New Outlook.com (Hotmail) sign-in page : Autofill/Autocomplete not working?

dustyduck said:

The funniest thing is I also got a request for a satisfaction survey from MS.  I do believe that this shows MS's right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.  I will answer the survey after the fix is complete with a link back to this thread

I have just received an e-mail with this:

Remember that question you asked on Microsoft Community a few days ago? 

Title: New Outlook.com (Hotmail) sign-in page : Autofill/Autocomplete not working?

We noticed that the question hasn't been marked as Answered yet and we were wondering if you resolved the issue.

A few days ago??  ... It was nearly a month ago.  Maybe that says something about Microsoft's perception of time.  Even if it'll take months to fix a simple error, maybe they'll consider that as only "a few days"!

There also seems to be a little confusion between "answered" and "resolved" ...

• Has the question been answered?  In fairness, yes.  Harshavardhan Rathod has kindly let us know that the problem has been reproduced and recognised, and that "the developers will be investigating the issue and soon there will be a fix rolled out". So thank you for that, Harshavardhan.
• Has the issue been resolved?  No.  Autofill still doesn't work, and "We do not have any turnaround time on when this issue will be fixed". As Langware has said: "The bug is easily reproducible, and the old sign on screen supported auto-complete (so the developers already have the code needed to implement auto-complete)."

I suspect that this, like so many '5-minute fixes', may be waiting in line behind some long-term mega-project that someone has decided is more important. If that's the case, here's hoping that MS might rethink their priority-management policy.  Resolving 'quick-to-fix' problems can greatly improve user satisfaction without any significant negative impact on longer-term projects. But letting those quick-fix issues build up and drag on forever can seriously impact a company's reputation.

Food for thought, MS.

Cherche,

Yes, this site often confuses "answered" with "resolved".

Often, one Moderator will "answer" my post with a scripted reply (such as "clear your browser's cache") then another Mod will mark the first Mod's reply as the "answer". When that happens, I go back and unmark the reply as an answer .... because the reply did not actually resolve my issue.

The person who starts a thread (called the Original Poster or OP) has the ability to mark and unmark other replies in their thread as the "answer". Moderators also have this ability ... even though they (Mods) cannot really determine if any given post actually answers (i.e., resolved) the Original Poster's issue.

So, if you see that any one else has marked a post in your thread as an "answer", and you do not agree that the given post truly answers (resolves) your issue, then you (as the Original Poster) can go to the post in question and unmark it as the "answer".

As far as the Support Case that you opened, if you use the link in the email that gets sent to you when Microsoft responds to the case, you can open a web page that shows all of the responses to your case. You will see that each time Microsoft responds, your case is marked closed (look near the top-left of the page that opens when you use the link from the email you receive). The case gets "closed" regardless of whether the issue is "resolved". When that happens to my case, I click on the re-open link (also near the top-left of the page) and re-open my case. I want my case to remain open until Microsoft either fixes the bug, or states that they have no intention of ever fixing the bug.

Thanks for all the tips, Langware.  I'll put them to good use.

Cherche,

Just to let you know, I received this update to the Support Case I opened ...

... Microsoft acknowledge that the issue is a bug it is not a system design. We are aware of this and rest assured that we will rectify the issue soon. ...

So, we now know that this issue (auto-complete not working in the new sign-on page) is a bug and not something that Microsoft designed into the new sign-on page.

Of course, most people posting here knew it was a bug (but some continued to argue that the problem was "by design").

Cherche

As I stated earlier this is the same issue that MS had last time they upgraded Outlook.  Their system testing is very poor and they do not keep any of their old test sets from previous versions.  Their Help Desk people only read from scripts and have very little knowledge of how software relates to other functions of the system.  They also do not have any problem review process in place for reported issues.  I think their motto is don't do anything and it will go away or it can become someone else's problem.