kindly agreed to more openly discuss the vision, plans and improvements coming for this new Office 365 Network. I'm sure  and the rest of her team will pitch in. There has been many reactions, reviews and critiques written and discussed since the launch of the Preview of this network. Remember that it is a Preview and it's our opportunity as a community to shape this network into what we want and keep the conversation going. 

So, Mike, Anna and team. What can you share of the vision and future plans for this network, that will help members transition from Yammer to here and grow it? 

• Will there be a mobile app and when is it likely to be released?
• What are current and future features of the platform that will help create community? Following, collaborative groups, co-authoring spaces, a feed for all conversations and people I follow...
• ...What would you ask the Office 365 Network team about it's future and vision?

I realise there is an Ideas forum here and keep posting your ideas. But do ask your questions on this thread too about the future of this network. It helps to keep the conversation together.

Hey Melanie, didn't mean to make you repeat yourself, I was just looking for more insight as to 'why not make it a standard post that can link to your other posts\" (I would do it as a Glossary post)... we are investigating the possibility of MVP or Community driven boards. At the least, I believe we will offer some sort of guest blogging in the future. 

We understand that this community will need to fight it's way back up to the top. We are deeply committed to this and already have an amazing internal buy - in, and many of our members have praised this place (though we know we still need to improve many things before public launch). We will absolutely iterate and add functionality and features to this network as we go. From a CM perspective, we wanted to start with a limited group structure and scaled back conversation styles in order to not overwhelm new members. In the coming weeks you will see more groups, different styles of groups (blogs, customer evidence, event timelines, etc). 

Hey Melanie, didn't mean to make you repeat yourself, I was just looking for more insight as to 'why not make it a standard post that can link to your other posts\" (I would do it as a Glossary post)... we are investigating the possibility of MVP or Community driven boards. At the least, I believe we will offer some sort of guest blogging in the future. 

We understand that this community will need to fight it's way back up to the top. We are deeply committed to this and already have an amazing internal buy - in, and many of our members have praised this place (though we know we still need to improve many things before public launch). We will absolutely iterate and add functionality and features to this network as we go. From a CM perspective, we wanted to start with a limited group structure and scaled back conversation styles in order to not overwhelm new members. In the coming weeks you will see more groups, different styles of groups (blogs, customer evidence, event timelines, etc). 

Thanks for kicking this off. I'll share what I can at the moment and please remember that we have many things in the works. Also, thank you for highlighting that this is in Preview, so many things are subject to change. We wanted our community with us on this journey, and the nearly all of the feedback we've received has (in some way or another) been incorporated into our issues logs, immediate fixes, ongoing fixes, and long-term planning. Many of these features also help bring in even more internal PMMs and Engineering, which will make the network a more valuable place for everyone.

Please keep in mind: This thread is to discuss our plans and improvements for this community on this network. We'll try to share as much as we can. Let's stay positive if possible.

- Will there be a mobile app? As @Jeff Medford noted on the announcement thread on the old site, we are developing a responsive mobile web experience. We are looking at the need for an app, but don't have anything solid to share right now. 

-What are current and future features of the platform that will help create community? Following, collaborative groups, co-authoring spaces, a feed for all conversations and people I follow.. Too much to mention everything, but I will make note of some big ones. 

1. As you can see, I am already using a neat feature here that improves readibility, emphasis and ultimately accuracy of information exchange. Rich text editor! We can embed videos, use bold + italics, <insert code> and even add spoilers. While tangentially related to community, I did want to call this out.

 2. Scale. As many of you know, this community helps us scale and helps us reach the many, many folks who are in the Office 365 Community but not the Office 365 Network. 

 3. Discussion styles. We have numerous ways to have conversations here. Including blogs, boards, idea exchanges (vote on it!), contests. We can pick the right medium for the right time. 

 4. Permissioning. I may have just created that verb. We can set a large number of permissions for the styles in no. 3 so that the right folks can see the right information. We can pin, read-only, set as private, stage things, open things and lock posts. While this has obvious community management benefits, it also helps us find, surface, and promote solutions and discussions, which helps us all. 

5. Search. Try it. The search is powerful and will help new members and unathenticated members discover what they are looking for. If content is king, this is the red carpet. We also have analytics relating to search results (and when no results are shown). This helps us fill gaps in content, documentation, and product needs.

6. Community structure. This helps EVERYONE navigate the network. By having a structure of nested groups, our community now has clearer paths to information and subcommunities. Please note: we are currently working on this structure to surface more information (like the nav menu links) and reduce scrolling, clicks, etc. Please be patient here. 

