Getting Started articles

Contributing to the Community

Dylan_Snodgrass — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 18:01:57 GMT

Here is a quick guide on how you can start interacting and engaging on Tech Community!

How to Ask a Question

Click on the 'Community Hubs' dropdown menu on the navigation bar

Click on the Community Hub that best fits your question or idea based on either product or special topic.

Select the appropriate space within the Community to post your question or idea

Click the 'Start a New Conversation' button

Fill out the Subject and Message (Title and Body) sections of your conversation. Add a tag (or a few) that best fits your message topic. Then click “Post” to publish your conversation.

Engaging with Posts

Like posts by clicking on the thumbs-up icon at the bottom of the post
Reply to posts by clicking the reply button, either in the main feed or on the post directly
Share posts by selecting the other platform icons on the right

Sending a Private Message

Click on the profile picture or name of the member you want to private message

Click the 'Message' button on their profile. This will open up a text editor just like the one used for posting above. Follow the same instructions!

Microsoft Tech Community Guidelines

Meenah_Khosraw — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 17:53:05 GMT

The mission of our online community is to provide a platform for IT admins, developers, MVPs, and Microsoft employees to interact. We want Tech Community to be a central destination for education and thought leadership on product news, best practices, and live events.

Get started by signing in. You'll need a Microsoft email to register (@outlook, @hotmail, @live, etc.) For help with creating a Tech Community account, follow these steps.

Here are some guidelines and helpful tips to keep in mind when interacting across Tech Community:

DO:

Be positive, kind, and courteous. Be friendly with others on the network. Feel free to provide feedback but keep it constructive.
Be interactive - “Like” posts and ask questions!
Browse our list of Community Hubs for the products you’re most interested in and join discussion conversations. Community Hubs are where most of the conversations happen.
Post your question or comment in the applicable community! Is your question about Exchange? Post it to the Exchange group. Using labels like “SharePoint” and ”Microsoft 365” help people understand what product or topic you’re talking about.

Not sure where to post? Post your question or comment in our Community Lounge in the Tech Community Discussion space, and one of our community admins will assist in finding the right Community Hub to post to.

If you ask a question and a posted answer worked for you, select “Mark answer as best response.” This helps resolve the thread, so other community members and visitors know you received the answer you were looking for.
Search before you post! There is a chance that your question has already been answered. The search bar at the top of the site is very useful, so take advantage of it.
Keep private stuff private. Make sure if you post confidential information, you do so responsibly and in the correct place.
Add a profile photo and complete your profile! It’s quick, easy, and helps identify your expertise and role to other community members and visitors.
Adjust your email notification preferences. Click on your profile photo in the upper right corner, go to My Settings > Subscriptions & Notifications > Notification Settings to set your preferred notifications.
Invite others to the community! Use the following short link: http://aka.ms/mstechcommunity.

DON’T

Post support or break/fix questions. The best place to get product support is the Microsoft Answers community: http://answers.microsoft.com/. If you’re an IT admin, you can also open a support ticket through the Microsoft 365 admin center. Opening a support ticket is the best way to track an issue and ensure it gets escalated as needed so you’re back up and running as quickly as possible.
Post solicitation, third-party links, content-free posts, or spam. First-time offenders will be given a warning, but future offenses may result in a temporary or permanent account ban. However, we have a zero-tolerance policy on spam. Violators who break the no spam rule will be permanently banned from the community on multiple instances of spamming.
Don’t post personal information about yourself or anyone else, such as email addresses, phone numbers, physical addresses, etc. If you want to connect with another community member or employee, ask for their permission to send them a direct message through our site’s Private Message feature.

Note: These guidelines outlined above still apply to private messages.

Be negative. We welcome constructive feedback here, but don’t post personal or harassing remarks, sarcasm, or blame; it’s not helpful.
Use crazy fonts, profanity, or ALL CAPS. Not only are these things inappropriate, but they’re also unnecessary.
Wander off topic. Don’t post about religion, politics or other things that don’t belong here. We do have a dedicated space designed to be an online version of an office water cooler called, Away From Keyboard. However, the rule of no religion, politics and other taboo topics still applies here. Keep it light and fun!
Share content from a private group. Respect your colleagues and our acceptable usage policy, and don’t share confidential information outside the community’s private groups.
Harvest user data. Some members may share personal information here. If you spam members from this network, Microsoft may take legal action.

Badging rings

You will notice that some community members have colored rings around their profile photos. This means they were awarded a specific badge. Here is a breakdown of each badging ring:

Microsoft employees are designated with a blue ring. Like you, they are members of the community with expertise in specific Microsoft products. We encourage them to share their knowledge, expertise, and opinions, and interact with other members on this platform.

