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

In addition, having just had to go thru and FIX what was broken, I will for sure have to be looking to a 3rd party solution.

WHY did you remove the option to allow me to pick and choose which apps they can run?

WHY did you remove the ability to prevent them from downloading things? (I just had a ton of requests for shopping ad **** to run, meaning some child downloaded something).

Sure, I get it - it is not in your best financial interest to allow you to prevent access to the store, or running all kinds of games... but, this is a FUN machine in some hours, and a SCHOOL machine most of the time. I need to be allowed to decide what is appropriated on ALL LEVELS for my children... not what "you" deem is appropriate to allow me to control. 

This is MY CHILD, not YOUR COMMODITY.

I feel I have failed to find the words needed to convey how serious this is, and how much a step backwards and failure this is on your part. You had something WORLD CLASS, that was eons better than your Competition. And you ripped it from the hands of the parents that were using it to give their kids freedom with limits. Allowing us to decide on a case by case basis what those limits needed to be. 

You, as the Microsoft Family Safety team do NOT know what is best for my child. Your job is to merely provide the tools to me, as the parent, to make those decisions.

And you failed. 

You failed to ask your users what features were important to them.

You failed to convey AHEAD OF TIME that it was going to break.

You failed to give us the same function we had before.

You failed to understand that each CHILD, USER and FAMILY is different, that you are not the permission God, that you are not the ones that should be making decisions for my family.

You failed the very children that you were entrusted to protect.

You failed.

Period.

Hi Mark -

Could you tell me a little more about how you used the old 'grid' feature? Why was it important for you to have those "blocks" of time that you could place in the middle of the day?

I'll reply as well. The grid feature was awesome. Daunting at first, but once I set it up my wife and I were very happy.

At the end of the day, because of setting up the old Family Safety we went ahead and decided to purchase a Surface 3 for home use.

For our child, we have two times setup: (1) Morning (1 hour of access) and (2) Early Evening (45 minutes within a 1 hour of access) and then the weekend is more open.

Now we have to work around this by just setting up the morning access range w/ 1 hour allocated for the whole day. So he burns through that. And then we have to login twice during the evening (30 min + 15 min) to give him permission.

He will not self-regulate - if the machine tells him he has more time he wants it and then giving him screen time is more of an issue than a help. And now we risk that if we have a sitter who can't give him evening access he'll bemoan the lack of screen time. So in that case, an iPad is the back-up.

My feedback: family safety, between the time schedule and the app management, over-corrected for simplicity and dropped below the functionality we need as a family (and that had enticed us to get a new Surface). It was best in class. Bringing back the grid and detailed app management are my two top wishes, and ensuring all those settings (we use MSA) propagate easily across devices.

If you ever get a Beta to try out restoration of these features, Sign Me Up!

Nick - this child doesn't have the account with the Windows 10 thing, my other DD does - and her account is working fine on her laptop.

The one i'm having issues with had reverted to an adult account multiple weeks ago. I fixed that, and reviewed it late last week when i was trying to block a website and change her hours. No changes I make to her account on the website stick. 

I made the same changes in her sisters account on the 2n1, and they stuck. Something is up with the middle kids account.

I'll see how it goes tomorrow when I get the new hard drive for the computer. Nothing like being forced to start from scratch....

I did just get to tell her - anything she saved to OneDrive, she has, anything local.... gone. 

She is crying.

I feel like I answered this. 

I homeschool.

Typical CSR responses it seems. *sigh*

So well stated!!!