Microsoft is replacing MSDN and TechNet forums with Microsoft Q&A
Microsoft has released a preview of a new Microsoft Q&A service meant to help users find answers to technical questions.
By Mary Jo Foley for All About Microsoft | October 31, 2019 -- 17:46 GMT (10:46 PDT) | Topic: Artificial Intelligence
Credit: Microsoft Microsoft has been slowly dismantling its MSDN and TechNet blogging platforms for the past year-plus. This week, Microsoft introduced something meant to replace the MSDN and TechNet forums: A preview of Microsoft Q&A.
Microsoft officials said they are making the switch because its MSDN and TechNet forums are outdated, according to a Frequently Asked Questions page about the new Q&A site.
The new Q&A experience is part of the larger docs.microsoft.com platform. It is designed to offer "relevant and timely answers to your technical problems from a community of experts and Microsoft engineers." The new service will allow users to follow posts, tags or people to get information; provide suggested answers as users type their questions; and the ability to bookmark content for future reference. Q&A uses the same user authentication as Microsoft Docs and Learn. Experts will earn Reputation Points for answers they provide.
Microsoft published a blog post on October 29 describing the Q&A preview in more detail. (Thanks to MSpoweruser.com and @WithinRafael for the link to the post.)
"A migration of a resource this size is a massive undertaking. To ensure a smooth transition and minimize any disruption for users, we've broken down the migration into multiple phases. The goal is to complete the migration by mid-2020," according to the post.
As of this week, Microsoft has a limited set of topics that are covered by Q&A. They include Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory Domain Services, Azure Active Directory B2C, Azure Information Protection, Azure DevTest Labs, Azure Lab Services, Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Service Fabric, Azure Web Apps, Universal Windows Platform and Partner Center API. The plan is for the team to continue to add more topics over the coming months.
FROM THE LINK IN THIS ARTICLE: Introducing Microsoft Q&A (Preview) | Microsoft Docs
Introducing Microsoft Q&A (Preview)
This post was written by Sandra Aldana, Senior Program Manager, Developer Relations for Cloud + AI Division.
For over 10 years the MSDN and TechNet Forums played a key part in enabling our customers to unblock their business scenarios by offering a platform where technical questions could be answered by Microsoft and the community
. As time progressed, and technology evolved, the needs of the community grew beyond what the existing solution could provide. We started on a journey to identify a new, robust solution which would support our need to evolve the user experience.
We’re excited to share an important milestone in the journey, introducing the preview release of Microsoft Q&A - the place to get answers to all your technical questions on Microsoft products and services.
The new Q&A experience will offer relevant and timely answers to your technical problems from a community of experts and Microsoft engineers and will open the door to a variety of new features and experiences, like:
- Tag-based experience allows you to ask questions across products and services in a single place
- Follow posts, tags, or people to get updates
- Unified profile for single sign on across docs.microsoft.com
- Suggested answers as you type your question to quickly identify possible existing answers
- Bookmark content for future reference
Microsoft Q&A is a natural extension of the docs.microsoft.com experience you’ve come to love:
- docs.microsoft.com provides you with deep technical information about specific topics, including the recent addition of code samples to accelerate your learning journey.
- Microsoft Learn allows you to master those topics by following step-by-step tutorials with interactive coding environments.
A migration of a resource this size is a massive undertaking. To ensure a smooth transition and minimize any disruption for users, we’ve broken down the migration into multiple phases. The goal is to complete the migration by mid-2020.
The launch today includes the following products/services and we will continue to add more services to this list during the upcoming months:
- Azure Active Directory
- Azure Active Directory Domain Services
- Azure Active Directory B2C
- Azure Information Protection
- Azure DevTest Labs
- Azure Lab Services
- Azure Virtual Machines
- Azure Service Fabric
- Azure Web Apps
- Universal Windows Platform
- Partner Center API
Check out the FAQ page to find out all the details.
Here is an example on how to ask a question
Here’s how the question looks once posted.
