Microsoft 365 invites users to 'Ask Me Anything' – as long as it doesn't require a clued-up exec to deliver clear answers A Microsoft 365 AMA (Ask Me Anything) thread yesterday failed to reveal much of substance about plans for the future or how to fix the platform's many issues. "We are very excited to announce a Microsoft 365 'Ask Microsoft Anything' (AMA) for Microsoft 365!" community manager Dylan Snodgrass said back in February. The day came …
I don’t know what it is with Microsoft these days, there's clearly been huge progress with features, functionality and integration, but there's just so much change, and it's all at different stages for different clients. It feels like features are constantly being re-bundled, re-worked, re-branded and re-named. I'm not saying progress isn't good, but it's the way that it’s done - it's disorientating and un-engaging for end users. Sure, you got used to X, but now X is Y, but not all of X is Y, and some of Z is now Y too, but only if you weren’t subscribed to Y in the first place etc... It's enough to give me the Ballmer sweats.
The problem is not the AMA (although I appreciate El Reg's coverage), the problem is the "community". Why Microsoft, with their boatloads of money, can't set up a team of professionals to monitor and respond to questions and problems from the community is beyond me.
P.S. El Reg needs to define a standard measure of a boatload of money.
No doubt they have a large team of community marketing professionals to monitor and interact with the community.
The open question is if those marketing professionals know that they the technical side of the company.
- The marketing department couldn't convince someone from the technical side to participate, and didn't have the political pull to force someone to do it. That would be some combination of inept internal marketing, internal power wars, and active indifference by the technical team. Some combinations would leave marketing blameless.
- Some marketing hack wanted "control" of the conversation and didn't trust the technical people to properly lie about plans, schedules, features and bugs.
- Some marketing hack thought that they would actually answer the questions. Which is absurd. Dunning-Kruger absurd. Some of these customers spend their who working days dealing with the minutia of the products. They are the experts from the end-user side. They aren't going to be asking a question that could be answered by skimming a manual or using the application for a few minutes.
Surely the questions should have been:
1) Why is * 365 so unreliable?
2) Why is OneDrive and SharePoint so god damn bad still?
3) How do you make your Exchange so latent and break sync compared to on-prem run by others?
4) Why do you undercut your own partners on pricing for the Office part?
5) Why do you keep renaming the damn products confusing the hell out of people?
6) Why do you deliberately cripple the full no-sub office compared to the sub office given the cost?
7) Why do you still refuse to let small businesses use 365 office on RDS without the VL or Enterprise requirements?
There are doubtless more.
I don't know, the mail in gsuite had been a helluva lot better than outlook in 365 (which is worse than the old exchange days before my decade in gsuite).
Never head much of a problem with drive either, hangouts could be better, but it was better than Skype, why we switched.
Maybe it's just being old and used to gsuite, but switching to o365 four months back with a new employer is not working for me.
Well that explains a lot.
You mind explaining why an SQL server wasn't good enough ?
Except for the fact that SQL doesn't belong to Microsoft, of course. Oh, you forgot the existence of MSSQL ? What a shame.
Looks like NIH is well and alive at Microsoft. Either that or Microsoft is desperate in finding things for Sharepoint to do.
'First, the user interface in Microsoft's "AMA Space" is poor.'
And you're surprised? Poor UIs are what Microsoft does best these days.
The whole Windows TIFKAM clusterf**k leading to Office and O365 UIs: Universally shite IMO
Wasted space galore, oversized fonts, undersized fields... I've not even seen the AMA space yet I can already clearly picture it in my mind from the description :-|
I can help you imagine how it looks...
I've found that applying an override stylesheet is the only bloody way of being able to read the "modern" Microsoft web pages.
Its not like I would trust the software on my main development amd64 workstation. Would be really useful to run it on my ratty netbook though.
The provide a 32-bit build for Windows. Is Microsoft trying to make out that Linux is for power-users only and they would always have the latest stuff?
This is not true. I moved to Linux exactly so I can get out of the consumption / update cycle.
As long as it is.
Because it is a monopoly.
Yes, just no flaps for the ear.
There are two types of things that can exist. A thing can either be eternal, or have a beginning. A thing that has always existed is therefore not "made". A thing that was made, and therefore at one point never existed, needs someone or something to make it. So by definition, it can be defined that God is in the group of things that always existed, and thus were never made or does not require something to make God.
You can ask anything. But you can also ask better questions. ;)
Yes. A thing can have a beginning or no beginning. An end or no end. Thus three possible combinations of those two groups.
The error people make is trying to first apply (or force) a thing into a group then proving it (bias and assuming) , instead of checking and reasoning on which group it falls into.
For example the above assumptions that a definition of God requires a beginning or that the universe (physical as we currently observe) has no beginning. Data shows our universe has a beginning and logic can define a God without one.
PS not sure why asking about beings? Anything can be eternal or not, if possible or not logically contradictory. A being with a beginning and no end is logically possible. Just not one we (fianite beings) can ever observe.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
