Microsoft readies new Feedback Portal preview for end of 2021

Earlier this year, Microsoft created quite the stir by yanking a number of its Office 365/Microsoft 365 UserVoice customer-feedback sites with little heads-up. At the time, officials said both existing and some new mechanisms would replace UserVoice for various products.

On October 6, Microsoft published information about a new Microsoft Feedback Portal that will be available in preview form before year-end. (Thanks to Carl Knecht, @rialtus, for the link in the Admin Portal for the entry.)

The new Feedback Portal will debut first for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Edge, the entry says. It also notes that “other products, like Windows, will be added next year.” The coming Feedback Portal is built on top of Dynamics 365 Customer Service, the entry says.

The Feedback Portal will allow users to post new feedback and upvote/comment on feedback others have given. It also will allow them to see previous feedback they submitted to Microsoft in the My Feedback section. There, they will be able to view responses from Microsoft and get status updates on their feedback.

Users still will be able to provide private feedback within individual Microsoft 365 apps, Teams and Edge, the entry says. Microsoft will update the Feedback Portal entry with more information as it moves forward. At launch, the portal will be available in all markets but in English only. More languages and other products will be added in the future. 

Earlier this year (around May), Microsoft  rolled out a way for IT pros to view their users’ product feedback via a mechanism in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. That product feedback option is located under the Health node in the Admin portal.

A note about Microsoft feedback on the docs.microsoft.com site that is dated October 5, 2021, includes this information:

“To meet Microsoft’s legal obligations to customers, we’re working on a new experience in the Microsoft 365 admin center that lets administrators view, delete, and export the feedback data for their organizations. As part of their data controller responsibility, customers own all user feedback data and this functionality will assist administrators to provide direct transparency into their users’ experiences with Microsoft 365 products and enable user feedback data to be provided as part of any Data Subject Request. Global admins and compliance data administrators will have the ability to view, export and delete user feedback. All other administrators, as well as readers, will be able to view and export feedback data but can’t perform compliance related tasks or see information about who posted the feedback (such as user name, email, or device name).”