Why Did Microsoft's Dedicated Product Communities Disappear?
Over the past few months, it looks like Microsoft has quietly removed or collapsed many of the dedicated product communities — including the Copilot Users Group, Tips & Tricks sections, and other structured hubs that used to exist under the old Answers/Community system. If you post a NEW question, you can still find them (see below), but I’ve found no way to reliably locate one and browse. Today, everything funnels into the generic Learn/Answers front door, and normal navigation no longer exposes product‑specific groups. The only way I’ve been able to reach them is accidentally: if a search returns zero results (announcements don't count), the system offers the opportunity to “ask a question,” (with that header), and only then does it reveal a product/community picker for the "posting space." Without that side‑door, the communities appear to be gone. This raises a few questions: Were the dedicated communities intentionally depreciated, or is this an unintended side effect of the Learn/Answers consolidation? Is the conditional “ask a question” picker now the only official way to reach product‑specific groups? If communities still exist, why are they no longer discoverable through normal navigation? Is Microsoft planning a replacement structure, or is everything moving toward a single flat Q&A model? I’m asking because the old product communities were genuinely useful — especially for product-specific workflow tips, user‑to‑user knowledge sharing, and related discussions. If anyone has insight into the reorganization, or knows whether the dedicated communities are coming back, I’d appreciate it. P.S. If anyone has seen a different workflow or found a reliable navigation path, I’d be interested in hearing it.
Account Recovery Methods
Trying to recover account for months with no luck. I had a old phone with the account still on it so I copied the subject lines and emails directly. This is the main reason I'm so confused why the system keeps declining me. I reach out to customer service and they can't even help as the system has no human interference. Solution? Keep trying or create a new email with them. I've seen smaller companies with better solutions, ridiculous.
Proposal : Offline Copilot Appliance for Education
Hi all at Microsoft, I am one of your old school engineers. An inspired idea suddenly came to me this morning when I saw how school institutions are suffering with cloud based infrastructure. I ran the idea through Copilot for analysis. Here is the output. Hope you can implement it. Cheers. Proposal: Offline Copilot Appliance for Secure, High Compliance Environments Executive Summary I am proposing a new Microsoft product category: Microsoft Copilot Secure Appliance (MCSA). This is a hardware bound, offline capable AI system designed for education, and regulated enterprise environments where cloud dependent AI is not viable. This product creates a new high margin revenue stream for Microsoft without reducing Azure consumption. It addresses a global market segment currently underserved by cloud only AI offerings. Market Problem Many sectors cannot rely on cloud dependent AI due to regulatory constraints, air gapped networks, national security requirements, offline resilience mandates, Azure outage sensitivity, and strict data sovereignty laws. These customers require deterministic offline operation, hardware locked security, predictable performance, controlled update channels, and zero cloud dependency. Microsoft currently has no product that satisfies these requirements. Proposed Solution: Microsoft Copilot Secure Appliance (MCSA) A dedicated, hardware accelerated AI appliance that runs a local Copilot class model with offline reasoning, offline inference, hardware bound licensing, encrypted model weights, TPM secured boot, signed update packs, and optional cloud augmentation. This creates a premium enterprise product similar to Cisco UCS, Palo Alto firewalls, Azure Stack Edge, and HoloLens Industrial Edition, but focused on AI reasoning and secure offline operation. Revenue Model Hardware sales: estimated unit pricing between $8,000 and $20,000 per appliance. Subscription update packs: monthly or annual licensing for model updates, knowledge packs, security patches, and compliance modules. Estimated recurring revenue between $200 and $500 per device per month. Enterprise support contracts: premium support tiers for government, defense, critical infrastructure, education districts, and regulated industries. Estimated annual revenue between $50,000 and $250,000 per organization. This model does not compete with Azure. It