Windows 8.1: Best Experience of Your Web with Sites and Apps together

This blog post is part of a series of guest posts we’re publishing this week from different people in groups across Microsoft who helped us build Windows 8.1. – Brandon

With the general availability of Windows 8.1, you’ll get the best experience of your sites and apps together on your favorite Windows device.

In Windows 8.1, IE11 delivers an experience that is fast, fluid and perfect for touch. IE11 puts your web sites first, delivering the best web on Windows across the full range of Windows devices and screen sizes that’s equally great for touch, mouse, and keyboard. You can have as many open tabs as you want, and side-by-side browsing with your favorite sites and Windows Store apps together.

As Group Program Manager for Internet Explorer, I am fortunate to work with the team of driven, energetic engineers who are passionate about the web. With the help of many teams in Windows and across Microsoft, we are responsible for making sure your experience of the web on Windows is the best it can be. Here are just a few of my favorite features in IE11 that take advantage of the great capabilities of Windows 8.1.

Windows 8.1 with IE 11 introduces support for live tile notifications when you pin your favorite web sites. Your pinned sites can now be alive with activity, pulling data directly from the websites so your Start screen is updated with the latest posts, scores or stocks – information from the Web right on your Start screen.

Together with the Start screen team in Windows, we designed the live tile support for sites to enable all the same tile sizes and layouts that apps enjoy. We set out to make it as easy as possible for developers to build live tile notifications using the existing RSS feeds for their sites, and we built BuildMyPinnedsite.com to help developers to create beautiful tiles and live notification support with just a few clicks.

On my Start screen I pin my favorite sites like Techmeme, Gizmodo, and deviantART for live notifications, alongside with my favorite apps like Flixster, Bing Weather, Bing Finance, and Twitter.

My Windows 8.1 Start screen with live tiles for sites and apps

Windows 8.1 is great for getting things done quickly with apps and site together. The IE team works closely with the rest of Windows to ensure that IE is fast and fluid when following a link into the browser from another modern app, and when launching modern apps from the browser. We designed the 50/50 split specifically with the modern IE experience in mind, to make the most common patterns of using apps and websites together automatic on Windows. No other tablet makes side by side multitasking this easy.

Opening a site automatically side by side from Mail

Clicking a link from the Mail app or launching an article from the Reading List app IE is automatically arranged side-by-side. You can check a map while reading directions to a friend’s house. And whether you are using a small device or a large one, you can see two things at once on the web by opening multiple windows of IE side-by-side.

You can easily compare two sites at once or use two sites together by launching multiple, full-featured windows of IE11.

Comparing two sites opened side by side in IE

One of my favorite time savers is making a Skype call directly from IE, side by side with a site. IE automatically detects and highlights phone numbers on a webpage. When you see a phone number, just tap on it and begin your call right next to your webpage using a calling app like Skype or Lync. It’s incredibly useful when you are making a reservation or appointment, or want to talk to customer service right from a webpage.

IE automatically recognizes phone numbers making a call with Skype a click away

Like many Windows customers, I spend a lot of time on the web reading. Since the release preview, we introduced a new Reading View in IE11, which is optimized to display text from the Web in a beautiful, full-screen view within the browser. Reading view automatically stiches together multi-page articles and adjusts for your screen size and orientation. Sitting back with your Windows 8.1 tablet and reading the web has never been as easy and enjoyable.

Reading view in IE11 for a beautiful, fast, fluid reading experience, especially on tablets

You want touch to just work – but some sites haven’t gotten around to it. IE11 has many improvements to make touch just work– like giving always reliable feedback when you tap a link, HTML5 drag and drop support, and making common patterns like hover menus work.

A long press to open hover menus with touch and access the command bar

Some of the feedback from the release preview was that opening the IE address bar isn’t as easy using the mouse on a non-touch laptop or PC, compared with tablets. We worked with the Windows apps team to come up with a solution that improves access to the app bar with mouse and maximizes the screen for your content. We added a “peek” for easier access to the address bar in IE by keeping a minimal 15 pixel bar at the bottom of the screen that you can always click on bring up the address bar. You’ll find the same great experience in the Mail and Calendar apps in Windows 8.1.

Hovering your mouse over the app bar “peek” for a hint, clicking opens the address bar

For some people browsing on large screens like big all-in-one PCs is important. We made IE great for that too. On my desktop PC, I turn on “Always show address bar and tabs”. When I browse I make the most of my big screen. It’s easy to switch tabs, get to my favorites, and navigate with the mouse.

