There are millions of apps available on the internet nowadays. Have you ever thought how do the companies manage so many apps, how do they manage the compatibility, the bugs, and their fixes? Just one single bug can take its toll on the company until it is fixed. Customers’ satisfaction is the prime motto of Microsoft, and thus the team keeps working on the compatibility of their apps and services. With tens of millions of apps with a different language, architectures, and configurations, it is really tough to keep it working. But the team Microsoft brings innovative approaches to keep the things smooth and prevent any kind of issues.
Application Compatibility on Windows
Mete Goktepe from Windows Application Compatibility team, recently published a blog post describing the various technologies and approaches they use to improve the apps compatibility.
The blog post says, “We work very closely with partners to measure, validate and improve application compatibility for every supported version of Windows. Testing is a critical step, but we also know that testing is not enough to fully understand our dynamic ecosystem, so we invest in new methods and product improvements.”
Mete further says that as soon as they discover that any OS change is impacting an application, they partner with the external and internal developers to implement the required modifications. Fixes are developed, tested and then implemented which take time, so the company takes some preventive measures so as to avoid any kind of bad user experiences.
Four major steps they follow are-
- Proactive Prevention– The Windows compatibility team partners with partnering with Windows feature development teams any app issues.
- Issue Discovery and Investigation– The team validates thousands of apps every week which serve as the issue detection canaries. The investigation further includes Automated application compatibility integration tests, Daily automated application compatibility tests, Manual application test passes, and Data and analytics-based issue detection.
- Internal and External Partner Management– After finding the issue, the team works with the partners to resolve the issue.
- Compatibility Mitigations- The Windows application compatibility team then evaluates the mitigations to avoid any kind of compatibility issues.
Microsoft is quite transparent with its users and keeps sharing their work processes. This is how they deal with any of the compatibility issues. The team further promises in their blog post that they will keep testing and bringing more innovative methods to give the fully compatible apps to the users.
