Throughout the history of California's Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) program, new teachers have reported experiencing substantial tension between the curricular and programmatic demands arising from their induction programs' formative assessment systems and the immediate coaching help they need to deal with day-to-day classroom responsibilities. To examine some dimensions of this tension, the authors undertook in-depth case study analyses of 18 novice teacher participants in an innovative online induction program managed by the Riverside County Office of Education (RCOE). Because the online format provides reasonably complete transcriptions of the new teachers' induction experiences, the authors anticipated being able to examine this tension in some detail. Preliminary analysis does indicate that inductees see coaching as fundamental, with formative assessment activities as valued but secondary in importance to their overall perceived needs within the classroom. Additionally, when examining overall satisfaction of new teachers enrolled in an induction program, the authors found important differences associated with teacher characteristics and assignments needing interpretation. They learned, however, that the data collected from this online induction program are more fragmentary and harder to organize than expected. As a result, this report must be considered a preliminary work in progress, and the findings will need to be confirmed (or modified) by future work.