John Martin's Blog

Secret TechNet Tips & Tricks

This week at TechEd, I had the chance to sit in on a roundtable discussion with 5-6 IT manager-types, including several Microsoft MVPs. Throughout the course of the discussion, which included some questions like “what’s one thing you wish Microsoft would do better, of fix?” a few items came up that I think we actually have a decent solution for.

Problem is, no-one knows about it!

So, I thought I’d blog it.

Problem: It’s hard to look up solutions for error codes. I always go to EventID.net – what does Microsoft have? After all, it’s THEIR error code!

Solution: Many months ago, Microsoft began indexing its Events & Errors database for Live Search. TechNet search is powered by Live Search and you can enter error codes into the search field in the TechNet site masthead to look up solutions. I tried this with “error 721.”

As you can see, we also have a handy auto-complete feature running that makes it easier to enter your code and see all the other errors and codes.

When you execute the search, on the search results page (1,890 hits), you can also use our search refinements, which “re-shapes” the search queries to increase the relevancy of content from specific sources, like the KB, Blogs, etc.

Notice that one of the refinements is for “Events and Errors.”

At this point, there are only 11 results for “error 721,” so it should be much easier to review the hits and see it helps.

Problem: Sometimes I need TechNet Library content offline, like when I’m flying or just…offline. Other sites help me with that. Why not Microsoft?

Solution: Last year, Microsoft created a utility called “Package This” to help customers download sections of the MSDN and TechNet Libraries. You can download it from CodePlex, Microsoft’s Open Source Project Hosting site. Here’s the “What it Does” text from the CodePlex site:

Package This is a GUI tool written in C# for creating help files (.chm and .hxs) from the content obtained from the MSDN Library or the TechNet Library via the MSDN Content Service. You select the content you want from the table of contents, build a help file, and use the content offline. You are making personalized ebooks of MSDN or TechNet content. Both help file formats also give full text search and keyword search.

Problem: Community (aka user-generated) content can be sprawling and random, especially in forums. It should be easier to quickly see the question and the answer.

Solution: In a recent release of our MSDN and TechNet forums, we reformatted the thread view so the answer to the question is right up at the top – all the other replies are below.

Check it out:

Hope this helps!

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Do those guys at TechNet even know there is an event going on?

Hi everyone! Its been a long time since I last blogged – embarrassing to be any more specific about how long – but I’m back at it again.

Several month ago, I took on a new role at Microsoft: Director of TechNet.

In the past, I have had several functional leadership roles around MSDN and TechNet (Planning, BI, Marketing), but now I’m actually accountable for what kind of experience you have on the TechNet site. The buck stops with me, so to speak, and I’m really excited about this new job.

One of the top priorities we have for TechNet is to make it more responsive to and reflective of topics, issues, and events in the IT community – ultimately, a “hub” for those same things – and not just a site for online product documentation.

Towards that goal, today, we did something very different on TechNet to reflect the big TechEd event in Los Angeles this week. We changed the site masthead to reflect the green branding of the event …

…and we added a new editorial “box” on the homepage to keep people up-to-date on the latest TechEd news and events. Myself and a teammate will even be trying to “report live” from the event.

This, of course, is just one thing for one event, but over time, its our goal to make TechNet and all its main TechCenters much more relevant by better integrating people, knowledge, resources, news, and events from the IT community.

So, yes! We know there is an event going on in LA. And we also know there’s a whole lot more going on every day out there - in the IT community - and we’d like to be a bigger part of it.

If you are at TechEd and would like to hook up, email me through the blog or hit me up on Twitter (johmar). If you’re not, but still have some feedback, leave me a comment!

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New MSDN Home Page - Better?

Last week, the MSDN Team updated the MSDN home page hoping to make it more valuable and easier to use.

We made tons of little changes and few bigger ones like:

• More better bloggers in the featured section (and an all new Featured Bloggers page)
• Downloads that really matter in “Essential Downloads”
• More content above the fold
• Icons that mean a little more at a glance and are a little easier on the eye

Better? Same? Worse?

Let us know what you’d like to see on the MSDN home page!

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Curious About Certification? Register for a Certification 101 Live Meeting

Not sure if technical certification is right for you? Think it is the right thing, but not sure where to start?

Next Tuesday, November 18, Microsoft Learning will be hosting a 60-minute Live Meeting to help you answer questions like these…

What can a technical certification can do for me--what is the goal?

How do I choose a certification track that will help me achieve my goals – career or otherwise?

How do I know when I’m ready? (expected experience level, time/money involved, etc.)

How do I prepare for the tests?

Use these links to register:

November 18, 2008 at 7:30 A.M. Pacific Time

November 18, 2008 at 5:30 P.M. Pacific Time

For more information on certification and links to great (FREE) learning resources, see the Microsoft Learning MCP site, the MSDN Learning page, the TechNet Learning page, or our online learning catalog.

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New Silverlight 2 App Visualizes Social Bookmarking on MSDN and TechNet

Ever wonder what people are actually bookmarking using MSDN and TechNet Social? Check out the Ticker and find out!

With the Ticker, you can quickly see what’s being bookmarked by the technical community right now, today, yesterday, or over the past week.

