Forum Discussion
This is the worst forum I have ever used (in 40 years!)
Community ManagerThank you for your feedback, the community structure is complicated. We cover over one hundred Microsoft products and product areas and, while we have tried to keep the community simple to find the product you want to share your experience and knowledge on, the nature of such a large structure is it is a fight to keep it organized in a logical fashion.
Could we do better? Yes definitely and if you have specific thoughts around this, I would be happy to take them away.
Your feedback on getting access to an FAQ is a good one but real estate at the top of the community fold is at a bit of a premium. What we can, and should do, is put a link to the 'Getting Started' documentation in the welcome email users receive when they first sign up.
I will add that to our backlog.
Anyway, I hope you're not feeling as frustrated now and if there is anything we can do to help you please do not hesitate to comment here.
Allen Smith
Technical Lead
Microsoft Tech Community
" @JoeUser is correct.....this community is horribly confusing. There is no FAQ page anywhere on the Home page, and because that important piece of information is missing it's a real problem figuring out how to go about the basics, like making a post."
Hello , This is a necessary discussion - thank you for your feedback.
I agree that it is difficult for new Members and I think Microsoft will fix it quickly!
Deleted
I agree that it is difficult for new Members and I think Microsoft will fix it quickly!I like your optimism!
Microsoft is a monolithic giant with ponderous movement when it comes to listening to the community, except when it's 'vogue' or makes them money.
As for this community Joe, Andre and Sue are all correct. I am a new user, attempting to report bugs or communicate issues with Microsoft products and have hit roadblock after roadblock while attempting to do so. Microsoft seem to have closed off their old gateways to do this, which is fair enough, but surely they should have a replacement?
Firstly, there does not appear to be any definitive, easily recognisable method for doing so. I have found two issues with SSMS that I am attempting to highlight to Microsoft, but there is no obvious wording anywhere that says: "REPORT BUGS HERE"
Secondly, on joining this site, I was presented with a confusing CMS with, as SatelliteSue says, no help for the novice user. Why not? This site is less than intuitive and does not lend itself to finding your way around easily.
Thirdly, perhaps most importantly, I do not have the privilege to ask a question in the most obvious feed! WHY?? Get a grip - the idea behind a community is that people help each other, not hinder them!
So, I think what people may like to see (especially new users, like myself, JoeUser2004, SatelliteSue and Deleted), is either some kind of walk-through or introduction to the community, and further support on how the site structure works. Site management could learn a lot by nipping off and having a look at StackOverflow.
Wow! Sorry to be so grumpy on my first day!
- Allen
Thank you for taking time to provide additional feedback, I am sorry you have such a negative view of Microsoft's efforts to listen to the customer. While I agree we don't always get it right, many of our product teams put a significant amount of effort into collecting user feedback via multiple channels. Indeed, the teams are currently working through a project to focus feedback through the windows feedback hub that ships with Microsoft Windows and through the new feedback portal, partly because we recognize the benefit of putting this all-in-one place and partly to give us more streamlined ways to get that feedback in-front of the product groups.
For your first point, the vast majority of Microsoft products have a feedback interface built directly into them, i.e. in Edge its under the three dots top right >> Help and Feedback. We continue to work with Product teams in the Microsoft Tech Community to add links to their community to the appropriate experience for providing this feedback, however where this is not currently available then feedback can be provided via https://support.microsoft.com or https://answers.microsoft.com (which are the official support channels for Microsoft).
For your second point, we already acknolowleged earlier in this thread we could do better with onboarding, and indeed started a project to improve it, however with the site getting a complete overhaul later this year we had to put it on hold. Before you joined the community there was a getting started banner at the top, which links to the content here: Getting Started - Microsoft Tech Community which talks you through most of the common tasks you might choose to under take on the Microsoft Tech Community. All that said, we still agree we could do better and this will be one of the things we look at closely when we re-skin and update the underlying technology the Microsoft Tech Community is running on.
For your third point, its hard to comment on as you have not shared where you were trying to point and why that was the most obvious thread for you to comment on. There could be multiple reasons why that was not an option.
I hope this helps you feel a little less grumpy! and if not please feel free to comment below.
Allen Smith
Technical Lead
Microsoft Tech Community