Providing product feedback using Microsoft Connect

Scott StephensonHello Developing for Dynamics GP community. David has been busy posting lots of great information and I thought it was time for my team to start helping contribute. My name is Scott Stephenson and I am the team manager for the Microsoft Dynamics GP Developer Support team in North America. Over the next few months, you will start to be introduced to other engineers from within my team as they help provide content for this blog. We look forward to working with this community and using the blog to provide additional information. Let's get on to my topic today.

While not deeply technical in nature, one of the items I, as well as other engineers, talk a lot with customers and partners is how they can help influence what is included in future releases of Microsoft Dynamics GP.  As Microsoft representatives we will often direct customers and partners to a site where you can enter suggestions. I wanted to provide some additional information about recent changes in this area.   We recently moved away from the Global Suggestions link that many of you found in CustomerSource and PartnerSource to a site called Microsoft Connect.  Microsoft Connect is a way for customers and partners to provide feedback on all Dynamics products, including Dynamics GP. 

MSConnect

The Microsoft Connect site requires users to login with a Microsoft Live ID profile. So, to gain access to the Microsoft Connect site, you must first register in Microsoft Connect and join the Connect for Microsoft Dynamics Group. If you have previously signed up in the Microsoft Connect site for other programs, you will still need to click on the first link to join the Connect for Microsoft Dynamics program.

New to Connect and Connect for Microsoft Dynamics - Click here to register for Connect and this connect program.

Already Signed up for Connect, but new to Connect for Microsoft Dynamics - Click here to get to the Connect for Microsoft Dynamics home and start entering suggestions.

Once you are logged in, you will see the page shown to the right here. Once here, you can either search and vote for an existing suggestion or enter a new suggestion. 

So what's next?

You may wonder what happens next after you enter your suggestion.  It does not disappear into a black hole, but rather it is reviewed regularly by both the Dynamics GP Product Planning team and Support to triage the suggestions.  As the submitter of the suggestion, the system has been setup with a mechanism that allows this group to not only status suggestions, but also provide a reply back to the external connect site that can be viewed by the submitter.  So as the submitter, you will receive feedback on your suggestion. 

Have a look at the following posts from the Product Management team at Inside Dynamics GP Blog:

Another important aspect of the Microsoft Connect site is the ability vote on product enhancements. While we will triage new suggestions as they come in, we will also periodically reviewing existing suggestion to watch the vote counts. Those items with higher vote counts will get additional consideration in planning for the next releases. So, please vote for your favorites.

For additional information

As support engineers talk to partners/customers that have specific product suggestions, they will encourage you to go to the Microsoft Connect site and enter the feature request on the site. By having the customer or partner enter the suggestion themselves, they will be notified of the status of their request after triage occurs.  The link the customer or partner will typically receive is https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/productsuggestions/productsuggestion.htm Secure Link

Scott

09-Sep-2011: Added Links to Inside Dynamics GP Blog posts.