Today we are pleased to announce the launch of the Microsoft Tech Community, bringing multiple communities together in one central location to support discussions and best practice sharing across a variety of Microsoft products and services. The Microsoft Tech Community is an evolution of the Office 365 Network, growing to support new Azure; Windows Server, and SQL Server Communities and in future many more communities. The URL of the new community will change soon to http://techcommunity.microsoft.com and redirects will be in place for any existing URL on the http://network.office.com domain.
In today's announcement, not only will you see new communities added but you will also see the following features:
- New Navigation Menu that reflects all of your favorite spaces, making it easier for you to navigate from space to space. Spaces can be discussions, blogs or idea exchanges and when favorited will appear here.
- Microsoft Ignite Community page launched: https://network.office.com/t5/Microsoft-Ignite-Conversations/bd-p/IgniteCommunity
- Discussions about Microsoft Ignite are happening here: https://network.office.com/t5/Microsoft-Ignite-Conversations/bd-p/IgniteCommunity
- Coming soon: Discussion threads for each session! Make sure you favorite the Microsoft Ignite Content space to stay up to date on the latest sessions!
- You can find the Microsoft Ignite Community Page via the new navigation menu under 'Events'. In our roadmap, this Events landing page will house more than just Microsoft Ignite but in the lead-up to the September event all our events efforts will be focused on Microsoft Ignite.
- New styling applied to Avatars. Colored rings indicate different community roles:
- 'Red' = a MTC (Microsoft Tech Community) Community Manager
- 'Blue' = a Microsoft Employee
- 'Green' = a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional)
- Profile Hovercards activated when hovering over a member's avatar so you can easily see which organization they belong to and what their activity is on the MTC
- A 'Follow' button will be applied soon and we are working on a 'People' section to help you manage your networks and feeds from the people you follow in the MTC
- Toggle between Blogs and Discussions in Communities: While we don't have blogs everywhere in the community yet, we are supporting the concept of blogs in the community. This will be where Microsoft Product Experts will be sharing product news, insight into how Microsoft products work and best practices they've observed. 'Favorite' Blog spaces to power your feed in your Home Page.
We have temporarily taken the Community Ideas section offline while we are working on some bug fixes. While you wait you can use the Community Discussion space to share feedback on the new community. Once Community Ideas are back online we'll be making an announcement in the Community Info Center.
Coming soon:
- 'More Resources' links in the right hand rail of Communities
- Continuing to refine threading and whitespace in conversations for desktop and on mobile
- Ability to 'Follow' users via a button on their hovercard
- 'People' section (more on this soon)
- More Blogs & More Communities!
The following fixes to bugs have been applied:
- Notification alert is now back on your Avatar via the Profile Menu
- To fix this bug we had to revert back to our original larger Profile Menu. We are investigating ways to make this profile menu smaller
- Community Spaces tiles are now wider to support longer Space names
- Removed the 'Sign In' text next to the Avatar placeholder image to support a better mobile experience
Known bugs and issues we are working on fixing:
- @mentions not working on all browsers
- Line breaks in Firefox and on iOS in incorrect places
- Styling of the hyperlinks in the notifications feed
- Replies, Likes and Views Icons not appearing in IE 11 and IE 9 browsers
Please continue to share your feedback in the new Microsoft Tech Community. We are scheduled to shut down the Office 365 Network on Yammer on September 15 (read announcement here). If you have questions about the future of groups that exist on the Yammer network and unable to find them on the new Microsoft Tech Community, please let us know via the Community Discussion space. Thank you for your input so far, we will continue to make updates to features of the MTC and the best way to stay informed is by favouriting the Community Announcements space to power your feed.
