OFFICE SERVICE PULSE
Company: Microsoft
Project: Office Service Portal for Exchange
Role: Senior UX Designer
​
The Problem
The on call Exchange engineers are responsible for monitoring Exchange servers all over the world. When an incident happens, they need to be able to diagnose, respond and act based on what happened and why. The tool that the engineers used was slow and inefficient which led to long diagnosis times and even longer resolution times.
Myself and and another designer were asked to redesign this system, making it more efficient, faster, and easy to use and understand.
The How
I was responsible for leading and driving the user experience and visual design across the org. by partnering with PM and user research we were able to redesign the entire portal to be more efficient and useful in evaluating and assessing Exchange data worldwide.
We started by learning about the problems engineers faced and what would make their jobs easier. They often had to respond to these incidents in the early morning hours and were not fully awake. They needed to have multiple ways to view an issue, which helped them diagnose the problem faster.
​
We began working on an idea that revolved around a group of charts that would show incidents over time. The design had up to 4 charts which the use could cycle through during an incident to see what the possible cause was. Rotating the main graph and the other 3 smaller ones (see top image). The data below the main graph would show each item line by line and give more details for the engineers.
We created a working prototype with the developers so we could review it with the engineers and get feedback on it. This worked great and allowed us to iterate quickly and efficiently based on their needs.
We also created pages showing each of the different elements used and chart types and how to use them.
The final feature we created was based on feedback from the engineers who wanted the ability to leave feedback/comments on an incident. We wanted a log so that others could look back on the comments and be able to see what worked for the resolution of a possible recurrence of an incident. This was a big hit as well for the engineers because it meant they could keep a log of what actions they took and if those actions worked, and help other on call folks with possible issues.
The Result
Office Service Portal health portal provides an overview of current health of Exchange data center and details of availability for OWA/CTP/STP/Mailflow/Networking along with alert information for the selected date range.
​
This was a big success for Exchange and the on call engineers who respond to incidents. It was one of the most rewarding projects in my career.