(Coming Soon).

UserVoice Integration. An integrated way to share your ideas and feedback, all within this community experience. This also means there will be a whole lot more MS engineers patrolling these waters.

UI Improvements. Improving the functionality, look and feel. We’re hearing this feedback loud and clear. We don’t want to hold the release of Preview until the details were hammered out. You’ll see changes every day. Some big, some small.

Events. Have a User Group meeting or other industry-related event you’d like to promote? We’re building an events area and process to help you highlight your events.

Ignite. Big things here. Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading and I am excited for the things to come! There are TONS of other features to make note of, and I'll do my best to respond to as many people as possible, but now we need to get back to work building and improving this network. 

-Mike (Community Team) 

\"A marketing blog\" - a concept to discuss in less than one thousands words.

Most marketing blogs are pretty devoid of real facts. I hope that we can reserve blogs.office.com for that material and concentrate on solving real problems here.

That's not to say that marketing blogs don't have a real function. They do. But debating the relative merits of technology and its deployment are not in that category.

\"A marketing blog\" - a concept to discuss in less than one thousands words.

Most marketing blogs are pretty devoid of real facts. I hope that we can reserve blogs.office.com for that material and concentrate on solving real problems here.

That's not to say that marketing blogs don't have a real function. They do. But debating the relative merits of technology and its deployment are not in that category.

Again, I don't really understand the use case as something separate from just posting. Where/what would you share differently on a blog that you can't post here? Creating blogs doesn't scale for us, and it adds a ton of noise and community management (what if we have 50 members all blogging once/twice per week? 

I could see the potential in MVPs having a blog, and I think guest blogging is more realistic. 

Again, I don't really understand the use case as something separate from just posting. Where/what would you share differently on a blog that you can't post here? Creating blogs doesn't scale for us, and it adds a ton of noise and community management (what if we have 50 members all blogging once/twice per week? 

I could see the potential in MVPs having a blog, and I think guest blogging is more realistic. 

MichaelHolste I apologize for now repeating myself three times in this thread: I see the prospect of reworking and posting a ton of material in this platform, connected only by inline replies or tags, as high effort with low potential return.

I theorize that a blog might offer the consolidated resource view that would make this slog more worthwhile.

I will never know if you refuse to give me one to try out. 

I apologize for now repeating myself twice in this thread: your community needs to earn scale. Ten million users isn't destiny, it's vision.

And what will get you there is NOT necessarily what you will do once you get there.

Does creating three user blogs add a ton of noise and community management for you? That's the question. 

----

Side note because I can't help it (and aren't you glad you gave me rich formatting?):

You wrote, \"What if we have 50 members all blogging once/twice per week?\"

Um, break out the champagne? 

Because that might offer a challenge for centralized control, but also potentially awesome success if you, you know, had learned lessons along the long slow ramp-up, and maybe even deputized some trusted partners to help you manage that ecosystem.

But meanwhile, I see \"but, SCALE!\" as a straw man argument precisely because you are in for a long slow ramp-up. You do not get to \"pass go\" and simply collect ten million members.

Meanwhile, you could act like Yammer and iterate as you go. Yeah?

 I apologize for now repeating myself three times in this thread: I see the prospect of reworking and posting a ton of material in this platform, connected only by inline replies or tags, as high effort with low potential return.

I theorize that a blog might offer the consolidated resource view that would make this slog more worthwhile.

I will never know if you refuse to give me one to try out. 

I apologize for now repeating myself twice in this thread: your community needs to earn scale. Ten million users isn't destiny, it's vision.

And what will get you there is NOT necessarily what you will do once you get there.

Does creating three user blogs add a ton of noise and community management for you? That's the question. 

----

Side note because I can't help it (and aren't you glad you gave me rich formatting?):

You wrote, \"What if we have 50 members all blogging once/twice per week?\"

Um, break out the champagne? 

Because that might offer a challenge for centralized control, but also potentially awesome success if you, you know, had learned lessons along the long slow ramp-up, and maybe even deputized some trusted partners to help you manage that ecosystem.

But meanwhile, I see \"but, SCALE!\" as a straw man argument precisely because you are in for a long slow ramp-up. You do not get to \"pass go\" and simply collect ten million members.

Meanwhile, you could act like Yammer and iterate as you go. Yeah?

Mike, glad to hear it. That's what had me flummoxed... deletions without contact is not what I expected from an experienced community manager like you.

