Have you guys been able to resolve the issue with Entourage dropping the connection to Exchange accounts? I would love to use the program to consolidate my work stuff and still have my calendars sync, but, I just can't. My connection won't stay on for more than 20-30 minutes. I have log into OWA for whatever reason and then reconnect with Entourage. It's highly discouraging.
As far as I know, we don't have an issue with Entourage 2008 dropping the connection to Exchange accounts. If you're still seeing it, you should work with IT at your company to resolve the issue. They can open a support case with their Microsoft account rep. If their account rep and tech support can't solve the issue, then it'll get into our hands here in MacBU to solve it.
Can't you make them give you guys more resources or freedom?
Well, you're right that we're a small team, and we have a lot less people than, say, our Windows Office counterparts. We have grown consistently in the three years since I joined. We were at ~180 then, and we're in the 250 range these days. In addition to the growth we've already seen, we currently have open requisitions. In fact, ever since I've joined Microsoft, we've always had open requisitions. We've just got more of them open today than we did when I started. Would it ever make sense for us to grow to WinOffice proportions? Probably not -- there are a few more WinOffice users than there are Office:Mac users, so I wouldn't expect parity.
Growth is a dual-edged sword. It's not as though someone new comes in and we implant a chip so that they know our codebase instantly (although maybe someone over in Microsoft Research is working on that ...
). It takes time for them to ramp up, and additional time on the part of our more experienced people to help them ramp up. Once they get up to speed, they're able to do more; but their first six months or more aren't ones where we count on a lot of output from a new hire.
As for freedom ... I'm not sure if we could be more free than we already are.
Organisationally, we sit in a separate division from the Windows Office division. That means that we make our own decisions about our future. If you were to look at my place in the Microsoft org chart and compare it to, say, a UX researcher from the Outlook team, the only person that we have in common in our report-to chain is the CEO.
We are, of course, in close contact with the other Microsoft divisions that we need to work with (WinOffice, Exchange, Messenger, etc etc etc), but we decide what we need to do that's right for our users. There are places where we are in lockstep with WinOffice (file format is a great example here), there are places where we diverge from them (take a look at the Ribbon in WinOffice 2007, we went off in a completely different direction because we didn't think that the Ribbon as implemented in Office 2007 was right for our Mac users).
All that said ... if any Mac developers are reading this and want to join one of the largest all-Mac development shops outside of Apple (or are we the largest? I don't know how many Mac developers Adobe has these days), PM me and I'll point you towards more information about the jobs that we have available and answer whatever questions you might have about what it's like to work for the Evil Empire.
(Or just go to
Microsoft careers and select "Mac Office" for the product to work on to see the currently-open positions.)
This isn't to sound all corporate shill on you guys. There are things about MacBU that we need to do better. We've made mistakes, and we've set about fixing them. Some of that we've been able to release to the world already, in the form of service packs. Some of that will be seen in the next version of Office. Some of that you can learn more about if you're at MWSF -- swing by the booth and chat with us about what we do and how we do it.
Regards,
Nadyne.
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