Your Time in the Microsoft Forums ~ An ongoing legacy

A lot of people spend a fair amount of time in the forums researching issues, answering questions, and getting to understand the issues around a particular product. These people are usually experts for the company they work for and part of the the solution set for the tools they use. As a person who has been active in the forums for over ten years here are some of the lessons I’ve learned; some of them the hard way.

Your Profile

Back in the early 2000s I used my company email alias as my profile on the MSDN Forums. Some time in 2008, our company mandated that we use a Windows Live email address; this was around the time that they became the Microsoft Forums. I lost all my points for posts and answers. Think of it, when you leave a company, you lost the company address. If you have been using that email for your participation on the Forums, you lose those points. If you use your Win Live ID, that stays with you forever.

So take the time to fill out your profile so that others can see what you are up to. I included my blogs site, where I work, and a short biography on mine.

Your Participation

Spending time in the forum can take a lot of time. So I schedule my time so that I can keep up. If I’m in a meeting that has run way to long, rat-holing on an issue that doesn’t involve me, I can often be found answering questions in the Forum, giving people credit for providing answers, and voting for helpful posts. I don’t get participation points for monitoring the CRM Forum (which is actually part of my job at Microsoft). But I am able to take care of the thoughtful and talented people who take the time to answer other peoples questions about our product.

Alerts

If you spend a lot of time on the MSDN Forums, you can make sure you get back to any threads where you are waiting for an answer. You can use the My Thread and My Alert settings on the CRM Forum main page.

You can select the specific threads you want to be alerted on by using the Alert Me button at the top of every thread.

Search is your friend

If you want to find out if a question has been asked already, you can use the Search window at the top of any forum.

So when I use the search term ‘Workflow’ I get results like this:

Here’s hoping some of these recommendation can be used by you to make your time on the Microsoft Forums efficient, fast, and effective.