Lessons Learned from Microsoft Tech Community Usage

Brass Contributor

I was a user of the previous Yammer community and have found it difficult to adjust to the new Microsoft Tech Community.  With Yammer, I was easily able to review topics/threads on my phone with badges as reminders, counters for unread topics in each Group, and an intuitive/smooth experience.  I was wondering if anybody has any best (or better) practices or lessons learned they have used to stay engaged with the new platform?  How do you review unread topics (RSS feed, clidking into each community, etc.)?  What device(s) and app(s) do you use to interact (browser on laptop/mobile, app, etc.)?  Any other tips you have found useful in keeping up to date on the information in the community?  I would like to be engaged as there is a great wealth of information in the community, I just haven't found a good way to do so.

11 Replies

Hi Michael,

 

I understand your feelings.

I was only on the old O365 Yammer group briefly before the move to this one, but am a Yammer user of 6 years.

 

Adapting to this community site has not been seamless, but I am enjoying using the new platform and expect to keep finding ways to best make it work for me.

Having had Windows PCs at home and work, then an Apple one at home, iPhone, Android, Windows phones, Android tablets and the iPad I'm posting from now a simple platform change ain't gong to keep me away. ;p

 

I don't have much in the way of any real tips yet, but I mostly goto my home feed first, unless the tantalising notifications are present.

 

I hope this helps a tad.

Thanks, Brett.  I will certainly continue to use the Tech Community, but am hoping I can find some tips or advice on ways to improve the experience.  I am sure it (and we) will adapt as goes through additional cycles of development.

It is very difficult to find the new posts in this software. I've selected Favorites which I view from My Home. From there I can see which groups have new posts.

But, from the groups it can be very difficult to find the actual posts that have new content as the new posts aren't always visible. So a lot of my time is wasted clicking on topic heading in the hunt for new posts.

I'm definitely not a fan of Yammer, but it was much nicer to work with the forums there as it was super easy to find new content. Today's AMA (Ask Microsoft Anything) proved that even more vs a YamJam. It was very painful trying to view the new posts during the AMA.

Most of the people I've spoken with have the same concerns, and we left similar feedback to our lovely community team. The reality is that those are two different platform and we need to adapt. The team has been doing some improvements based on the feedback and more are coming in the future, take for example the inactivity window.

 

As for actual tips, what I do now is use the dashboad page. It allows me to quickly check for ne threads (although pagination would certainly help in this regard), and then I just go over each of the communities/spaces I follow in a new tab. Definitely not perfect, and it takes quite a lot of clicking, but it's the best I've found so far.

I'm in the same boat as you and the others in this thread, NONE of us can figure out how to easily find the post that we have not yet read.

 

I have submitted numerous suggestions/complaints about this simple functionality, but nothing has happened. It continues to be a major point of frustration for me.


@Vasil Michev wrote:

The reality is that those are two different platform and we need to adapt.

The reality is that communities must be designed to foster engagement, and this one is not. Only the most dedicated people will expend the mental energy required to use a system that is not intuitive. The rest will drift away.

it takes quite a lot of clicking

That neatly summarizes pretty much any activity here at the moment.

I cannot offer any tips because I haven't found anything that makes this site easy to use. In my opinion the primary use case is no longer the community, but ad-hoc searching for solutions to specific problems. The whole idea of a community where people hang out, discuss etc. is completely gone. And it is precisely because keeping up-to-date is so difficult now.

 

I've stopped keeping track and now only come here when I have a question to ask - and then I typically come back the following few days to check up on answers.

 

To get alerted about new threads, I use Inoreader, which is already part of my workflow to stay current with all kind of news and sites. It works like a charm, as usual.

For new posts in already existing threads to which I have subsribed, I get the standard community email alerts.

All in all, I need just the bare minimum of clicks...

 

What would be a good way to get notifications from here?

CLick the .... in the top right corner of a conversation and you can subscribe

Since you have posted in this thread, probably (it depends from your profile settings...) you are already subscribed.