Make the most of your large screen with “Always show address bar and tabs”

With IE11 and Windows 8.1 you can browse the way you want whether you are using touch, or mouse and keyboard, and whether you are on a small device or a large one.

We optimized the IE11 browsing engine for real-world sites to download and display fast and be highly responsive to touch. Over multiple releases we’ve built IE on the underlying support in Windows for graphics hardware acceleration and fast, fluid touch input for modern devices. We’re fortunate to work side by side with experts in 3D graphics, composition, and rendering, with the deepest understanding of the Windows graphics stack and modern hardware. By building together and optimizing for Windows we can ensure great performance and battery life while enabling exciting new experiences for the web.

Developers can build next generation experiences with professional-quality web video, and hyper-fast 2D and 3D web technologies that make the most of the underlying hardware. IE11 supports real world standards and compatibility, and new developer tools enable developers to build high-performance web experiences on Windows devices.

Here are just a few examples of how the web is better for developers with IE11:

Modern Web development is easier. IE11 supports the latest standards and frameworks actively used by web developers. Brand new F12 tools in IE enable iterative, visual debugging and tuning of web sites. Modern.ie enables cross-browser testing, no matter where you choose to develop.

Hardware-accelerated 3D web graphics. Interoperable WebGL experiences run on all devices, taking advantage of GPU acceleration. IE11 scans for unsafe WebGL content and implements a software-based renderer to complement the GPU. With Windows, graphics subsystem failures are not fatal, and WebGL continues to run. With IE11, your 3D experiences can access device orientation to create new interaction opportunities for immersive web content.

The existing web continues to work – even better: IE11 is interoperable with existing sites, which just run faster and look better in IE. Of course, intranet sites and apps continue to run in IE11, which supports Compatibility View.

Enable professional-quality video experiences on the Web. IE11 enables HTML5 video without plugins. IE11 supports the latest standards for closed captioning, streaming that adapts to available network bandwidth, and rights management—so all your video content can be as good as the professionals. Power-efficient video streaming in Windows 8.1 extends battery life for web video.

We built IE11 to make the web great on Windows 8.1 and getting to the sites you love fast and using apps and sites together. These are just a few of the ways IE11 on Windows 8.1 delivers the best web experience on any tablet.

We’re excited for you to try IE11 when you update to Windows 8.1 from the Windows Store starting tomorrow, and enjoy the absolutely best browsing experience on your Windows device!

Rob Mauceri
Group Program Manager
Internet Explorer

View the original article here

One experience for everything in your life

Many of the same issues still exist...this is just putting lipstick on a pig. This obsession with FULL SCREEN app with hidden command bar, horizontal scrolling items...I've gotta tell you guys...ppl hate Metro. There's a lot to like about Metro, but there also lots to hate...

1. Why does the dialog box in Metro run from one edge of the screen to the the other? It's ugly and doesn't make any sense. What if you have multiple apps side by side and a dialog comes up, does it cover both apps?

2. Since the advent of computer UI, items have been scrolled vertically. Visit the Windows Store and you have this huge list of items scrolling horizontally. This is just plain weird, no other way to put it. This horizontal scrolling is every where in Metro...

2. Open a few Metro apps and all of a suddenly you realized that all the Metro apps look the same to you, with the HUGE text header and the big rectangles and squares and the horizontal scrolling of items. There is no personality from apps to apps. Enough with the big ugly rectangles already. Enough. Developers should be allowed to develop their app differently. People are tired of this big block rectangular thing called Metro...just too overwhelming.

3. Why the obsession in Microsoft with full screen? A full screen calculator or timer on a 23" screen, who needs that and where do they do that at? Doesn't make sense. To make matter worse, the buttons in the app bar are hidden by default. Take the app Fresh Paint for example, it comes up in this full screen mode with the app bar or command button hidden. No matter how many times I used this app, I feel stuck and have to wonder for a minute how do I exit from this thing. There is obviously not a lack of space or real estate, so why are button being hidden. If it is on a 5" phone, I would understand this, but this doesn't make sense. Command buttons need to be visible and available and you should not require user to right-clicked before showing the app bar.

3. Why is the Metro scroll bar so ugly? Why is the context menu also so ugly...they don't even match the Metro theme.

4. Users hate full screen, especially on large displays. If the OS is called Windows, where are the windows? So if GDR3 now allows you to dismiss an app by clicking on the X, why can't you do the same in Windows 8.1? Have you ever tried to close an app in Windows 8 using a mouse by dragging the app from the top to the bottom? C'mon Microsoft. The markets will speak for itself. Consumers rejected Windows 8 and I think that they will reject it again, because the some core usability issues still exist, even though you guys have fixed some.

