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Sitting in the ship room monitoring OneNote feedback

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We just released a major update for OneNote for Windows Blue!  This was a lot of hard work for test and now I am sitting in a conference room as we see what customers are saying about the new release.  It's a lot of fun and very eye opening (OCR is initially getting a lot of coverage and that is great).

The interesting part of testing this release was working with partner teams that are not here in Redmond.  We had a team in Europe add the OCR engine for us and a team in Japan add the new camera functionality.  Coordinating testing with each team was straightforward - we reviewed their test plans, performed code reviews, etc…  The unusual part of this was working with teams in very different time zones than here.  We would catch the team in Serbia right before they went home when we got into our offices.  Japan was just tough since they are not only in a separate time zone but in a different day. This is nothing new - many teams that work worldwide deal with this all the time - but for me this was the first time I had to work this way for a short period. 

Next up we will
monitor all the feedback coming in.  Most people here will look at the business side of the requests but my eyes will look for test coverage and any bugs users report.  While I am confident we caught these, there may be some cases that bubble up.  If that happens, we will add test cases, investigate what went wrong and so on. 

Anyway, it is pretty exciting to be in the ship room right now. If you get the new version, let us know what you think!

Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,
John

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 25, 2013
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 25, 2013
    Good ideas - I sent this list to our design team.  We don't have a voting mechanism but contacting us directly here on our blogs is a good start.

  • Anonymous
    November 25, 2013
    Some more requests...

  1. Why doesn't Onenote app have highlighters?
  2. Ability to move radial menu to a different location
  3. For Onenote 2013 users on Surface Pro, we currently have to sync once for the Onenote app and once more for Onenote 2013. Is there some way to harmonize this?
  4. Nested notes (i.e. subpages) in Onenote app cannot be collapsed in list view, making it cumbersome to navigate large notebooks

  • Anonymous
    November 26, 2013
    I actually make a lot of notes which are a mixture of handwriting and typed text. In OneNote 2013 this goes perfect, at least when you turn of the automated switching between pen and keyboard. You either click on the text selection tool or on a pen. Not so much on OneNote MX. You start off typing, which OK. The you pick the pen and the interface context menu switches to the pen tools. But what if you now need to switch back to text typing? If you have the physical keyboard connected it is a breeze. Just start typing or mouse the cursor with the mouse. But if you have just the tablet the only way to get back to get back to typing is to navigate back to another note/section and then return. This cold easily be fixed by adding a keyboard command to the pen radial menu. That means, I'm done writing and I want go back to typing.

  • Anonymous
    November 27, 2013
    Ruud Bijvank: That command already exists in the pen radial menu. It is called "Exit Draw".

  • Anonymous
    December 10, 2013
    Omar Atay: Yes you're right and no you're not. I'm using a Lenovo Helix which comes with a active digitizer pen. If I click with the mouse or trackpad on the radial menu selecting a pen, the exit draw command is there. If I start jotting, or continue jotting with the pen, the exit draw menu item does NOT appear.

  • Anonymous
    December 10, 2013
    I found a sort of workaround. When jotting, I "right click" with the pen. That'll bring up the on screen keyboard and I just need to hit one key. That character will go nowhere, but it forces OneNote back into non-draw mode.

  • Anonymous
    December 16, 2013
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 16, 2013
    As addition to my post above, here is the diagram I tried to create using OneNote. somepic.someserver.de/.../7f9738b5ae10b978394cb312592df313.png (actually created it in Powerpoint) I've marked the problems/limitations I ran into (also see the above post).

  • Anonymous
    December 16, 2013
    I sent these comments to our design team - thanks for the in depth feedback!