Forum Discussion
This is the worst forum I have ever used (in 40 years!)
" @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
Community Manager
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
I'm sorry, but I do not believe in Microsoft's invasive attempts at CEIP - once again, they'd rather collect the data and use it to sell more products; I always disable Microsoft Store, and respective CEIPs in every product: My PC is my own, not Microsoft's, so it should be me deciding what they see, not them sneaking in the backdoor. Thankfully, my organisation does block a lot of them as a matter of course.
I will admit that they are making through-roads with respect to .NET and similar. The problem is, however, that they don't allow time for something to 'bed in', before it's replaced with the next greatest thing. Surely getting security and structure right in current products would pay dividends for future ones?... While .NET may be coming on, products such as Office have taken a massive backward step; I only use it because I have to ... for now. Libre and OpenOffice are proving to be better products in a lot of respects.
As for the third point, for whatever reason, I can now post in the required hub, so my apologies for that. Initially, however, I was greeted with a panel saying that I did not have appropriate privilege to do what I was doing, so I'll take it that this is down to a slight lag in updating my profile.
The site does need a nice big intelligent search box at the top, preferably using DuckDUckGo (a more agnostic search!), as Bing is a bit rubbish.
I have to say that, as soon as I am forced to move to Windows 11, that's it - I'm throwing in the towel and moving to Elementary.
Thanks for taking the time to respond, Allen.
Thank you - Great first post!
" the idea behind a community is that people help each other, not hinder them!"
I would like to add that MTC is not Microsoft technical support - I want to emphasize this Welcome to Feedback (Preview) - Microsoft Tech Community
Deleted wrote:I would like to add that MTC is not Microsoft technical support - I want to emphasize this
No - that's true, but not obvious.
