For those that may not know – Microsoft have ran the Windows Insider Program since the 1st October 2014 and it has allowed Windows users to run a variety of different test builds of Windows depending on their own preferences ranging from builds in the “Dev Channel” for technical users willing to experience an unstable system, to builds in the “Release Preview” channel for users who want to test near stable builds of Windows perhaps for release validation in their business.
The premise of using these builds is that you provide feedback to Microsoft – whether this is a critical bug that stops you using your PC, a little quirk when using your PC (such as text not displaying as expected, or a dialog box not displaying correctly), or simply a suggestion to make Windows 10 better – Microsoft wants to hear from you!
Microsoft receives thousands of items of feedback every day and it can be difficult to filter through the noise – “it’s broken” or “it doesn’t work” is not actionable by engineers at Microsoft to help you with your problem.
There are 3 questions you can ask yourself when submitting feedback in order to make it as helpful as possible.
What was I doing before the problem occurred?
Sometimes when an error occurs, what you were doing in the lead up to the error occurring can be important.
For example, saying “My Computer Crashed” doesn’t provide a lot of detail, but something like – “I went to open a Word Document saved on my USB pen and my PC stopped responding. I had to manually reboot my PC to continue working” is more helpful.
What did I expect to happen and what actually happened?
In order to help figure out a problem, it can be helpful to state what you expected to happen and what actually happened.
For example, expanding on our Word document on USB example, it might be helpful to state “I went to open a Word Document saved on my USB pen. I expected the document to open in Microsoft Word so I could begin to edit it. What actually happened is I double clicked on the file on my USB and my PC stopped responding (I couldn’t move my mouse and the keyboard would not work. I had to manually reboot my PC to continue working”
Could someone follow my instructions to reproduce the issue?
A nice simple test to make sure that you are providing enough detail in your feedback is to ask yourself if you handed your feedback to someone else, could they use your instructions to reproduce the issue?
If they can, well done! You have provided enough information in your feedback!
The issues that you come across are important to you and they are important to Microsoft too – they want you to have the best experience when using Windows 10 – just be sure to provide them with enough helpful feedback for them to do so!