Family safety: Feedback on recent changes to multi-device management

Oh My God!!!

Just checked the family interface after last post, and it is true, Microsoft have indeed made it worse yet again. This is freaking ridiculous, they are making the family safety more and more useless with each change.

As Mark said, you no longer have any control of what times they can use the computer, you can set 1 time and that is all. The previous method was far better.

The people who are in charge of family safety clearly do not have children and know about them, which frankly is just incompetent to put such people in charge of such a project. So now we have Windows phones with no parental controls at all, and windows computers with less control than than they had before.

So far this is looking like Windows 10 is going to be a bigger FUBAR than Windows 8 was.

Hi Jenn -

The new interface that changed (everything) the other day has made managing applications even harder. Before, I could toggle with a radio button whether an app was allowed or blocked, which was invaluable to make sure my kids weren't playing around before finishing school. Now, I can only "remove" the apps from one list or the other, I can't 'add' and app, or move it from the allow to the blocked list or back.

Also time settings were great with the grid as I could block out a window in the middle of the day, if I wanted. Now, I can only define one time range/per day with an allowance of time for that day. What if I want them to have access from 8 am - 10 pm, but block out a time from noon-2 pm for example? I can't do that. The grid was easy and intuitive. This didn't need "simplifying."

 Mark

here is the thing: the problem guys is that this functionality is so important for us... but we are few people if compared to the rest of Windows users, so when they have to decide how to do a transition from a technology to another, we are not taken in any sort of consideration.

that's how it is going... because in any other case, if a deployment of a new functionality completely breaks the previous one - and this is what is clearly happen - a rollback would immediately take place, with many apologies.

my advice is to couple the Microsoft Family Safety with another solution, for example I use the Asus router RT-AC56U which incorporates a time range and sites categories filter at device level (MAC address): when one technology doesn't reach, the other helps.

So last night at 1:35 am my special needs child was in bed with the tablet that wasn't supposed to be working after 9pm.

family safety fail.

and I think it failed totally because I didn't get a report for it at all.. Good times today sorting that mess out.

the ONE THING in my life I no longer had to nag about, and be the bad guy about.... Gone.

I'm taking it personally, it sucks. You guys broke the one thing that brought peace to my house that wasn't via a "Fruit" product. Why???? Everything you say you are giving me sometime this summer, I had. It worked.

so now I have to exert mental energy on something that fixed that once for me, and brought peace to the house....

meanwhile, i keep the tablet and she is horrid to live with.

thanks for nothing MS, stab me in the back after sucking me into being your friend again. That would be sucker on my forehead.

Hi Jen,

Can you confirm whether or not the new approach, which talks all about Windows 10, will provide the same features still in Windows 8.1.

I'm asking because there's so much being said about this being in preparation for Windows 10.

Most people are obviously finding having to manage (children) x (devices) number of profiles a real problem and that includes me however, there's possibly some benefit of making this optional.

With the increasing use of Microsoft accounts, and the variety of devices in a typical home, it's quite likely that parents may want to apply different curfew/usage/filtering on different devices. I don't mind my children using  our new Linx tablet but definitely don't want them downloading things onto it whereas I'm not so concerned about their own laptops.

Regards

Steve