Community Managers are designated with a red ring. We are here to encourage conversation, event participation, provide direction, answer general community questions, and keep the community a healthy and fun place for everyone.

MVPs are designated with a green ring. They are recognized technology experts who passionately share their knowledge and expertise with the community.

Similarly, you may notice badges and ranks next to usernames. Badges are achievements you can “unlock.” Ranks, such as MVP, can either be assigned or earned through community participation.

Microsoft Tech Community Feedback & Ideas

This is a community designed for you! If you have feedback or ideas about the Microsoft Tech Community website, please post them in our Tech Community Ideas space.

Flag inappropriate content for review

Tech Community is a big online community that continues to grow, so our admin team doesn’t always see everything to moderate accordingly. This is where you, the community member, can help! If you see any violation of these guidelines or our Terms and Conditions, please report the post by clicking the … button on the top right of the message, select Report Inappropriate Content, and provide a reason for why you think it’s inappropriate, such as if it breaks one of the guidelines outlined above.

If you have any questions about our guidelines, Terms and Conditions, or policies, email our team.

Thanks for being part of the Microsoft Tech Community! To learn how to get started, check out our Getting Started Guide.

Getting Started on the Tech Community

EmilyPerina — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 20:30:30 GMT

How to Sign In

Click ‘Sign In’ at the top of the home page.

Enter in your email address and password. You can choose one of the options below:

Use your Microsoft Account (MSA) which could be an @outlook.com; @live.com, hotmail.com or other personal email address that you have set as a Microsoft account.
Use the email address associated to your Office 365 or Azure account, which could be your work email address.

If You See the Wrong Email When Registering

When you go to register for the Microsoft Tech Community, the site automatically uses whatever Microsoft account you're currently signed into in your browser. This could be a personal account (like @outlook.com or @hotmail.com), your work email, or a school account.

The site will often ask for your Microsoft login email and password—unless you already have an active session in your browser, or auto-login is enabled. In those cases, it may skip the prompt entirely and sign you in with whatever account is currently active.

If you see that the site is registering you under an account you didn’t intend to use, it’s likely due to this automatic sign-in behavior.

How to Register with the Correct Email

To make sure you're signing in with the Microsoft account you want:

Open an incognito or private browser window.
This prevents the site from using an existing sign-in session.

Navigate to https://techcommunity.microsoft.com.

Click “Sign In” and log in with the Microsoft account you'd like to use.

Complete the registration process as usual.

Alternate Option:
You can also:

Sign out of all Microsoft accounts in your browser,

Clear any cached login sessions if needed,

Then return to the site and sign in with the correct account.

Selecting Communities to Join

Open the Communities page by clicking on the “Community Hubs” in the navigation menu on the top of the page.
Pro Tip: You can also search for specific communities or spaces using the search bar as well.

Completing Your Profile and Connecting Social Media Profiles

Changing an Avatar
1.Click on the default avatar at the top right of the navigation bar and select “My Settings”.

2. Select the “edit pencil” icon on your profile picture under the Personal tab.

Create a Bio

1. Click your avatar at the top right of the navigation bar and select “My Settings”.

2. You will find your bio under the Personal tab.

Managing Preferences, Subscriptions and Notifications

Subscriptions to blogs and spaces enables you receive an email notification when a new blog or post has been published. You will automatically be subscribed to topics you participate in. See the guidance below on managing subscriptions.

Setting Preferences

You may access your preferred display and time zone in the “Preferences” tab.

Follow & Notifications

You can also choose what content you would like to subscribe to or follow.

As well as update your email notification settings.

For more information on Contributing to the Community, please visit the supporting article. - Contributing to the Community - Microsoft Tech Community

Contact us

Have feedback or ideas for the community experience? Let us know in the Community Lounge!

If you are unable to post, and your question is about the Microsoft Tech Community itself, please see this article for Guidance.

Using Search in this community

Allen — Fri, 21 May 2021 19:56:35 GMT

We use an open source search tool that supports several standard search functions: Stemming, Boolean operators, and Wildcards .

Stemming
Stemming enables a search engine to compare the roots of search terms to community content. For example, if a user enters “speakers” as the query, the search engine reduces the word to its root “speak” and returns all content containing the root such as “speaking”, “speaker”, and “speaks”.