With each bookmark, you are also just one-click away from opening the bookmarked URL (and adding to your own bookmarks) or viewing a list of other bookmarks that share the same tags.

The latest version of the Ticker has been updated run on Silverlight 2, and is available in English, Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and Traditional and Simplified Chinese (use the “Change Language” feature at the top to switch).

Try it out and let us know what you think!

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Ramp Up Your Developer Skills for SharePoint

Ramp Up is a free learning program from Microsoft that provides community-driven learning paths or “routes” for building your skills with Microsoft developer tools and technologies.

Ramp Up routes are authored by experts from the technical community, easy to follow, and include a variety of learning resources like whitepapers, codecasts, and v-labs. Perhaps best of all, when you finish a route, you get cool rewards like discounts on certification exams and e-learning.

In addition to the new route for SharePoint, Ramp Up also offers routes for Aspiring Developers, Java Developers switching to C#, and developers updating their skills to the latest version of Visual Studio.

Check it all out on the Ramp Up site on MSDN.

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New “Oslo” Resources Now on MSDN

"Oslo" is the code name for Microsoft’s platform for model-driven applications. The goal of Oslo is to provide a 10x productivity gain by making model-driven applications mainstream with domain-specific models, a new language, and tools.

To support developers using Oslo, MSDN has launched the new Oslo developer center featuring the Oslo SDK, videos, and great Oslo blogs from people like Chris Sells, Don Box, Aaron Skonnard, and others…

…and a new MSDN Forum.

For the very latest on Oslo, see this PDC2008 session video on Channel 9, or visit the PDC2008 event site.

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New Windows 7 Developer Guide Featured on MSDN

In support of the pre-beta version provided today at PDC2008, the MSDN team has updated the Windows developer center on MSDN to include new Windows 7 resources.

Featured content this week includes the new Windows 7 Developer Guide, which can be downloaded from the MSDN Code Gallery.

For more on Windows 7 and other news from PDC2008, including live keynotes, visit the PDC2008 event site.

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MSDN Launches New Developer Center for Azure Platform Services

In coordination with the announcements this week at PDC2008, MSDN has launched a new developer center for Azure Platform Services.

This new center is THE go-to MSDN site for cloud-computing, including resources for SQL Data Services, Live Services, .NET Services, and Windows Azure.

In addition to documentation and downloads the new site also offers links to new MSDN forums for Azure and easy access to top blogs from the Azure, Live Services, .NET, and SQL product teams.

This week the MSDN team also launched significant updates to the developer centers for Parallel Computing and Architecture.

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Live from PDC2008 - MSDN and CodePlex!

This year’s Professional Developer Conference – PDC2008 -  is kicking off today in Los Angeles, and is shaping up to be one of the most significant developer events from Microsoft in a long time.

In addition to major technology announcements around cloud-computing and Windows 7, MSDN and CodePlex are in the Microsoft Pavilion, so if you are at the event, stop by and see us!

Chris Slemp (cslemp on Twitter) and other members of the team are at the MSDN booth, where you can learn about our new DevLabs site, and how social bookmarking is enabling developers to contribute directly to the MSDN community and network with each other on sites like the ones for Visual Basic, C#, C++, Silverlight, and Visual Studio Team Server.

Being an MSDN bookmarker can also help you collect a cool PDC badge at the event, so come by and show us your profile…

Sara Ford (saraford on Twitter) and Jim Newkirk will be at our booth for CodePlex, Microsoft's open source project hosting web site. In addition to being THE woman to talk to about open source projects on CodePlex, Sara has also written a book recently and might even sign a copy!

If you are not there, the PDC web site provides some great ways to track with the event. They even have a mobile site. Check it out.

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Top 5 Resources Used on TechNet and Other Interesting TechNet Factoids

Every quarter or so, we’re going to start providing the MSDN and TechNet communities with some insights about activity on the global websites. Yesterday, I posted on MSDN – today is TechNet.

As a member of the TechNet community, I hope you find this interesting. We have tons of data, so please let me know if you’d like to see more or different numbers.

And, thank you to all our visitors and especially the ones who completed our satisfaction survey!

Worldwide Reach Increases

TechNet sites averaged 13.8 million Unique Visitors (UVs) per month in the Jun-Sep period. This is up about 10% from the same period last year. (Source: WebTrends)

Top 5 Locales

Microsoft manages dozens of country-specific MSDN and TechNet sites. These are the top country-specific TechNet sites sorted by average monthly traffic in the Jun-Sep period. This list is also based on data from WebTrends.

1. United States
2. Spain 
3. Germany
4. China 
5. UK

Way to go Spain!

The rest of the factoids are sourced from Jun-Sep data from the monthly satisfaction survey on the US TechNet site.

Top 5 Ways People Get to TechNet

1. Search (27%)
2. From within a Microsoft product (14%)
3. From www.microsoft.com (11%)
4. From some other Microsoft site (10%)
5. Favorites or bookmarks (8%)

Top 5 Tasks

More than 80% of the visits to TechNet are driven by these top 5 tasks:

1. Troubleshooting (24%)
2. Downloads (23%)
3. Find out how to perform a task (14%)
4. Learn about a product or technology (11%)
5. Lookup reference info (10%)

Question: Is this they way you see your tasks as an IT processional? Have any suggestions for us?

