I've been reflecting on the process of receiving and managing feedback. It can sometimes be a challenge to receive feedback and not to take it personally. In addition, the level of difficultly in obtaining feedback can increase considerably if people are under stress. During these times its most important to ensure people feel heard and that their feedback is considered in its entirety and taken seriously.
First up, I have three objectives in managing feedback:
Accurately capturing feedback - without challenge, and with facilitation and exploration.
Reviewing feedback - to remove items that don't contibute to a better deliverable.
Incorporating feedback - with the view of making the deliverable better.
Remember, your goal is to: 1) improve the quality of your work, 2) ensure people feel heard - in that order.
Some other rules on managing feedback:
Only seek feedback on work that is ready for review. It's really annoying to thoroughly review incomplete work.
Identify who will need to provide feedback. Organise one-on-one time to do this with them. Avoid group feedback sessions. Some will be happy with a conceptual review. Others will want a more detailed review. Either is fine. Some may seek rassurance from others. Let them do this outside of the review you are undertaking.
Craft scenarios/stories that relate to the item you are reviewing. This helps focus on how the deliverable will be used (ie whether fit for purpose).
Run through these scenarios/stories in your feedback sessions.
During these sessions:
Take notes - particularly on all comments and feedback made.
Try on each comment or piece of feedback for size. Does it make sense - if not ask questions.
Do not question the relevance of any feedback. Some will be meaningful and important, other feedback may be venting ad frustration. All feedback gets recorded.
End with a commitment to get back to them. To replay the feedback that they provided and what you did about it
Once you have your list of feedback:
Enter each item into a table
Filter out anything that does not relate to improvements you can make to your deliverable
For each item that is left, work through each. Make changes to your deliverable and/or provide your comment against each. Each item does not need to be actioned. You just need to provide comment in some cases.
When we undertake staff consultation, it's sometimes difficult to align calendars between interviewers and particpants. To make this process easier, we use Microsoft Bookings (hidden in the bundle of goodies you get with most Office 365 licences). I like Bookings because:
Participants can choose a time that suits them
Participants can also easily reschedule or cancel bookings over the web
We, as interviewers, can set days/times when we are generally available for interviews (like within a particular week, for example)
Our availability is synchronised with Outlook. So if we schedule a meeting for something else, it will remove booking slots over that time.
Bookings is based on time slots. So firstly, decide the length of the time slot for an interview and the amount of buffer time you may need to prepare for and to wrap up the interview. Also decide upon the timeframe you want to open bookings for and the staff you want to conduct these interviews. You'll need this information to setup a booking calendar.
To create a booking calendar go to office.com and click on the App Launcher (top left), All apps and then Bookings
Before setting up the calendar, you need to define staff that will undertake the interviews:
Select Staff from the left hand blade, and then Add new staff
Provide a phone number (in case the booker needs to get in touch)
Assign the appropriate permission - Admin, Viewer or Guest
Check Events on Office calendar affect availability - this person can then block out time in their calendar to make themselves unavailable
If they work a few hours a day and/or on particular days, you can turn off Use business hours and modify the days / times that the person is available.
Hit Save once done.
Then to create the calendar for one-on-one interviews:
Online meeting is turned on (ie done over MS Teams)
Duration set to 30 mins
Buffer time is set to 30 mins
No price set - of course
Max no of attendees set to 1 (this can be increased to accommodate group sessions)
Enable let customers manage their appointment when booked
For availability options, set time increments to 1 hr, and min / max lead time to 1 hr / 365 days (or change as you require). We also set general availability to Not bookable.
For assign staff, add the staff member of members that will be performing the interviews.
For custom fields, just enable customer email. You'll then have some way of contacting them if you need to contact them (to reschedule, for example).
For reminders, check Notify the business via email on changes and send meeting invite in addition to confirmation email. Also add a reminder a day before that the appointment is coming up soon.
Also, enable Show this service on the booking page.
Then, go ahead and test your new booking page by placing a booking. Double check the following things in an incognito browser window:
That the details provided on the page are correct
That booking times are within the date ranges you specified. Also check that any time blocked out in your diary is not able to be booked.
Your new booking page is then ready to be released into the world!
Microsoft Remote Help is currently in Preview and offers an improved way for people in your organisation to offer and provide help to others. It's a bit like Quick Assist with some added features.
I like it because it provides:
An opportunity to focus on a Microsoft stack,
A way for anyone within your organisation to provide support to others within your organisation (assuming you have given them permissions to do this). All they need is the Remote Help app.
Better security (only those within a tenant can provide support for each other).
The ability to monitor support sessions through Endpoint Manager (where you can also proactively get information about the device you are providing support for).
An opportunity to move away from Teamviewer (good but expensive). Remote Help is free for the time being whilst it's in Preview.
Some helpful features - like viewing multiple monitors and drawing on-screen.
There are some limitations
Does not permit unattended access. This is fine for us, because we access remote appliances (like servers) over VPN/RDP.
Need an account on the tenant where you are providing support. For clients where there is no Office 365 tenant, we have 3CX or MS Teams for screen sharing / remote access.
Only supported on Win10/11 machines and users with an Intune licence
Remote Help consists of a few parts:
A client app (similar to Quick Assist but not baked into Windows). Not dissimilar to Teamviewer, you need to install this on every client machine that may need to review or provide support. This app can be installed manually, or packaged as a Win32 app and deployed automatically through Endpoint Manager.
Tenant settings (to enable Remote Help and assign people to the support role (ie can provide support through Remote Help).
Select a role that has Remote Help access and click Assignments. You can check this by selecting a role, click on Properties, and scroll down to find remote Help app permissions.
Click + Assign to create an Assignment (ie a group(s) that are to be assigned access) and follow the prompts.
Wait 5 minutes. The permissions may take a little while to apply.
You are now ready to provide support using Remote Help.
