Microsoft 365 Health
The Microsoft 365 Admin Center gives IT professionals actions and insights to manage Microsoft productivity applications, like Teams and Outlook. Many administrators within IT departments manage organizations with 100,000+ users. At this scale, they manage a massive influx of alerts, advisories, messages and updates, including those that involve security breaches and network outages. This information was scattered throughout the Microsoft 365 Admin Center experience across multiple pages. To reduce information overload and create a cohesive management experience, I worked on the Microsoft design team to envision and create the M365 Health dashboard.
The Microsoft 365 Health dashboard was launched in July 2022.
Learn more about Microsoft 365 Health dashboard here.
New M365 Health Dashboard after redesign
Before redesign M365 Health Information scattered across multiple experiences
“Admins are most frustrated about the accuracy, actionability, and timing of Microsoft communications through-out the product life cycle, especially regarding high priority incidents. Addressing this problem will enable IT admins to better communicate with end users and decision makers in their organization and react appropriately with the right information”
- IT Administrator
Generative Research
Participatory Design | Workshop
6 participants: Enterprise Engineers, IT Managers, IT Admins
To explore the concept of Microsoft 365 Health in the M365 Admin Center, we utilized a Microsoft Compass Connect design sprint. The Compass Connect events bring together customers from Enterprise organizations for product roadmap sessions, co-design sprints, customer presentations, and discussions. As part of an interview activity, IT admins were asked to reflect on a series of questions, then brainstormed and sketched ideas to address their pain-points and needs. Most expressed that their ideal Microsoft 365 health experience would include a dashboard to understand the health of their organization and an 'impact zone' to understand who is effected by an incident/outage.
Research Questions:
(1) What are IT admins top challenges and pain-points?
(2) What drives health from an IT admin point of view?
(3) What type of health experience will empower IT admins?
Analysis
As part of an interview activity, the IT admin participants helped us affinity diagram the top challenges and thoughts surrounding M365 health to find commonalities and themes. Then the participants developed "how might we" statements. The Compass Connect participants participated in a sketching exercise that encouraged them to generate a variety of solutions that would address our problem statement.
The most voted on solution was a overview dashboard that would improve clarity around the number of users affected by an incident, the duration of the incident, the cause, and a suggested corrective action.
Generative Research
Survey
29 participants: IT Managers, IT Admins; Enterprise Organizations
In a follow-up, a survey was launch to validate the problem statement and prioritize user scenarios and challenges. An initial mock-up was also tested to validate design ideas generated from the co-creation sessions with Compass Connect participants. From this data, it was found that IT professionals utilize a combination of services in the Microsoft 365 admin center to manage the health of their tenants. They also prioritized being able to get a quick overview. These findings gave us context and a clear signal to more forward with the design of a health overview page.
Research Questions:
(1) What health scenarios do IT admins prioritize?
(2) Do IT admins see value in a health overview page?
First iteration of M365 Health Overview Dashboard
Evaluative Research
Unmoderated Study | Concept Evaluation
8 participants: IT Managers, IT Administrators; Enterprise Organizations
Based on the results of the survey, I worked very closely with the UX Designer to develop an initial design concept for the M365 Health Dashboard that we used to test with customers. We conducted an unmoderated study to address these research goals where we asked open-ended questions in regards to participant’s backgrounds, approach to managing health and their top pain points. We also provided them with a list of features and asked them to rank the features. We then showed participants an initial design of the health overview page and with areas of missing content and asked what type of information they would expect to be included. Lastly, we showed them the heath overview page with content included and asked them to provide their impressions.
Research Questions:
(1) What features do enterprise IT admins want to see in a health overview dashboard?
(2) What are enterprise IT admins impressions of the content, verbiage and layout of the health overview dashboard?
(3) Are enterprise IT admins needs met and is there anything missing from the health overview dashboard?
M365 Health Overview Dashboard mock-up with missing alert information
M365 Health Overview Dashboard mock-up with missing service/app information
M365 Health Overview Dashboard mock-up
Evaluative Research
Interviews | Concept Validation
6 participants: IT Managers, IT Administrators; Small Businesses
Using the findings and recommendations from the unmoderated study, we conducted 1:1 interview sessions to validate the final design of the M365 Health Overview Dashboard. Up to this point had addressed enterprise scenarios, so our final usability testing included small business customers.
Research Questions:
(1) What are small business IT admins current experiences managing IT health?
(2) What are small business IT admins impressions of the content, verbiage and layout of the health overview page?
(3) Are small business IT admins needs met and is there anything missing from the health overview dashboard?
M365 Health Overview Dashboard mock-up - Critical alerts
M365 Health Overview Dashboard mock-up - M365 Health at a glance
M365 Health Overview Dashboard mock-up - Network security status
M365 Health Overview Dashboard mock-up - Recommended actions
Outcome
After these findings and recommendations were presented to stakeholders, we came together as a team and decided that the final design of the health overview page would provide: (1) “All in one place” convenience where IT admins can get the full story of what needs attention in their tenant without searching and gathering information, (2) proactive recommendations where IT admins receive suggestions for actions that help them prevent problems and move from a reactive to proactive stance, and (3) clear path to action where IT admins see only things that require action, with clear steps on what to do next.
The Microsoft 365 Health dashboard was launched in July 2022.
Learn more about Microsoft 365 Health dashboard here.
M365 Health Overview Dashboard released