5. Is it me or does Windows 8 start screen not look like a crowded convoluted mess, with all the square blocks animating? There need to be breathing room between the "Live" tiles, the greatest innovation from Microsoft (more on this in a min). Also, why is it that when you install an app, it installs everything, including help files, in your "app apps" screen. Imagine having over 100 apps install on your machine?

6. MS love to brag about live tiles, but truth be told, Live Tiles is probably only applicable in maybe 20% of the scenario (weather app, calendar, etc). 80% of the time, all you have is a glorify icon in a big rectangular square taking up important real estate. Also, it doesn't make sense have all that animation like a coloring book even when the live tile is not visible on the screen. All you're doing is killing the battery.

View the original article here

Check your schedule with a modern calendar experience for Outlook.com

Today we release a new, modern calendar experience for Outlook.com. Outlook.com calendar has been completely redesigned with a modern, intuitive interface which puts you in control of your schedule. Our calendar service is faster than ever, helps, focus the on the events and appointments, and tasks that you have added to the, and you can take your calendar on any device. The new Outlook.com calendar rolls out now available and are all over the world this week at https://calendar.live.com/.

The new, modern design of the Outlook.com, along with many Microsoft products, optimized "Content over chrome", i.e. in the case of calendar, your events and appointments are in the foreground.

 

We also have navigate and getting information to your calendar faster than ever before. You can add or edit events with a single click, enter an event by simply dragging of the mouse over the area of the date or time, you add tasks, without having to open a new page to the and jump to a specific date simply by clicking on the date.

Another important part of our design philosophy is to ensure that a consistent behavior that adds you up more than just the individual parts. You'll see the in as the new calendar naturally in the same family with your Inbox, address book and SkyDrive fits:

Today's calendar is wholly of course across the Internet-it has to work surprisingly well on your mobile devices.  Used sync Outlook.com Exchange ActiveSync email, calendar, and address book on your Smartphone, Tablet, in the new Outlook-2013 with the apps, Gmail, calendar, and people on your new PC or tablet with Windows 8. The Outlook Connector can integrate your calendar with earlier versions of Outlook desktop software. Connecting your calendar on the mobile device is.

You connect your Microsoft account, can access services such as Skype, LinkedIn and Facebook to see your friends birthdays in the calendar automatically from these services added. Current weather forecasts for many regions and breaks for a growing list of regions their calendar also shows you. You can import calendar (ICS files) or subscribe to public calendars from other services. iCalShare offers you thousands of holidays, sport and other calendars that you can subscribe to with one click. Or try to export a Google Calendar, and then you import Outlook.com, into your calendar by clicking the import link in the header.

We prioritize your privacy and your calendar is private so of course by default.  But we make it as easy as possible to share your calendar with others. All what you need to do is, click 'Share' in the header menu. When you share a calendar that others can access to the calendar, but as an owner, you determine who can add events to and edit. You can set it up in just a few clicks of the mouse.

You can either privately share the calendar with specific persons (by entering their e-Mail address), or you can click on "Get link", and then email or post this link anywhere you want.  You can also subscribe to change notifications on a shared calendar. So if a parent adds to or an event-a family meal, football game, doctor's appointment changes, make date night-you will be sure that the whole family by e-Mail informed. And can you so many shared calendars as you like.

Whether you're already using Outlook.com for your email, or you are looking for just a new, modern calendar, you can get started with each e-Mail address at Outlook.com calendar , as soon as your account is updated.

We are looking forward to your opinion.

--David Dennis, senior program manager lead, Outlook.com calendar

View the original article here

Really want to do some winter cleaning? Switch to Outlook.com for the best email experience across all your devices

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AppId is over the quota

We were very surprised to see Gmail announce last week that they'll soon end support for Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), unless of course you're willing to pay Google for your email.  It means that many people currently using Gmail for free are facing a situation where they might have to degrade their mobile email experience by downgrading to an older protocol that doesn't sync your calendar or contacts, doesn't give you direct push of new email messages and doesn't have all the benefits of Exchange ActiveSync.

So if you want a better email, especially on your phone or tablet, it's time to join the millions who have already made the choice to upgrade to Outlook.com.

