Did you ever vote on Microsoft Connect?

In our onward going strive to get our verticals as efficient as possible on the market we were recently discussing whether we should continue our own Links feature or should abandon it and fully adopt the standard NAV version. One of the arguments against standard NAV is the simple fact that users are not able to personalize the Links window, both on Classic and RTC, while they can in our solution. As this also seemed in conflict with standard NAV behavior we considered this a bug and decided to log an incident for it: incident 9717916 (for details see How to Customize the Links FactBox?).

Bug or By Design

Some bugs are clearly bugs and some are in the gray area where you could consider them to be “By Design”. And this is exactly how the MS support engineer looked at the issue. Long story short: there was nothing to fix from his point of view and after a short discussion we agreed I could (and would! [8-|]) request this as a feature change through Microsoft Connect.

Voting

Although I have been using the tool for ages already, it hasn’t been many times. And every time again it appears to me the tool is a disaster from a usability perspective. First I have to search for the right URL: I often just go to Partner Source (or even www.microsoft.com) and search for msconnect. And once I am logged on it feels I have to relearn the tool, every time again! Eventually, however, I always succeed, one way or another, to get my things done. So I got our Links issue logged as a suggestion (have a look here).

But then I wondered: in what way could I give some weight to this? Well, any user of the tool – having the right permissions for a specific product – can vote on an entry:

Then looking at the list of NAV suggestions it’s clear that the vast majority of entries only have 1 vote in favor (and zero against). Which raises the question: who’s actually using this tool? Have you ever used it? Did you ever vote on Microsoft Connect? It does not look to me many are … [:(]

A Call for Action

So on my mibuso post for the Links issue I placed this simple “call for action”. Apparently not in vain having 9 votes so far.

Note

1. Although it seems users can personalize the Links window on classic, i.e. reorder, hide or show columns, these changes are not saved to the .zup file. As soon as the user closes and reopens the window it’s back in the initial state.
   
   BTW: ever noticed that you cannot filter (or sort) on this window? Buttons, menu items and shortcut keys are not working.
2. Microsoft Connect can only be used be registered users. To be honest: I do not know what the policies for this are as I cannot recall how I got registered. Might be based on the same credentials I have for Partner Source.

Update

Yesterday (July 6) Søren Nielsen published his post Table 2000000068: Record Link – almost great!. Worthwhile to have a look at and also vote for his MSConnect entry!