Top 5 TechCenters

TechNet is made up of dozens of smaller mini-sites called “TechCenters,” which are dedicated to specific products and technologies. Here are the top 5.

1. Security
2. Windows Sysinternals
3. Exchange Server
4. Windows Client
5. SQL Server

Other Fun Factoids

I thought these were kind of interesting as well…

Which of the following best describes your level of knowledge and skills related to the product or technology you are researching today?

How often do you visit TechNet?

What resources did you use during your visit to TechNet today? (Please select all that apply)

Like I said, if there is other data you’d like to see or have questions, please let me know!

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Top 5 Reasons Why People Use MSDN and Other Fun MSDN Factoids

Part of running a global network of websites is looking at numbers – lots of numbers. Recently, we had a look at metrics from MSDN and TechNet from July to September. Here are some highlights on MSDN. Next post will be TechNet.

As a member of the MSDN community, I hope you find this interesting. If you’d like to see more or different metrics, please let me know.

And, thank you to all our visitors and especially the ones who completed our satisfaction survey!

Worldwide Reach Increases

MSDN sites averaged 17.4 million Unique Visitors (UVs) per month in the Jun-Sep period. This is up about 10% from the same period last year. (Source: WebTrends)

Top 5 Locales

Microsoft manages dozens of country-specific MSDN and TechNet sites. These are the top country-specific sites sorted by average monthly traffic in the Jun-Sep period. This list is also based on data from WebTrends.

1. United States
2. China
3. Germany
4. France
5. UK

The rest of the factoids are sourced from Jun-Sep data from the monthly satisfaction survey on the US MSDN site.

Top 5 Ways People Get to MSDN

1. Search (44%)
2. Typed in the URL (13%)
3. Favorites or Bookmarks (13%)
4. From within a Microsoft Product (9%)
5. From www.microsoft.com (5%)

Top 5 Tasks

More than 80% of the visits to MSDN are driven by these top 5 tasks:

1. Lookup reference info (27%)
2. Find out how to perform a task (24%)
3. Learn about a product or technology (18%)
4. Downloads (10%)
5. Troubleshooting (8%)

Question: Is this they way you see your tasks as a developer? Have any suggestions for us?

Top 5 Developer Centers

MSDN is made up of dozens of smaller mini-sites called “Developer Centers,” which are dedicated to specific developer tools and technologies. Here are the top 5.

1. SQL Server
2. Visual Studio
3. Visual Basic
4. Visual C#
5. Visual C++

Other Fun Factoids

I thought these were kind of interesting as well…

Which of the following best describes your level of knowledge and skills related to the product or technology you are researching today?

How often do you visit MSDN?

What resources did you use during your visit to MSDN today? (Please select all that apply)

Like I said, if there is other data you’d like to see or have questions, please let me know!

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Social Bookmarking Kicks Off at TechEd Brazil

In September, Microsoft launched v1 of MSDN Social and TechNet Social supporting social bookmarking in 12 languages. This week, the Brazilian Portuguese version is getting a workout at TechEd Brazil in Sao Paulo.

Awareness and excitement about our social vision and plan is high at the event thanks in part to…

…a nice plug from CEO Steve Ballmer in the keynote…	…non-stop demo-ing and radio broadcasts from our own Ricardo Arroyo…

…and great support from our friends in Microsoft Brasil and the local MVP community.

Special thanks to Luciano Palma, Renata Rochel, Marcos Rodrigues, and Joao Nunes and his SQL team for making this a great event!

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Major MSDN Forums Now Live on New Forums App

Millions of customers visit MSDN Forums and TechNet Forums each month (more than 9 million visitors in September) for technical discussions and answers to technical questions. Earlier this year, the team released an all-new Forums application featuring a revamped UI, time-saving features like Thread Preview and Filters, and a new Recognition system.

Since then, we have been migrating existing forums from the old forums app to the new one.

This week, the team migrated more than 50 forums to the new MSDN Forums app including…

• Visual Studio Team System
• Team Foundation Server
• Windows Live Development
• Parallel Computing

For a complete list of the migrated forums, see our announcement on MSDN Forums.

The migrated forums will be persisted on the old app as read-only.  If you have existing links to the old forums they will redirect you to the new site.  All new replies, threads, comments, etc. should be made on the new forums app.

If you have comments, questions, or suggestions about our forums, please talk with us using the Suggestions & Feedback Forums for MSDN and TechNet.

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Brand Your Open Source Projects on CodePlex

This week, we released an update to CodePlex - Microsoft’s open source project hosting site - that enables project owners to better brand their project pages with project-specific logos and titles.

Here are a couple of examples:

Compared to the previous layout, the CodePlex banner has been moved off to the right side and uses a neutral gray coloring, helping create focus on the unique project brand and title on the left.

On a side note, the CodePlex team also achieved a major milestone in September – more than 100,000 registered users! This is more than double the number from September last year.

Congrats to the entire CodePlex community!

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