To learn more about how to get started with Outlook.com, check out the technical spec for Exchange ActiveSync in Exchange 2013 just follow these simple steps:

To learn more about setting up Outlook.com on your mobile device, see our simple instructions here.

  

For those still on the fence, a quick introduction to why EAS is so important for a seamless experience across devices could be helpful. There are many protocols for sending and receiving email.  POP and IMAP were designed decades ago, were considered state-of-the-art at the time, and are still used by millions of people.  Both were created before mobile phones really even existed.  To have a great email experience in 2012, a protocol needs to do more than just send and receive messages on a PC.  It needs to work really well on a variety of mobile devices, to sync not only email but also your calendar and contacts, to do this automatically, and in a way that preserves battery life.

Exchange ActiveSync was first introduced in 2002 as a way to help you have a great mobile email experience. Since then, it has continued to improve, with a number of optimizations specifically for mobile devices, including tablets:

Designed around Direct Push of information so a device can be updated in near real-time when an email is received - so you can get notified when there's new email instead of having to constantly check manually. Unlike IMAP or POP, EAS also syncs calendars and contacts.Setup is much easier because EAS supports AutoDiscover so you don't have to remember and type server names; instead, you simply type in an email address and password to set up a new device over-the-air.Built with bandwidth and battery life as key design considerations; for example, sync requests are bundled for all folder syncs in order to optimize the amount of battery required

You can read more about these innovations and a whole host of other nitty-gritty details in the history of Exchange ActiveSync.  It's because of these advanced consumer benefits that many devices choose to natively support Exchange ActiveSync-whether that's a Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad, or even a number of Android devices.  You can see more detail in this chart of some of the other devices that support EAS. 

We hope you have a wonderful winter holiday. As you enter the New Year, we encourage you to seize the opportunity to upgrade your mail to a service that puts the consumer first and gives you a great mobile email experience. 

 --Dharmesh Mehta, Senior Director, Product Management

View the original article here

Using personalisation to create unique digital experience

There’s a high correlation between great customer experience and three key elements of loyal behaviour: willingness to buy more, reluctance to switch, and likelihood to recommend. Given today’s consumers interact with brands across many different channels and devices, marketers are left with a number of challenges – which channels are most relevant to their brand, how do they manage multiple channels and how do they evaluate the success and business impact of their activities?

Check out our recent webinar with Forrester and Pippa Barron, Renault UK’s Online Development and Publishing Manager. Here they discuss best practices to increase engagement, relevancy and personalisation and put customers in the driving seat.

Read on to see how we’re working with Pippa and her team to create a unique experience for Renault’s customers:

Understand what your customers want: Customers increasingly expect to conduct all their vehicle research online, including pricing, product, colours, and options, before they even go into a dealership. We’ve worked with Renault to integrate engaging media across its site. Adobe Scene7 displays images, shows video, and provides other content that allows visitors to explore available models and vehicle features for a better digital experience.Use enhanced images: By providing 360-degree views of each vehicle the customer can even see inside the car before going to the dealer.Offer personalised options: Using the colour-rendering option Renault customers can see swatches of all available colours and zoom in to really get a feel of what their car will look like in the colour option that they’ve chosen. This level of personalisation lets customers get a good idea of what colour car they want before they ever step into a dealership.Provide engaging hot spot content: Renault used Scene 7 to implement engaging hot-spot content (both text and video) where specific features and functionality are described and demonstrated in detail. This enables Renault to showcase its products and to zoom in to give the customer a great experience about what the product is really like. Offer relevant product videos: Renault used Scene7 to add four to six product videos per car showing key features and functionalities in detail. These included test drives or TV commercials that highlight the performance attributes of different models, as well as some information about the car that might move the viewer closer to a purchase decision.Provide up-to-date brochures and product price guides: Renault maintains a vast library of e-brochures and price lists for all its models and these are updated weekly using our technology. It also has a wide selection of supporting brochures about paint trim selections, financing options, and features like satellite navigation to provide the most up-to-date content for its customers.Evolve to meet customer expectations: Renault’s looking to evolve in ways that meet customer expectations in terms of mobile and desktop functionality. It has a mobile-optimised site that is compatible with all smartphones, and it will soon offer the 360-degree spin and zooming functions as well as video.

For more information on how to personalise the brand experience, please click here.

View the original article here

The new Visio start experience

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AppId is over the quota

The new Visio start experience is all about helping you quickly and easily find the template you need to begin your diagramming experience. You'll see that we've updated all our template icons to be simpler and easier to quickly scan.   We've also color coded them, so that, for example, all the flowchart related templates are green. Additionally, new search functionality will make it easy to find exactly what you're looking for to get started creating your diagram.