Boolean operators are used in keyword searches to combine or exclude search terms. We support these basic Boolean operators:

The OR operator is used by default, meaning that if there is no Boolean operator, the OR operator is used. To search for documents that contain either “bose reviews” or “speaker reviews” use the query bose reviews speaker reviews or bose reviews OR speaker review. You can use the symbol || in place of OR.
The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist in the text of a single document. The symbol && can be used in place of the word AND.
To search for documents containing “car speakers” and “bose” use the query car speakers AND bose.
The + operator requires the term you enter after the + symbol to exist somewhere in the field of a single document. To search for documents that must contain “bose” and may contain “car” use the query +bose car.
The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT. The symbol ! can be used in place of the word NOT. To search for documents that contain “headphones” but not “bose” use the query headphones NOT bose. The NOT operator can only be used with a single term. For example, the term bose speakers will return no results.
The - operator excludes documents that contain the term after the – symbol. To search for documents that contain “car speakers” but not ”bose” use the query car speakers -bose.

Wildcard search
Wildcard searches are used as a placeholder for any sequence of characters or words. You can use single character or multiple character wildcard searches within single terms (not within phrase queries).

To perform a single character wildcard search use the ? symbol.For example, to search for text or test you can use the search te?t.
To perform a multiple character wildcard search use the * symbol. For example, to search for test, tests or tester you can use the search test*.

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) Guidelines

EricStarker — Wed, 05 Aug 2020 19:30:08 GMT

An Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) is the same as an “Ask Me Anything (AMA)” on Reddit,or YamJam on Yammer. It provides the opportunity for the community to ask questions and have a discussion with a panel of internal and external experts on a particular topic.

In order to get the best value out of this hour, here is an outline of how the flow of the AMA will go and some guidelines for etiquette.

There will be a panel of Microsoft experts as well as MVPs on hand to answer questions about product and strategy. They will be introduced at the beginning.
At the scheduled kick off time, an announcement will be made notifying group members that the AMA has started. Please respond to the initial welcome thread introducing yourself, but make sure you post your questions in a separate thread.
Please read through the threads before posting. Your question may have been answered already.
Be patient. The panel will try to get to every question, but some questions may go unanswered.
Please be polite and follow normal Community Etiquette (see our Code of Conduct for reference). Any personal attacks, inappropriate language, or promotional content will be deleted.
Please stay on topic. Discussions pertaining to other topics, products, or services belong in the appropriate group. If you would like to submit an idea for an AMA topic, please message one of the admins privately.
When the AMA period is over, the group will remain open so people can review the content and continue to reply to existing threads, but do not expect a prompt reply. The moderator will create a summary of the AMA and share it to the community in the days following the event.

Tips:

Use the "Reply" function to reply to an individual comment. This will make the thread much easier to follow.
You can hover over the “in reply to” portion of the comment to see the context.
If you are receiving too many emails or notifications, you can change your settings by going to Profile > My Subscriptions.

Managing Preferences and Notifications

Allen — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 19:01:34 GMT

Subscriptions to blogs and spaces enable you to receive an email notification when a new blog or post has been published to what you are subscribed to. You will automatically be subscribed to topics you participate in. See the guidance below on managing subscriptions.

Setting Preferences

You will automatically be subscribed to topics you participate in. To disable this, click on your avatar at the top right of the navigation bar and select 'My Settings’.

In the 'Follows & Notifications' Tab, you may change your notification settings to not include content automatically.

Manage Email Notifications

Under the same ‘Follow & Notifications’ tab. Scroll down to customize email notifications.

Completing your profile & connecting social media profiles

Allen — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 01:07:14 GMT

Changing an avatar

Click on the default avatar at the top right of the navigation bar and select 'My Settings'.

Click the edit button over the current avatar.

Upload your own image, or choose a default avatar, then click save.

Create a bio

Click your avatar at the top right of the navigation bar and select “My Settings”.

Click on the Personal tab, and provide your name, preferred pronouns, bio, and other details about yourself. When finished, click 'Save'.

How do I register?

Allen — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 01:23:16 GMT

Click ‘Sign In’ at the top right of the home page.

Enter in your email address and password. You can choose one of the below options:
1. Use your Microsoft Account (MSA) which could be an @outlook.com, @live.com, @hotmail.com or other personal email address that you have set as a Microsoft account.
OR
1. Use the email address associated to your Office 365 or Azure account, which could be your work email address.
After logging in with your chosen email address, you will be prompted to create your username.
You will also be prompted to mark that you accept our Terms of Service.

Participate in the Community

Collaborate, Share, and Learn. Join Communities based on the products and topics that you are interested in, start reading the blogs, engage in the discussions, ask questions during our AMAs, and explore all that the Microsoft Tech Community has to offer.