tells me who I talk to a bit, that would be ok.
But when you talk to a manager, you probably are going to pick another manager.
When I talk to an Azure DevOps engineer, I am probably going to pick another Azure engineer (not a React developer).