We’re getting around to doing our FY21 planning for the Excel team, and I thought it might be worth looking back a bit and sharing the high level FY20 plans and how we’re doing against them.

We’re getting around to doing our FY21 planning for the Excel team, and I thought it might be worth looking back a bit and sharing the high level FY20 plans and how we’re doing against them. For folks who don’t know me, my name is Brian Jones, and I lead the Excel PM team. I’ve worked on a number of things in Office over the years including Word, File Formats, Extensibility, and Access. I’ve been leading the Excel team for the past 4 years, and every year we have an internal framework around how we organize the team around a set of top level goals. I often considered posting those frameworks in this community, and decided now is a great time to give it a try. This is the beginning of what I hope will be an ongoing conversation with this community on the direction we’re taking the product.

We don’t plan out the full year down to the level of specific work items - instead, we identify the top level goals we want to focus on and identify a collection of initiatives that we fund where each initiative is tasked with hitting one or more of those goals. We “ship” daily at this point across multiple platforms, so the groups are constantly rolling out improvements, and each initiative adjusts their plans throughout the year as they learn through customer interactions and usage data. We use a framework that looks a bit like Objectives & Key Results, but I wouldn’t say we use OKRs in the strict sense.

This past year we had 5 key goals - for each of these we have about 3-5 key measurements, as well as 2-5 funded initiatives. Below is a slightly modified version of the framework I used with the team this year. I had to pull out a couple initiatives that aren’t public yet, and removed the specific metrics from the goals for now (I’ll look into which ones we might want to share publicly over time). I’m sure there are a number of terms in here that won’t be familiar but as I plan to spend time in future posts drilling into each goal, and I’ll be sure to clarify those terms and provide more context:

For accessibility purposes, here’s the text from the image for the top level goals… I will spend time later drilling into each one in future posts for the folks who find it useful:

\n
• Web – customers can use our web app for all their work and should never feel they need to fall back to using the rich client
\n
• Value – customers of our premium subscription offerings feel that Excel gave them great returns on their investment (ROI)
\n
• Modern – customers are on the latest version of the product and able to use Excel for all modern teamwork
\n
• Engagement – everyone finds more value in modern Excel, using it for a wider variety of tasks
\n
• Culture – people love working on the Excel team, and feel they can be their authentic selves.
\n

We’ve made significant progress against all of these this year, and are on track for hitting many of the targets we set (but not all). If you’re on the latest builds, you’ve probably seen a lot of these improvements roll out, or will soon.

In future posts, I’ll drill into each of the goals and talk more about what we’ve delivered to help hit those goals.

-Brian

We’re getting around to doing our FY21 planning for the Excel team, and I thought it might be worth looking back a bit and sharing the high level FY20 plans and how we’re doing against them. For folks who don’t know me, my name is Brian Jones, and I lead the Excel PM team. I’ve worked on a number of things in Office over the years including Word, File Formats, Extensibility, and Access. I’ve been leading the Excel team for the past 4 years, and every year we have an internal framework around how we organize the team around a set of top level goals. I often considered posting those frameworks in this community, and decided now is a great time to give it a try. This is the beginning of what I hope will be an ongoing conversation with this community on the direction we’re taking the product.

We don’t plan out the full year down to the level of specific work items - instead, we identify the top level goals we want to focus on and identify a collection of initiatives that we fund where each initiative is tasked with hitting one or more of those goals. We “ship” daily at this point across multiple platforms, so the groups are constantly rolling out improvements, and each initiative adjusts their plans throughout the year as they learn through customer interactions and usage data. We use a framework that looks a bit like Objectives & Key Results, but I wouldn’t say we use OKRs in the strict sense.

This past year we had 5 key goals - for each of these we have about 3-5 key measurements, as well as 2-5 funded initiatives. Below is a slightly modified version of the framework I used with the team this year. I had to pull out a couple initiatives that aren’t public yet, and removed the specific metrics from the goals for now (I’ll look into which ones we might want to share publicly over time). I’m sure there are a number of terms in here that won’t be familiar but as I plan to spend time in future posts drilling into each goal, and I’ll be sure to clarify those terms and provide more context:

For accessibility purposes, here’s the text from the image for the top level goals… I will spend time later drilling into each one in future posts for the folks who find it useful:

\n
• Web – customers can use our web app for all their work and should never feel they need to fall back to using the rich client
\n
• Value – customers of our premium subscription offerings feel that Excel gave them great returns on their investment (ROI)
\n
• Modern – customers are on the latest version of the product and able to use Excel for all modern teamwork
\n
• Engagement – everyone finds more value in modern Excel, using it for a wider variety of tasks
\n
• Culture – people love working on the Excel team, and feel they can be their authentic selves.
\n

We’ve made significant progress against all of these this year, and are on track for hitting many of the targets we set (but not all). If you’re on the latest builds, you’ve probably seen a lot of these improvements roll out, or will soon.

In future posts, I’ll drill into each of the goals and talk more about what we’ve delivered to help hit those goals.

-Brian

We’re getting around to doing our FY21 planning for the Excel team, and I thought it might be worth looking back a bit and sharing the high level FY20 plans and how we’re doing against them.

Would love to read more about these goals and how you're working to deliver on them!

I am an Excel VBA developer. I generally work with a large volume of data distributed across multiple workbooks. I like to use a central userform to control the application. From this userform the operator will select source files to process and, typically, will select a single target file in which to collect the results of processing. 

