Please, Connect me if I’m Wrong!

After implementing Microsoft Dynamics AX and now Dynamics 365 already for years, there are features in the product that are missing or there are things wrong or not supported. There are some ways to provide feedback to Microsoft. This post is intended to get you familiar with Microsoft Connect. Also some of my thoughts on this tool will be described which should be picked up by partners, customers but also Microsoft themselves.

How to Connect

You can encounter a bug, you might miss an important feature or a translation can be incorrect. Microsoft is interested in hearing what is important for you. Believe me, they are really interested!

These days you can start using LCS issue search for finding known issues. Using this tool you can find possible hotfixes for your environment. If there is no fix available and you think you found a bug in a live environment and you have a support plan, you can e.g. contact your partner or use Microsoft Premier support for submitting a request. When something is indeed wrong, Microsoft could provide a hotfix for your scenario. Then the details will also made available on LCS issue search for other users.

There is a clear difference between wrong system functionality (bug) or missing features. The support plans are not covering missing feature requests. For many years Microsoft is using Microsoft Connect to gather feedback. This tool is supposed to gather these feature requests. I heard a lot of feedback from partners and customers on this Connect tool that it is not working or Microsoft is not doing anything with the request. For this reason I wanted to point out in this blog that we (partners and customers) are not using the tool to provide the correct information. Microsoft at the other hand is not aware how we think of this tool. I will explain…

UPDATE: The feedback has been moved to a new Microsoft Ideas website. Connect has been depreciated.

Microsoft can do better

When you submit a feedback item, you don’t hear too much about it or it will be closed without providing a clear explanation. This was often my experience on the feedback items. For this part I would like to ask Microsoft to provide more and better feedback on what them made doing this. When they start to interact with us on the items, they will be more aware of the details. But when do they start looking at these requests? Continue reading…

You can do better

When you login for the Microsoft Dynamics ERP feedback, you can view existing feedback items or create a new one. One thing that you will notice is a “Votes” part on each feedback topic. We are not using this! Many items remain on the positive vote count ‘1’. Only a few do have more votes. So start voting today! Microsoft is focusing on items which are important for more users. Only one or two users is not an indication for Microsoft to start looking at the item.

It will help you and other companies to regularly review new items on the list and vote if it is also important for you or when you think it would be important for multiple companies.

If you created a feedback item yourself, share the details and ask others to also review/vote on your item. This will lead to more votes, so Microsoft would be able to prioritize features correctly. To be honest, I can also do better.

In the past I was using this tool and started to provide votes and thoughts as well. Sorry for the negative votes on some items. This is also possible. When I do think it is a nice enhancement which is of benefit for most users I will vote positive. But I’m also having a certain opinion. If I do think a feedback item does not make sense, I also provided negative feedback. E.g. who is waiting for a feature that is called ‘Test’ with no details? I you don’t have an opinion on certain items, let others decide to vote or not. Some feature requests might be related to a certain industry or country.

I will set a new recurring reminder to review the new items more often. What made me start writing this blog and promoting this tool, you might ask me? I had contacts before with Microsoft on a certain topic. This was more talking about e.g. bank revaluation support. This feature is currently only available as localization in Russia and Poland, but is helpful in many other countries as well. During an implementation we came across the requirement again and I had a conversation with Microsoft Support. They pointed me to an existing Microsoft Connect item. “André, can you please vote on the item as only 21 persons thinks it is important?” Only 21 out of all Dynamics AX users… When only 21 persons will vote for a candidate, this person will never become a president. See my point?

So, if we all start using this tool, there will be a better chance that feature requests will be picked up. For your interest: I understood that the bank revaluation is already considered for a future release, but voting still makes sense!

There is more…

If you are working with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations and have some experience with previous versions of Microsoft Dynamics AX, you might have noticed that currently it is not possible to use calculations in decimal fields. In older versions you could e.g. type 644.23 * 1.25 to get a result 805,29 in the cell. If you are also missing this feature, start voting here: Online calculation in decimal fields.

That’s all for now. Till next time!