What’s New in the MTC? September 2023 – Community Ranks
Our Mission at the MTC is to provide a community Microsoft users can get the latest news, ask questions, learn new skills, and connect with peers and Microsoft experts from around the world. This month, we are rolling out a new ranking system designed to recognize users’ contributions to the community and add a little more ‘Microsoft’ to the MTC. What are the Community Ranks? We now have two ranking ladders to recognize both types of our tech community members. We have our Contributors Ranks for those who come to the MTC to interact and ask/answer questions in our forums, blogs, and events. Some of you Microsoft gamers may notice the subtle nod 😉 Contributor Ranks Onyx Contributor Titanium Contributor Diamond Contributor Platinum Contributor Gold Contributor Silver Contributor Bronze Contributor Steel Contributor Iron Contributor Brass Contributor Copper Contributor And for our members who come to the MTC to catch up on news and learn something new from the blogs, we have our Reader Ranks! These are replacing our Visitor/Member ranks, and once you start posting in the MTC, you will move into the Contributor Ranks. Reader Ranks Senior Reader Prolific Reader Regular Reader Frequent Reader Casual Reader Occasional Reader New Reader (Please note that these rankings are intended for fun and are not a measure of MTC’ers technical competence.) What goes into the Community Ranks? When you become a member of the MTC, you start climbing the ranking ladder, starting as a New Reader. As you contribute more and more to the community, you will start to climb the rank ladder. Here are some of the key ingredients that go into our ranking recipe (*These points are awarded each time an activity is completed): Viewing messages (0.25 points) Commenting on blogs, ideas, and TKB articles (1 point) Creating new discussion topics (1 point) Replying to forum discussions (2 points) Giving (2 points) and receiving Kudos (4 points) Contributing Ideas (5 points) Authoring blog articles (10 points) Publishing Knowledge Base articles (10 points) Getting your replies marked as a solution (15 points) Simply put, the more you engage and interact with the MTC, the more points you earn and the higher your community ranking will be! If you have any questions on these new rankings or you’d like to share feedback with the Tech Community Team, let us know in the comments below.Impossible to sign in with different user account
I use this browser with two MS accounts. The techcommunity does not let me choose the user account to sign in with! I'm forced to open a private window to sign in and write this feedback. So when clicking Sign In, it thinks I want to sign in with my M365 company account, and asks me to accept certain permissions. However, I want to sign in with my personal MS account. So I click cancel and get redirected to the home page. So, in order to visit the site with my personal MS account, must either use a private windows, or clear every single cookie for every single Microsoft domain, which is also NOT what I want to do. This is simply unacceptable and driving me away from using the techcommunity at all! I made a video for you to show you how broken the sign in flow is: https://i.imgur.com/KnxnPKM.mp4Primer: How to Use RBAC for Applications to Control App Use of the Mail.Send Permission
The temptation to use the Mail.Send application permission in scripts can lead PowerShell developers into trouble because the permission allows access to all mailboxes, including sensitive executive and financial mailboxes. Fortunately, RBAC for Applications allows tenants to control the access that apps have to mailboxes and other Exchange content. All explained here with an example script to test RBAC of Applications. https://office365itpros.com/2026/02/17/mail-send-rbac-for-applications/
What happened to Microsoft Support?
The level of support for M365 that we are receiving from "Microsoft branded" support teams keep getting worse and worse (we didn't think that it was possible, but here we are). The classic "we tried calling you but couldn't reach you" is back. You open a support case, sit in front of the phone waiting for the call just to receive an email stating that "we tried but you couldn't be reached". When you reply that you are sitting in front of the phone and you didn't miss any calls, the support engineer will call you back and successfully "reach you". Not replying to emails (including those sent to "Team Managers"), sending email with 2 mins before the end of the engineer's shift so there is only 1 email per day or closing cases with issues still being open is now the norm with MS Support. Support cases that drag on for weeks with no resolution, "can you please change this setting and try again", "we are still reviewing the logs" or my favourite "it's been 2 weeks, is the issue still occurring?" emails are extremely frustrating. The difference in support a company receives is very obvious between a multi-million-dollar support agreement and partner/SMB support. I understand that MS may not want to spend time, money and effort on companies that don't buy support agreements outside of those that come with the product, but if you already offer support then at least make it somewhat useful. The most frustrating part is being stuck with this level of support and having no other options. Most escalation emails to cc'd managers result in "do the needful" emails back to the engineer or go unanswered. The only way to combat this issue is to open multiple identical support cases in hopes that 1 out of the 3 engineers will be able to help you.Unexpected Error when navigating the Microsoft Tech Community
All, We are aware of higher than normal instances of unexpected errors this morning. This does not appear to impacting all users but users who are impacted may see a black bar asking you to report it to our team and quote a reference number. Users who experience this error may also encounter missing page elements i.e. no boards or blogs listed on corresponding pages. Update: This issue is not affecting all users, if you get an unexpected error then try again either from a different browser or device, even opening the page using the InPrivate mode can result in not getting this error. We are investigating this as a matter of urgency and will post updates here. Resolved: 10:00am GMT - The issue that caused this spike has now been resolved. Please remember unexpected errors can happen for a variety of reasons and so if you continue to receive them it does not mean this issue has resurfaced. Please try to reload the page that caused the error again and if no resolution then please contact our team. Thanks and once again please accept our apologies for any disruption this event caused.