I want that main userform to usually stay visible on top, even as the code may be opening/closing many data workbooks as part of processing. Right now, under SDI, the main userform disappears when I open another workbook. Right now I am \"living\" with this. The app still works but it doesn't look professional and the operator can't easily interrupt a long process, even though I have it set up (with doevents) so that he theoretically can - except the userform with my \"Cancel/Abort\" button is gone. There are other problems with the disappearing main userform. 

I personally don't care if you use SDI, MDI, or anything in between, as long as you give me this basic functionality. And it would be nice to be able to turn off screen updates, too. 

Can you give me this functionality under SDI? I can't be the only developer to feel the lack. You must have heard similar comments from others. This has nothing to do with multiple monitors or links between workbooks or any of that amateur nonsense. I store raw data in multiple workbooks. I run VBA code to process that data, going from one workbook to the next sequentially. I want to do this from a main userform which stays visible on top. Okay, I'm repeating myself. Can you give me this very basic and, I believe, very critical, functionality? 

Steve_K_Excel 

When I read from Brian, \"no, we're not planning on bringing VBA to the web apps. The scripting scenarios you would accomplish with VBA are a really key piece of the value of Excel, and we think that needs to work across all platforms.\" I thought that across platforms would mean both the desktop and web versions of Excel. Great, maybe a newer more user friendly way to do some automation. But no, Office Scripts don't work with Desktop and no plans for VBA to work with Web. So what we really have are to two very separate applications with the same name, Excel....? (not to even touch on using VBA in Word and Oullook)

Because if VBA only works in desktop Excel and Office scripts only work in the web Excel, those apps are not any more interchangeable then Excel and Google sheets. No cross functional automation language between desktop and web is a very dysfunctional move by Microsoft. 

Steve_K_Excel 

Are you able to shed some light on what \"not at this time\" means?

https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304921-excel-for-windows-desktop-application/suggestions/10561194-conditional-formatting-apply-to-named-ranges?tracking_code=c5505047dc2b47fcc97d4a78792d572a#{toggle_previous_statuses}


This has been a product suggestion for almost 5 YEARS!
If \"not at this time\" when?

It is one of the most voted items not only in its category but across the excel suggestions.

Responding by saying \"it's in the too hard basket\" is not a valid response.

Please provide an ETA/road map of when you actually intend to resolve this product suggestion!

There is absolutely no point in users using the voting system of forum if they are simply going to be ignored.

Thanks
Bleddyn

Hi Brian Jones (OFFICE) , thank you for taking care about Microsoft 365 Roadmap update, it's much better now. Still bit random information from my point of view, but my question is about Tasks in Excel (Web) mentioned in Roadmap with GA in Q2 CY2020. Is it really so and I missed something?

Steve_K_Excel thanks for your response.

As you have indicated the site doesn't currently capture what has been taken into consideration.
Might I suggest that your team implement a similar approach to the experience.dynamics.com product suggestions.

Where by each suggestion is tagged with a status of \"Completed\", \"In Review\", \"Needs Votes\".
This would then assist your team in focusing on some of the higher voted items, and would also provide more visibility to users.

It would also provide the visibility that you described of features your team has completed suggestions that \"make excel better\".

Are you able to shed any light on when the Conditional Formatting applied to named ranges is likely to be incorporated into future versions?
It would be great to understand where this is in the Excel teams Road-Map as it is one of the most voted items, has been open since 2015 and still has a status of \"Accepting Votes\".

https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304921-excel-for-windows-desktop-application/suggestions/10561194-conditional-formatting-apply-to-named-ranges?tracking_code=f015379b2ae2bf966f435f01df692cb9

I look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers
Bleddyn

Bleddyn_James Excel.uservoice.com is still the correct forum for product suggestions.  We do monitor the suggestions and the voting there as important input to influence our plans.  The site doesn't highlight completed suggestions when you're looking at the list, so we prepared this post to show that we do take the input we receive seriously - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/resources-and-community/how-your-ideas-on-excel-uservoice-com-help-improve-excel/m-p/1587487. 

Again, there are many factors that have to be considered and numerous reasons for prioritizing one suggestion over another. With regard to the suggestion you mentioned, applying conditional formatting to named ranges, complexity and risk is an important consideration.  Since named ranges can be dynamic (changing when the workbook recalculates), and conditional formatting also happens during recalculation, it's quite complex to make this work right and avoid introducing performance issues.

Hi Steve_K_Excel,

Thanks for your response.
Can you shed some light as to whether UserVoice is still the correct forum for Excel Product Suggestions?

As previously mentioned the following product suggestion was raised in 2015 and has more than 850+ votes. (The most votes in the formatting category).
https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304921-excel-for-windows-desktop-application/suggestions/10561194... 

I find it hard to believe that in the space of 5 years, the top voted suggestions aren't being considered by the Excel Product Team.
This really doesn't give much confidence to users in bothering to provide feedback/suggestions if the most popular suggestions aren't even being considered.

Cheers
Bleddyn

Bleddyn_James  We on the Excel team do continue to monitor the suggestions on UserVoice.  While we don't always post status updates, we do consider the suggestions as well as the number of votes when we're planning our work.  As you can see from the goals that Brian shared, there are many different initiatives that have to be balanced and there are numerous reasons for prioritizing one over another. Votes that we see on UserVoice are one of those reasons. 

Brian, was my clarification about the active cell contrast problem helpful? I had to go into detail about the usage scenario because this may not seem like a big deal if you're just modifying one or two cells on a large sheet. In that case, you can simply squint hard enough to see the highlighted cell or glance up and over to see the shaded column and row. Having to do this 50 to 100 times is where you become desperate for the cell to stand out more clearly on it's own. Again, this is an issue in all versions of Excel and seemingly something that would be easy to address.