Forum Discussion
Why is the Lounge so wild at the moment?
Crazy mix of questions surfacing here? What’s the go?
16 Replies
The term "wild" is far too mild — it's a complete mess.
Some features were even expired before the new version was released.
Any reasonable company wouldn’t dare to do something like this, but they’ve done it without hesitation.
The structure of this site feels like it was built as a summer hobby project by a couple of college students.I believe this clearly shows how Microsoft truly views MCTs.
It's frustrating and disappointing.
- Allen
Community Manager
Welcome to the Microsoft Tech Community, I think the first thing I need to make clear is the Microsoft Tech Community (MTC) is not the same as the MCT Program. If you have a view to share about the MCT program then you would be best to address that with the team by posting in the MCT Cafe in the MCT Lounge.
With regards to the Microsoft Tech Community, we have grown over the last 8 years from a community supporting 4 products to almost 120 as of today. I would agree its allot more complicated than we would like and we are actively looking into ways to improve the UI/UX through streamlining the IA to leveraging AI to help users better navigate the site.
The problem is always how to facilitate discussions across a desperate, and growing, number of topic areas without over cluttering the UI. This is something we spend allot of time working on and trying to balance.
With the new UI we moved away from Community Hub Memberships, which basically didn't do anything, and toward following / subscriptions which, not only allows you to curate the topics your most interested in and have them delivered to your mailbox, but also builds out the homepage when your logged in to show the discussions from those spaces on the left rail.
Its a balance we still do not have right, I am quite prepared to admit that, and I am sorry that you feel your experience is so poor. If you have some specific feedback then I am always happy to hear it and take it into consideration for future projects.I would also like to know what features have been removed or you feel are missing from the experience today.
All the best and thanks for your contributions.
With 120 products in list with current navigation it could be hard to understand where to ask question. Not everyone could make a guess that with Excel 2019 question you shall go to Microsoft 365, with SharePoint to Content Management, etc. Search under Products returns nothing for above. Or SharePoint is not the product?
- Allen
Think there are a few provlems:
- I’ve been very busy which means I’ve not been able to spend as much time in here as I would like to spend.
- The MCT lounge used to be part of the lounge menu in the primary nav but only for people who have access to it. Unfortunately the Aurora UI doesn’t let us do that at the moment so folks are getting confused and don’t understand they need to use the aka.ms link to get there (we told them about this in advance)
- no one seems to be reading the MCT questions pinned resource
- Our website is so vast covering so many products that I think some folks just give up and post in the first place they find
- we need to build out a better onboarding experience leveraging the power of Copilot to help introduce and direct people’s questions.
So yeah some things for us to work ok for sure
What the MCT means, do you mean MTC here?
- Allen
MCT = Microsoft Certified Trainer
MTC - Microsoft Tech Community (to some folks :P)
ThanksAllen - is there an opportunity to recruit some helpers from the community? Happy to offer some help.
also FYI I just got an email about 599 new subscription!
- Allen
HelloBenTeoh Everyone is welcome to help by directing users to the correct community to post or answering their questions :)
You can also report any posts that are against our terms of use or are just spam.
HelloBenTeoh For new and occasional users, it can be somewhat challenging to navigate the platform, as they may not be familiar with where to post discussions in the appropriate category.
I have impression that MTC team, which supports this resource, disappeared.
I guess that a couple of new users have ended up asking for help in the lounge instead of the proper community hub pertaining to their issue.
Exactly. IMHO, one of the reasons that's not easy to find proper hub here, especially for new users.
Is there another site linking here now? So many MCT discussions :D