expands Microsoft’s footprint into markets where Azure cannot operate. Strategic Benefits to Microsoft New revenue channel. Offline AI appliances represent a high margin vertical market that Azure cannot reach. Government and defense adoption. Many countries legally require offline AI systems. This product satisfies those mandates. Education resilience. Schools worldwide experience outages when cloud identity fails. An offline Copilot appliance restores deterministic operation. Competitive advantage. No major cloud provider currently offers a secure offline AI appliance with enterprise reasoning capabilities. Brand alignment. Fits naturally into Microsoft’s existing ecosystem including Azure Stack, Surface Hub, Defender for IoT, Confidential Computing, and Copilot for Enterprise. Technical Feasibility The system can be built using quantized large scale models, secure hardware accelerators, TPM bound licensing, encrypted model weights, signed update packs, and local inference runtimes. Estimated development cost: between $150 million and $400 million. Estimated annual maintenance: between $20 million and $45 million. This is well within Microsoft’s R&D capacity. Conclusion The Microsoft Copilot Secure Appliance represents a strategic opportunity to expand Microsoft’s AI leadership into markets where cloud dependent AI cannot operate. It is technically feasible, commercially viable, high margin, globally relevant, aligned with government and enterprise needs, and complementary to Azure rather than competitive. I believe this product would strengthen Microsoft’s position in secure AI, expand revenue, and address a critical gap in the current AI ecosystem.
How can I delete my posts on the community hub?
How can I delete my posts on the community hub? Please have the administrator delete the following posts for me: Possible File History Issues After KB5101684 and KB5120249 on Windows 11 and Windows 10 | Microsoft Community Hub Please confirm the KB5101684 File History issue and release a fix in the August security update. | Microsoft Community Hub This issue occurred after I and other users installed KB5101684, disrupting File History. | Microsoft Community Hub Also, someone replied to my post. My reply is still under review. Please approve it. Thank you.Office 365 Tenant-to-Tenant Migration Best Practices
Hello Everyone, I’m currently working on an Office 365 tenant-to-tenant migration project and would like to get recommendations and insights from the community based on real-world experience. The goal is to ensure a smooth migration with minimal downtime and user impact. I’m currently reviewing areas such as tenant preparation, DNS and mail flow planning, identity management, licensing, MFA, and Conditional Access policies. I would also like to understand: Important prerequisites before starting the migration Best practices for source and target tenant preparation Common issues faced during migration Steps to validate the environment after migration Recommendations to reduce migration risks and downtime If anyone has handled similar migrations, please share your suggestions, lessons learned, or things that should be avoided during planning and execution.[Help]Tips on how to chat with live customer service
How can I chat with live customer service and the technical team to get their assurance that Microsoft will fix the issue or is currently investigating it, such as the file history log problem? For example, these two posts: Windows 11 to KB5101684 File History bug | Microsoft Community Hub Win 10/11 file history is malfunctioning after an update why hasn't Microsoft fixed this issue yet? | Microsoft Community Hub
Microsoft 365 Copilot Training: Explore Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat
Hello Getting Started on the Tech Community , I have recieved an invitation to join this event on August 18th 2026 but all options are easter/european times. Do you have this session available for America's time zone? https://msevents.microsoft.com/event?id=1980970910&ocid=eml_pg524077_gdc_comm_mw&mkt_tok=MTU3LUdRRS0zODIAAAGjdU2p6LqmpYtBXwA-5BrSNEvzsDFPpGpSPpqGT2aWB1RfXaY6wX_MCzAPRsNZwcaDB5cQQfWXl35GMu8Vr1faby2VCJKwU6DB-LP2PVSoq2RcrmvIh0kIpGO4
Content Not Published Your post contains invalid HTML.
"Content Not Published Your post contains invalid HTML. Remove the following invalid tags before publishing: p (data-afsc-id)" That message appears just about every time I try to post something in this forum. It is so annoying. Can't someone fix the forum so that it stops doing this? I am never posting any html. Apparently, the forum is adding the html itself and then saying that I can't post it.