I was left to wonder about the moderation policy for this space, and the implications for the culture here.

I'd encourage you to publish an official version of the policy, BTW. Given your ambitions for the size of this space, seems advisable to have that long-established and ready to cite.

Melanie, our Community Guidelines cover what is appropriate and inappropriate. https://network.office.com/t5/Getting-Started/Office-365-Network-Guidelines/m-p/107#M1 

I like the idea of having a hard \"moderation policy\" post that we can lean on when needed. I'll get something up soon. 

Hey Melanie, looks like they got caught in the spam quarantine. They have been moved out of there and should be available on the network. We just turned this on late last week so it is still learning. Apologies for any confusion. (You should know I'd never censor you) :smileyhappy:

Mike, I've now had a respectful reply to you deleted twice (unless I'm mistaken, as I've heard nothing from you directly). Is it because I linked to a blog entry elsewhere summarizing my position? Because without the ability to blog here, I've simply done it elsewhere.

If it was more about the sentiments I expressed, what is offensive in saying that a high-control forum will be less likely to deliver collaborative community value?

Can you please share your moderation policy for this network so that I am less likely to write posts that will go poof?

Hey Melanie, I can promise you that I have not deleted your posts. I will check our spam quarantine and see if it ended up in there.

As per moderation policies, I think you all have a pretty good idea of how moderation here works. No solicitation, no personal attacks, no flaming, keep criticism constructive, and treat others with respect. I will look into why/where your posts went. 

I do hope that an over-excessive moderation stance is not being taken here because it will absolutely and utterly drive people away from considering this network as somewhere in which they would want to participate. I anticipate that Michael Holst will clarify the situation about posts and make it absolutely obvious that no reasoned and rational contribution from an MVP would ever be suppressed. Evidence of such action would make people think twice about future support of these fora.

Hey Tom, 

We wanted to get out from behind the Yammer sign up process, which wasn't designed for a community like this. Allowing members to create groups added a ton of noise. Pair that with a flat group structure and we ended up with more than 1,400 groups on the network, without an easy way for members to navigate and find the information and solutions they are looking for. In fact, there were many duplicate groups. We also had an issue with teams of people hosting their own private Yammer groups (about anything) on the network, which is designed and resourced to be a community about Office 365. Community Management was a pain due to so many inactive, private and public groups that were off topic, along with redundancies and no line of sight across the network, new members posting to All Network because they don't know groups existed, etc. Internally and externally, members didn't know where to post. This network makes it far more clear (and the experience will continue to get better). 

If folks here are interested in having a group, reach out to admins and our network team will discuss it with the internal stakeholders to come to a conclusion on whether or not to create it. Our goal is to prevent it from devolving into the wild west again. 

We've actually reduced our 'eventual' workload. I understand the previous network was very valuable for many (especially enterprise socialites), but this network is better geared to serve the larger Office 365 audience. 

Did my reply to this thread from yesterday disappear?

I do respect you, Mike, and what your team is trying to build here. That said, I've summarized my thoughts on LinkedIn (\"Community, Value... and Control\"), as to why you're likelier in my estimation to end up with a forum than a community. 

At the same time, I'm empathetic to the challenge you're facing and the situation you're in, here. I will try and post resources in the Yammer Community Management board, which please note, I also did yesterday. 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/community-value-control-melanie-hohertz

With all credit to you for the best of intentions... My thoughts, on LinkedIn.

On Community, Value... and Control

One man's noise, is another man's treasure

A responsive mobile web experience just won't cut it, they never do, mobile users expect the performance and behaviour of an app. Just ask the teams doing apps for Outlook, Sway, Groups, Delve, SharePoint, Skype, OneNote, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Send, Video, OneDrive, Lens, Flow, PowerApps and ... Yammer.

Mike, I need a little help understanding something.  One of the reasons stated for the migration of platform was to ease the community management workload.  Much of the power of both SharePoint and Yammer is that it puts what was once in the hands of only IT into the hands of data creators and consumers.  Now that you can update web content with SharePoint without coding HTML, you've freed the creators and consumers from going through technical staff, and you've freed technical staff from maintaining content.  Likewise for Yammer, people can decide on their own when a group is needed, who should be invited to that group, and the raison d'etre of that group. 

It seems to me that migrating away from Yammer while at the same time making group creation and maintenance a community management function, you've actually increased the workload, while at the same time squelching community development.  Am I misunderstanding something?