Ultimately, we think these improvements will make it a lot faster to go from booting Visio to drawing your diagram. 

If you don't yet have the Visio Preview, you can find instructions for getting it here so that you can try the changes out for yourself.

One of the first things you'll notice in the new start experience is that templates are presented in a single flat list that lets you see the breadth of content the new Visio has to offer. We also put our most popular templates first, so that they are easier to access. 

All of the new Visio's template icons have been redesigned to be simpler and easier to scan, as well as color coded by template type. For example, all of your business and scheduling templates are blue, flowcharts are green, network, software and database are orange, etc. We found this made it even faster for folks to quickly scan the list of templates and find the one they're looking for.

The new Visio has enabled its entire template library to be searchable via the search bar on the start experience. Simply type in the template you're looking for or click one of the "Suggested searches" links to get started. And, if you liked our old template categories, you'll notice we've pre-populated them as the suggested searches, so they're only a click away. 

For example, searching for "uml" returns all the Visio templates related to UML diagram notation.

Over time, based on usage data from the new Visio, we plan to modify our start experience's template order to reflect changes in template usage. For example, if we learn that most folks really enjoy our new Timeline or BPMN templates, we may move them up higher in the Featured tab view so that the start experience is optimized to be as fast as possible for the largest number of people possible.

Of course, if you do have a few favorite templates that you don't want us moving around, we also have an easy way to pin things to the top of the list. To do so, simply hover over the template you want to pin, and click the pin icon. You'll see the template move to the top of your templates list and it will stay there, until you tell us otherwise. 

To unpin the template, simply hover over the template and click the pin icon again. The next time you launch Visio, the template will be back in its original un-pinned location. 

When you've found a template you'd like to use, you can single-click it to display the Enhanced Template Preview, which will provide you with a larger preview image of the template icon, a description of the template, and allow you to select your template unit type (US/Metric).

If you prefer to jump right into the template, simply double-click the template icon from the Start screen. This will use the units you selected last time you opened this template.

Above the template icons, you'll notice two different tabs: "Featured" and "Categories". If you do prefer the hierarchical view of our templates from Visio 2010, it's still available. Simply click on the "Categories" tab above the template icons and your view will change to display templates organized by type. You'll still get all of the modern and color coded template icons too.

However, by default your view is set to the Featured tab, where you will see the flat list of templates ordered by popularity and your own usage over time. 

The Categories tab is also where you'll find "New from existing..." and any templates that were installed with an add-on. Having a dedicated area for this content will make it easier and faster for users to find and we're really excited to provide our more advanced users this functionality.

Finally, you can set the Categories tab to be your default view using group policy:

Policy Name: L_DefaultBuiltInTab

Registry Path + Value:[ HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Visio\Application] - "OfficeStartDefaultTab"

0 = Featured tab

2 = Categories tab

If you have custom personal templates you can view them in the new Start experience in a separate tab. Just go to Options and under Save add the path of your templates folder where it says "Default personal templates location". 

With the new Visio's start experience, we hope it's easier than ever for you to both find the template you're looking for, and discover new templates you may have never knew Visio offered. We encourage you to explore- look through all the templates we provide and try opening a few you've never seen before.   You'd be amazed at wide array of content we've got in here!

To learn more about the Start experience across all of your Office apps, stay tuned for an upcoming post on the Office Next blog.

View the original article here

Part 1: Experience Office 365 from a Workers Point of View (Video)

a.stbar.chicklet img {border:0;height:16px;width:16px;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:middle;}a.stbar.chicklet {height:16px;line-height:16px;}Office 365 - Part 1: Experience Office 365 from a Workers Point of View (Video) Create or Link an account or Sign in using [f] [t] [in] Please wait... Create or Link an account It only takes a few minutes to join.

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Close Microsoft Office Office Blogs Office 365 Home All Blogs Products Word Excel PowerPoint Outlook Access OneNote Publisher Office Web Apps Perspectives Office Casual Office in Education Office Exec Office 365 Subscribe to our RSS feed
Send to friendRSS for post commentsCollaborationContestCustomer StorieseducationemailenterpriseExchangeExchange OnlineFAQfindwelllaunchLync OnlineOfficeOffice 365Office 365 businessOffice 365 for small businessOffice 365 for small businessesOffice 365 Small BusinessOffice Pro PlusOffice Web AppsProduct InsightsReady for WorkSharePointSharePoint Onlinesmall businessUnfiltered HTMLUnfiltered HTML Part 1: Experience Office 365 from a Workers Point of View (Video) by Stephen Bury on March 22

Office 365 provides secure anywhere access to email, shared calendars, IM, video conferencing, and document collaboration. To show you the Office 365 experience from the end user's point of view, we've created a five-part video series that starts today.

