The teams responsible for Microsoft’s community forums including (Microsoft
Answers,
MSDN,
TechNet,
Expression and the
Microsoft brand forums) would like to make you aware of upcoming changes to
the Microsoft Answers platform and share details as to some modifications to the user experience that you may see.
As our most active users and contributors we want to share this information with you ahead of time to prepare you for these changes and answer any questions that you may have.
What is Happening and Why?
As the popularity of social media increases, more customers are turning to Microsoft's online community forums to learn, solve problems and extend
their capabilities with our software, services and tools. This increase in popularity has led to many asks that are differentiated per audience. For Microsoft Answers, targeted at the consumer audience, we need to more fully support the
consumer Q&A scenario and features and functionalities for our online service businesses like Windows Live.
For the MSDN, TechNet, Expression and Microsoft brand forums targeted at developers, IT Pros and Designers, the focus is to empower and incent the communities to contribute and seamlessly integrate the experience with the rest of the MSDN and TechNet
platforms and applications (wikis, blogs, galleries,…).
Today, Microsoft Answers shares the same forum infrastructure as The MSDN, TechNet, Expression and Microsoft brand forums. To sustain growth and provide an avenue
for continued innovation around specific audience needs, we will be moving the Microsoft Answers forums to a new platform infrastructure.
With this transition, there will be changes to the user experience for community members that participate on Answers as well as The MSDN, TechNet, Expression and Microsoft brand
forums. There will be no change in user experience for the community that solely participates on MSDN, TechNet, Expression and Microsoft brand forums.
When Will This Happen?
The date for this transition is targeted for Friday May 21, at 4PM PDT.
During this transition, the Microsoft Answers, MSDN, TechNet, Expression and Microsoft brand forums will experience downtime for a period of 4 to 6 hours.
This time is needed for necessary data migration and testing.
Users that navigate to the site will be directed to an outage notification page during downtime.
Why is this happening now?
With the recent release of Office 2010 and the planned retirement of public newsgroups beginning on June 1, 2010, the decision to make the Microsoft
Answers transition before these events occur is intended to minimize additional change and impact on the community.
Less than .1% of All Users Will Be Impacted:
Only those users who are active in both Microsoft Answers as well as any of the other supported sites (MSDN, TechNet, Expression and Microsoft brand forums) will see any sort
of change.
What Will Be Impacted?
While the vast majority of the functionality of the sites (Microsoft Answers, MSDN, TechNet, Expression and Microsoft brand forums) will remain
unchanged, the transition will impact the following community features:
Forums Feature Change
·
The ability for moderators to move threads to and from Microsoft Answers to the other brands (TechNet, MSDN, Expression and Microsoft branded forums) will no longer be an option.
Moving threads across TechNet, MSDN, Expression and Microsoft branded forums will continue to work as it does currently.
·
The ability to share forums across brands between Answers and MSDN, TechNet, Expression and Microsoft brand forums will no longer be available.
Shared forums for TechNet, MSDN, Expression and Microsoft brand forums will continue to work as it does today.
·
Forum and thread list views ("My Forums", “My Forum Threads”, "Assigned Threads", "My Alerts") will be limited to either Microsoft Answers only or only the other brands (TechNet,
MSDN, Expression and Microsoft brand forums).
·
Over a year ago, forums RSS changed from an older syndication endpoint to the forums user interface.
Since this transition, it has been recommended to move off the legacy syndication URL service.
However for customers that have not moved off yet, they will no longer serve Answers data.
Users that want RSS for a forum or thread will need to re-subscribe to the RSS from the Answers Forum’s RSS buttons.
·
Existing users will not need to create a new profile after the Answers platform splits from the existing STO platform.
Each current user will have their existing profile copied to the Answers platform and ready-to-access upon launch.
Forums Recognition Points Calculation and Display
Today, users’ recognition points are central across all brand forums. This has caused some confusion since Microsoft Answers forum contributors would also show up as
top users in the MSDN and TechNet forums even though they may not have contributed much there.
After the platform separation user’s points will be more aligned to their set of forums. Answers points will reflect work done and contributions only in the Answers
forums. The other brands (TechNet, MSDN, Expression and Microsoft brand forums) recognition points will reflect contributions that were not part of The Microsoft Answers forums.
For example, currently if a community member has 16,000 points (5 medals) for their contributions in The VB forums on MSDN, then their profile will show that they have 16,000
points (5 medals) when they log into the Office community on Microsoft Answers. Once the transition to the new platform for Microsoft Answers occurs, points will only be displayed for the contributions that have been made on the Microsoft Answers forums.
Points that have been accumulated for participation on MSDN, TechNet, Expression and the Microsoft brand forums will not be displayed in the profile on Microsoft Answers. This change is intended to accurately reflect the points and medals that have been
accumulated for contributions specific to Microsoft Answers or MSDN, TechNet, Expression and Microsoft brand forums.
Because of this change the following behavior may occur:
·
Point totals may decrease as the points are split for contributions on Microsoft Answers or MSDN, TechNet, Expression and Microsoft brand forums.
·
Medals may decrease as they are awarded for a total of points accumulated.
Once the platform separation takes place, points and medals will continue to be calculated in the same manner.
Moving forward, users will have different point and medal totals for these contributions on Microsoft Answers and MSDN, TechNet, Expression and Microsoft branded forums.
It’s important to note that points and medals will continue to be calculated for contributions across MSDN, TechNet, Expression and Microsoft branded forums.
For additional information on how points are calculated be refer to the forums
FAQ.
The Forums-NNTP Bridge
A number of users who use the NNTP Bridge to connect their newsreaders to the Microsoft forums will see a change to the existing user experience.
The current NNTP Bridge will continue to work for MSDN, TechNet, Expression, and Microsoft brand forums.
In order to access the Microsoft Answers forums from a newsreader, a new Microsoft Answers NNTP Bridge has been created. The new Microsoft Answers NNTP Bridge must be downloaded and installed in order to access the Microsoft Answers forums once the platform
transitions occur. For users that participate in Microsoft Answers and MSDN, TechNet, Expression, Microsoft brand forums, both NNTP bridge clients will need to be installed and running.
The latest version of the Microsoft Answers NNTP Bridge will be accessible from the following
link on May 21.
If you have additional questions or comments please feel free to contact our team
directly at fortrans@microsoft.com.
On Wednesday May 26, 2010 we are holding two Live Meeting events for your convenience.
The meeting invites are below and are an excellent arena for you to ask any questions you might have about this shift after you've had an opportunity to experience the changes.
We highly encourage you to save this to your schedule.
_______________________
Live Meeting Option #1: 8AM-9AM (PDT):
(866) 500-6738 or +1 (203) 480-8000
Participant code: 8178974
Meeting Option #2: 5PM-6PM
(PDT):
(866) 500-6738 or +1 (203) 480-8000
Participant code: 8178974
_______________________
We're appreciative of the contributions and knowledge that you share
in our online communities.
Thank you,
The Microsoft Online Forums Community Team
Community Forums Program Manager
