Tim Long

Forever in Electric Dreams
The life and times of a Small Business Server MVP and all-round technology enthusiast. Tim is founder of TiGra Networks, a company based in South Wales UK specialising in small business IT. This blog is aimed at Microsoft Small Business Specialists, IT professionals, Astronomers and anyone interested in science and technology.

I've had it with broken partner directories

image A little while ago, Microsoft wrote to me and asked me to test their latest partner finder solution. If you're a partner, then I'm sure they wrote to you too. Well I tested it, and guess what? It was broken. In fact, it was so completely and utterly broken that it was only finding 5 small business specialists in the whole of UK (I know for a fact that there are several hundred).

I gave feedback. Nothing has happened. It still doesn't find my company or any others in South Wales.

Look, Microsoft: it's not that your tool needs tweaking - IT DOESN'T WORK AT ALL. Don't you think this is an urgent situation? Why can't we go back to the old tool, which worked pretty well and really didn't need changing? Moreover, don't you think you owe it to your partners to actually TEST these things before you unleash them on us and our customers? Gadzooks! Are you having these search tools coded by an infinite number of monkeys?

This is highly unprofessional and a bad show. And I'm not the only person who thinks so.

[UPDATE: I have received notes today from some of the UK small business team that the problem is being worked on. In all fairness, they are a great bunch and they do listen to us]

Posted: Jun 19 2007, 02:15 AM by Tim Long | with 3 comment(s)
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Comments

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# June 19, 2007 2:46 AM

Richard Tubb said:

Hi Tim - I share your frustration and excellent use of Gadzooks. ;-)

I tested the Partner Finder last week and in addition to it not working at all under any Firefox (which potential customers WILL use) implementation I could find, using Internet Explorer I struggled to find any other Small Business Specialists locally - let alone myself - and they do exist!

To be fair I only gave feedback in the past few days, but it is a little shocking to think this is a Live system. How many potential customers will visit the site, find it doesn't meet their needs, and look elsewhere?

# June 19, 2007 2:54 PM

Tim Long said:

The partner finder is now working. Despite what I said above about liking the old tool (it was 2am and I was frustrated) I really rather like the new search. It is more informative and tells the customer what I actually do. You have to hand it to our UK Small Biz team at Microsoft - they do listen to us and when they want to, they can move mountains.

# June 21, 2007 11:16 AM