This first video shows the services that make up Office 365. In addition, there is an overview of Office Web Apps, which are online versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. Also included is an introduction to tools for collaboration, email, calendaring and instant messaging.

In the coming weeks we'll go deeper with each service, highlighting how you can use Office 365 in your work every day. The services we'll explore include:

Exchange Online and the Outlook Web App for email and calendaring SharePoint Online for collaboration with Team SitesOffice and Office Web AppsInstant messaging and more with Lync Online 2010

                                  

 

--Stephen Bury

See how customers are using Office 365 here.

Interested in trying or buying? Research plans or start a free trial now.

Just want to know more? Visit Office365.com.

Tags: Cloud Solution, Online sharing, improve collaboration, Office 365 cloud other Microsoft blogs Official Microsoft Blog Microsoft On The Issues The Windows Blog Bing Community Zune Insider Major Nelson other product blogs Office For Mac Office Web Apps InfoPath Project Visio other Office blogs Office IT Pro Office Updates Office Labs SharePoint Information Workers Legal | Trademarks | Privacy Statement © 2011 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

View the original article here

Part 4: experience Office 365 from an employee perspective - co-operation with team sites (video)

Whether your company has 10,000 employees, or one, are the chances of that cooperation is an essential part of doing business. Without the right infrastructure can become complex with basic activities such as document sharing, and tracking the task completion. Part 4 of our series showing how team sites, a feature of SharePoint online, can work more efficiently with people inside and outside the organization. Watch and learn how you can manage documents, contacts, and tasks from an internal Web site, which is accessible on a mobile device or a desktop computer.

Office 365 offers secure anywhere access to e-Mail, shared calendars, IN IM, video conferencing, and document collaboration. See previous videos from the series:

How work together your team? Share your story on Facebook: www.facebook.com/office365

-Buried-Stephen

As customers, 365 use Office, you will find here.

Test or to purchase? Research projects , or start a free trial now.

Just want to know more? Visit Office365.com.

View the original article here

Adobe & the Customer Experience Professionals Association

We are pleased to announce that Adobe is a proud sponsor and founding member in the newly formed Customer Experience Professionals Organization.

Responding to a greatly increased need for a centralized and interactive community that brings together the growing field of all those who develop, manage, optimize and envision how organizations interact with their customers, the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) launched today with a number of leading companies signed as Founding Corporate Members and Gold, Silver and Bronze Sponsors.

CXPA (CXPA.org) is a global industry trade group whose members are responsible for creating and maintaining an overall positive customer experience – a vital objective for any organization that offers products or services for sale. CXPA supports the professional development of its members and advances the field by providing research and education, establishing standards, offering networking and career opportunities, promoting the industry and creating a better understanding of the discipline of customer experience.

The mission of this new organization is essentially directly in line with where we are going as a company, both in terms of how we serve our customers and in our enterprise platform roadmap where we continue to deliver and enable outstanding experiences for the customers and employees of our enterprise partners and customers.

The Customer Experience Professionals Association is a global, non-profit organization that supports the professional development of its members by enhancing networking, providing research and education, establishing standards, promoting the industry, and creating a better understanding of the discipline of customer experience.

Governed by a Board of Directors to be drawn from its membership, CXPA is led by Bruce Temkin, co-founder and chair, and Jeanne Bliss, co-founder and vice chair – pioneers in the customer experience field that have a deep understanding of the roots of this burgeoning industry and a keen shared vision of its future.

There are many customer experience networking groups, but the industry has hit a stage where it needs a single, collective voice to map its evolutionHelp customer experience professionals embed customer experience management skill sets across their organizationTo identify standards and best practice approaches and transfer those skills across the industryTo ensure that customer experience management continues to generate a vibrant set of opportunities for customer experience practitioners

The CXPA recognizes that there is an ecosystem of customer experience professionals which includes companies that are committed to customer experience, individual professionals who are committed to customer experience, and vendors that help companies improve their customer experience. So there are membership options for all of those constituents.

