The Microsoft Tech Community has come into its own this year! This year we reached 100,000 members, and along with new product releases, AMAs, contests, Tech Summits and Microsoft Ignite, we've had a busy and exciting year.
To celebrate, here's a countdown of the top 17 product news announcements, moments and conversations from the community in 2017. Thanks for being part of it!
- The Microsoft Tech Community team
17. Microsoft Technical Communities
We absorbed Microsoft Technical Communities into our site in November. The Microsoft Tech Community now offers a space to give you access to content and speakers, and opportunities to promote your community events to a wider user-base.
16. Tech Academy
In October, we launched the Tech Academy, accessible from the Microsoft Tech Community navigation bar. The Tech Academy unifies Microsoft's learning and readiness platforms for IT Professionals and Developers into a single place. It gives you access to a centralized repository of readiness content and lets you track your progress as you complete it. It’s a great, free resource and one more reason to stop by the Tech Community!
15. Win Big in the Tech Community!
We hosted a number of sweepstakes in the tech community, most notably for Office International, a community we launched in September (you could still win in the sweepstakes ending December 31!).
14. 50K Members
In April, we reached the amazing landmark of 50,000 members! We celebrated this great landmark with a 50K Celebration Puzzle.
13. Teams/Skype at Ignite
Microsoft Ignite was full of big product announcements! One of the biggest was around Teams eventually replacing Skype for Business with a new vision for Intelligent Communications.
12. Windows AMAs
Office has had a number of successful AMAs (Ask Microsoft Anything) events in the tech community. This year, we expanded to include Windows 10 with seven AMAs, starting in May with Windows as a service. Our most popular so far was Windows 10 deployment, with over 2000 unique visitors and over 9000 page views.
11. Cloud + Enterprise AMAs
The Azure Blockchain AMA in March was our first AMA among Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise products. We followed that up with 10 additional AMAs, five of which were for Windows Server. We had an exceptionally popular one around Co-management with Microsoft Intune and System Center Configuration Manager with over 900 unique visitors and almost 7000 page views.
10. Microsoft Teams AMA and roadmap announcement
This was a big year for Microsoft Teams! Following up with their big Microsoft Ignite announcements, Microsoft Teams hosted a popular AMA in the tech community in October with nearly 2000 unique visitors and almost 6000 page views. Teams also posted a blog about the roadmap for Skype for Business capabilities coming to Microsoft Teams with nearly 60,000 page views.
9. Azure free training resources
Posts on Azure training resources in March and Azure Essentials free training in October proved to be valuable resources to the community.
8. Follow the Tech Community Blog and Microsoft Tech Community Twitter Handle
Want to keep up with this community? We launched the Microsoft Tech Community Blog this year as a one-stop shop for the weekly roundup and other news about the community. Get all the news there as well as through the @MSTCommunity Twitter account, now with over 35,000 followers!
7. Tech Community at Microsoft Ignite
The Microsoft Tech Community was proud to host a Community Lounge space at Microsoft Ignite with swag giveaways, takeover days, executives to meet, live podcasts, food and drink and so much more. In the Tech Community, you can view every session’s slides and video, save it as a resource for the future, and connect with the speaker to ask questions long after Microsoft Ignite.
Our Microsoft Ignite session content received a total of almost 125,000 page views! Some of our top viewed sessions include:
- Microsoft 365: Transform your communications with Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business (5.5K Views)
- Manage SharePoint using the new Sharepoint Admin Center (2K views)
- Using custom themes and designs to standardize the creation of clean, functional SharePoint sites (2.2K views)
- Microsoft 365: Unlock creativity and empower teamwork in the modern workplace (2K views)
- Modern authentication for Exchange Server on-premises (1.7K views)
Thank you to everyone who stopped by our booth. It was great to meet so many community members and MVPs in person!
6. New Member of the Week Club Inductees!
The Member of the Week is an award we give to a community member who has gone above and beyond during the week. We don’t look at metrics, but rather give it to someone who embodies the “community spirit” i.e., is helpful or asks great questions. We offer a Member of the Week Badge for all past and present winners. Congratulations to all the new Member of the Week club members from 2017 - you are truly what makes the Microsoft Tech Community great!
5. Go Local with the Microsoft Tech Summits
The Microsoft Tech Summits are a free, two-day technical training for IT professionals and developers across the globe. The Microsoft Tech Community team traveled to Sydney, Tel Aviv, Sao Paolo and Toronto in 2017 and we’re headed back on the road to 9 more cities in 2018. You can read about each Tech Summit in our blog, and see the session content in the Microsoft Tech Summit group. We hope to see you in your city!
4. Microsoft 365 Community Launch
In August, we launched a community for Microsoft 365, continuing to build momentum around a much talked-about product.
3. 100K Users!
Only eight months after we hit our 50,000 user milestone, we surpassed 100,000 community members. To celebrate, we awarded our first 100,000 community members our 100K Milestone Badge. Thank you all for your contributions and for making the Tech Community such an amazing place to connect and learn.
2. SharePoint communication sites and popular blogs
The SharePoint community remains one of our largest and most active, thanks to the product team and amazing members. Mark Kashman’s SharePoint blogs regularly get thousands of views, and his post on Sharepoint communication sites was exceedingly popular with over 50,000 page views. Jeff Teper’s blog on SharePoint and OneDrive announcements at Microsoft Ignite was also very popular with nearly 20,000 page views.
1. Community Superstars and MVPs
MVPs remain community superstars and we couldn’t do it without you. As a group, they contributed 500 new topics and over 5000 replies this year! Their expertise and enthusiasm help make the community a great place to be.
Of course, they aren’t the only community superstars! Thank you to everyone who has joined, contributed, and shared content from this community.
Here are a few resources to help you get the most out of the Microsoft Tech Community in the year ahead!
- Follow the Tech Community Blog for updates on the Microsoft Tech Community and for the Weekly Roundup to find out everything that’s been happening in the Microsoft Tech Community this week (published every Friday)
- Suggest ideas or vote for existing ideas in the Community Ideas Exchange
- Join the Microsoft Ignite community
Have a favorite moment from 2017? Let us know in the comments!
Updated Dec 29, 2017
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