Request and review feedback

Once you have working software, you're ready to get feedback from your stakeholders. You can ask reviewers to provide videos, screenshots, type-written comments, and ratings. Their feedback is captured into work items that you can review and use to create a bug or suggest a new backlog item.

Request feedback

To request feedback, you fill out a form that generates an email request to your stakeholders.

  1. From the home page in Team Web Access (TWA) (such as http://myserver:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection/MyProject), start a feedback request. If you don't see a link to Request feedback, then request that you be added to Full Access Level in TWA.

    Home page with Full access Activities links

    Note

    If your team project was upgraded from a previous version to the current version of Team Foundation Server, you’ll have to update your team project using the Configure Features wizard.

    If the following message appears, you need to configure an SMTP server.

    Email notifications are not configured

  2. Add the feedback reviewers. If you don't see the names you want in the browse list, grant them permissions to provide feedback.

    Add stakeholders to request feedback form

  3. Tell your reviewers how to run the app they'll be reviewing.

    Provide information to launch your app

  4. For each area of interest, decide what type of feedback you want. Set the context for the reviewers by providing enough background information. Add up to four more areas of interest with the add feedback item link.

    Focus the area to review

  5. Send the request.

    Send the request to your reviewers

Provide feedback

Reviewers launch your application and provide feedback through the free Microsoft Feedback Client.

  1. Reviewers who don't have VS 2012 installed can download the feedback client directly from the feedback request they receive.

    Choose the link to install the feedback client

    Or, they can go to the Visual Studio 2012 download site.

  2. Reviewers start the feedback session.

    Start feedback client

  3. They launch the app to review from the feedback tool.

    Launch app to review

  4. They begin providing feedback.

    Enter feedback for Item 1 in the Provide context

  5. Reviewers can add screenshots, comments, and file attachments, and even record the feedback session. Results show up on the lower part of the screen. In this case, you can see the comment that the stakeholder wrote after attaching the screenshot.

    Example of reviewer feedback

    Security noteSecurity Note

    Unless you stop recording, everything is recorded—all steps that you take as well as anything you say. If you provide sensitive data such as user names and passwords, you will capture this information in the recording. However, you can always delete a recording by deleting the image for the recording session that appears in the feedback tool’s text box.

    To record audio on a remote computer, see Enable audio capture.

  6. Reviewers can modify or even delete parts of their feedback, such as a recording, before they submit their feedback.

    Rate and submit feedback

Review feedback

  1. Open the Feedback query.

    Open feedback query

    Or, create a feedback query with the parameters, as shown.

    Feedback query parameters

    You should see a list of all active feedback responses for your team project.

    Open a feedback response from the All Links tab

  2. Open a response item and play or save a recording.

    Play feedback session recording

  3. Or, you can create a bug or backlog item linked to the feedback.

    Create a new linked bug to feedback response

With the TFS feedback experience, you can engage stakeholders frequently to provide continuous feedback. Interacting with your working apps, your stakeholders can record rich and actionable data that TFS automatically stores in the form of video or audio recordings, comments, and annotated screenshots. You can then take action on each feedback response by assigning it to a team member or creating bugs or backlog items to the linked feedback.