Recognizing the inherent value CXPA offers ? and the critical, strategic impact customer experience has to their organizations ? the new association has already attracted a number of leading companies that have signed as either Founding Corporate Members, sponsors, or both.

We are proud to share the Founding Corporate member status in this new effort alongside other prominent ecosystem players such as Confirmit, Cox Communications, EMC Corporation, Fidelity Investments, Mindshare Technologies, RightNow Technologies, Safeco Insurance, SAP, Strativity Group, Symantec, Tealeaf Technology, Sapient Nitro and Universal Mind.

“We are excited at the opportunity to be one of the first companies to be at the industry table contributing to the conversation around this growing practice area,” said Rob Tarkoff, SVP of Digital Enterprise Solutions at Adobe. “Customer experience is important in so many ways to Adobe, in our work with our customers, and within the digital enterprise solutions and platform that we have built to optimize customer experience.”

Read more about the association online here.  You can also view the original post on the Adobe Customer Experience Management blog.

Ben Watson, Principal, Customer Experience at Adobe. @bitpakkit.

View the original article here

Deus ex Machina: Customer Experience Management

Deus ex Machina: Customer Experience Management « Experience Delivers function clearSearch() {document.search_form.s.value = "";} .avatar {vertical-align:middle}.credit {font-size: 50%;}adobe.com      Experience DeliversTransforming customer experiences by designing processes from the customer-in, enabling rich, meaningful interactions  

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OneNote Mobile for iPhone 1.1 adds new features, improves the user experience

[Editor's Note: this blog post was written by OneNote Mobile team member and technical writer of Mona Azarians.]

As the OneNote Mobile app for the iPhone in the United States made its debut in January, it has high in the free app and productivity classified categories in the iTunes app store have been.

Combined with the passion, the OneNote fans for their favorite product, many great proposals have enormous interest in the mobile app, and requirements have created. We have tackled some of this customer feedback into the latest upgrade to OneNote Mobile for iPhone, version 1.1, which is now available.

  

Delete unwanted notes and pages with others to share in e-Mail only even easier with
the OneNote Mobile 1.1 for iPhone version update, available now in the iTunes app store.

Whether you download OneNote for the iPhone for the first time, or upgrading your current app, some of the new features and improvements in version are here 1.1:

The ability to email your notes directly from your iPhoneAn easier way to get comments you delete no longer shroud more intuitive symbols and a home button, makes it easier to select or move between multiple NotebooksA sign-in scene and more simplified help synchronize with a Windows Live ID AccountFaster notebook and better overall app PerformanceA always more OneNote Mobile for iPhone help page in an easy to scan-FAQ-format

On the last element, The new OneNote Mobile for iPhone help page answers to your most the frequently asked questions - how you your mobile notes with OneNote notebooks synchronize on your computer now includes for example. You come to the help page from within the new app, go to settings, tap Help and support, and then tap on the first link on the screen.

Just for the record: the OneNote team reads all comments and reviews in the app store and the OneNote Forum on the Microsoft answers site, which is actively monitored the official support forum for all versions of OneNote, including OneNote Mobile. Their ongoing feedback helps us create a better app, so please Download this latest version and let us know what you think!

--Mona Azarians
 

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What is Customer Experience Management?

“Customer Experience (CX a.k.a CEM) is the sum of all experiences a customer has with a supplier of goods or services, over the lifecycle of their relationship. This covers several phases including awareness, discovery, attraction, interaction, transaction, use, service, cultivation and advocacy.
These are not simply sequential, rather a Continuum of phases existing with the context of CX.

CX is not something you just bolt on to your existing enterprise architecture.

So why does CEM/CX matter? The simple answer is for retention of your existing business customers. Your competition is a click away and studies show people are 3 times more likely to tell others about a bad experience.  People declaring a bad experience with you are ripe for your competition to steal.

With Social Media, bad CX stories can escalate on a viral basis and ruin a business’s reputation in weeks or even days.  People notice BAD experiences and get emotional!  They want a good customer experience.

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User Experience and Real-life Inception

User Experience and Real-life Inception « Experience Delivers function clearSearch() {document.search_form.s.value = "";} .avatar {vertical-align:middle}.credit {font-size: 50%;}adobe.com      Experience DeliversTransforming customer experiences by designing processes from the customer-in, enabling rich, meaningful interactions#30DaysofUX (2)dream (1)inception (1)UX (5)  

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Revised - Adobe Flex and Connected devices for Customer Experience Management (TC)

Revised – Adobe Flex and Connected devices for Customer Experience Management (TC) « Joseph Lee function clearSearch() {document.search_form.s.value = "";} .recentcomments a{display:inline !important;padding:0 !important;margin:0 !important;}adobe.com      Joseph Lee / Revised – Adobe Flex and Connected devices for Customer Experience Management (TC)by Joseph Lee  

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Experience Delivers Goes on Tour

Experience Delivers Goes on Tour « Experience Delivers function clearSearch() {document.search_form.s.value = "";} .avatar {vertical-align:middle}.credit {font-size: 50%;}adobe.com      Experience DeliversTransforming customer experiences by designing processes from the customer-in, enabling rich, meaningful interactionsAdobe (79)customer experience management (16)social enterprise (7)  

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2 New Videos on the Connected and Entertainment Experience with Microsoft Products

Back in December, I posted about a really neat video directed by Keith Rivers that highlighted how up and coming indie artist Andrew Belle used Windows 7 and Windows Live to create a song. If you liked that video, you won’t want to miss these two new videos that were also directed by Keith that go beyond Windows 7 and Windows Live to highlight the entire breadth of Microsoft products being used together to create some amazing experiences. These videos, along with the Andrew Belle video, were showcased at the Microsoft booth at CES with all the PCs and devices that were used.

Video 1: Making of a Flash Mob

Have you ever wondered what kind of work goes in to coordinating and planning a flash mob (click here if you don’t know what a flash mob is)? Using PCs such as the Dell Inspiron Duo (read Ben’s review) and the Samsung QX410, as well as their Windows Phones - local choreographers and dancers here in Seattle use Windows Live (Messenger, Mesh) and Kinect to plan and coordinate a flash mob at Pioneer Square. Pretty impressive.

Video 2: Road Trip to Mt. Hood

In this video, skiers and snowboarders head off on a road trip from Seattle to Mt. Hood to hit the slopes. While on the road, and then even on the slopes and from the lodge at an elevation of 6,000 feet, they use their Windows Phones, Kinect and Xbox, and the ASUS Eee Slate (read Ben’s review) to stay entertained with music, movies, and games.

I got on the phone last week with Keith to talk about these videos and get some backstory. For these two videos, Keith told me his initial approach was to do something similar to what they had done with the Andrew Belle video but with 2 new musicians. However as he began to concept the videos with Microsoft, they decided they wanted to focus on other real stories that branched beyond the music industry: one about coordinating a flash mob and another following a group of skiers on a road trip to Mt. Hood. Keith not only directed the videos but wrote both of them as well and he did so in just a matter of a few days. He had about a month to do these videos which included the writing all the way to finishing post-production and handing off the final videos to us (Microsoft) for CES.

Keith used resources around him for these videos. Keith happened to be good friends with Bobby Bonsey and Egan Orion who are flash mob choreographers and producers in Seattle. He had been fascinated by the idea of a flash mob and thought following the design and production of a flash mob could be really interesting for people to see. And Keith also grew up skiing in the Pacific Northwest and had done some really great videos early in his career on freestyle skiing. He also knew of some local skiers and snowboarders who participated in competitions in the area. So deciding to do a video on a flash mob and another on skiing came as easy choices. For the skiing video, he chose the location of Mt. Hood because of the weather and because it had a beautiful lodge that gave an antique, historic look he was looking for.

Each video shoot had its challenges. The shoot for the flash mob video was done pretty fast and because of that, Keith called it “one of the most insane productions we’ve ever done”. For the Mt. Hood shoot, getting the live-action shots of the skiers and snowboarders was pretty challenging and the lift shots proved to be really challenging with the person holding the camera literally hanging off the back to film. His team was also shooting live products in use, which sometimes took extra time to light correctly to adjust for the brightness and contrast of the screen. But on the other hand, Keith also recalls how much fun it was for his crew and the people in the videos to get to use some of the newest products like the Dell Inspiron Duo and Windows Phone 7, and how addicting Kinect Sports was and easy to pick up.

In making these videos, Keith worked with producer Rebecca Davis, TJ Williams Jr. who was their Director of Photography, Nick Pezzillo who was the editor for the flash mob video and Daniel Soderberg who was the editor for the Mt. Hood video.

Keith says he was gratified that Microsoft gave him the opportunity to go out and do some really creative stories with these videos. I certainly enjoyed them and am often fascinated by the backstory behind videos like these. I hope you enjoyed hearing the backstory for these videos!

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