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Introducing Allen, our new Community Manager

Allen's avatar
Allen
Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
Sep 01, 2017

 

  I am very pleased to be joining a talented team who are dedicated to bringing IT professionals from all over Microsoft's products and services together to help solve shared problems and provide feedback.

 

I am coming in from the Skype (Consumer) world where I have been running the Skype Community and Insider program. Before that I was running the Skype Developer program, enabling 3rd party plugins to leverage and build upon the Skype ecosystem. I have been a beta tester for Skype since 2003, my first build was Windows 0.93 Beta, and I am also an active member of Windows Insider and Xbox Insider programs.

 

My role here will be to collect and review your feedback and suggestions you have for our community. Using this data and aligning to our internal planning I will build out a roadmap for changes to the community platform and share these with you all.

 

I am a certified Lithium community manager and building strong, dynamic and engaging communities is something I believe deeply in.

 

Outside of work I spend time playing World of Tanks on my xBox, watching Sci-Fi (Dr Who and Star Trek mainly) and being from Bonny Scotland I love to get out and go for a drive in the country. I Love cruising, the picture above was taken as we approached the port of Messina in May 17.

 

I invite you all to share any idea's you have about features on our Community Idea's board or comment below.

 

Allen S

Updated Oct 13, 2017
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  • Cian Allner's avatar
    Cian Allner
    Silver Contributor
    Sep 06, 2017

    Welcome Allen! What a great time to join the team with Ignite about to take off and the community in full flow.

     

    I agree about the Community Ideas section could do with more attention, it's not really a section I have considered using.

  • Deleted's avatar
    Deleted
    Sep 03, 2017

    Hi Allen,

     

    welcome to the community hope you will have a good time here :-)

     

    kr,

     

    Paul

  • Dean_Gross's avatar
    Dean_Gross
    Silver Contributor
    Sep 01, 2017

    Welcome, if you could do something to make it easier to find unread posts it would be greatly appreciated by those of us who were used to that functionality in Yammer. We greatly miss that feature. 

     

    I made this request last year and it has been in the Community Ideas list without any resolution since then (:

    • Allen's avatar
      Allen
      Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
      Sep 01, 2017

      Hi,

      When you say find unread posts, do you mean when you look at the category view and you can see all the discussions you would like to know which ones you have read vs not read?

       

      If so we pushed something that did this last night, if you look to the left of the category view you will see a grey bar next to unread posts, see below

      .

       

      In this screenshot the top post is read and the one below it is unread, we were discussion the colour of the bar, we originally planned it to be blue - like an unread message in outlook - but decided there is to much blue on the screen. Open to suggestions if the grey is to subtle

       

      • Dean_Gross's avatar
        Dean_Gross
        Silver Contributor
        Sep 01, 2017

        That will be helpful, but it is not really what I am looking for. When I'm in yammer, it shows me the new posts that I have not read, I can easily read them and then the next time I'm in that group, the previously read items are hidden by default. In your example, the unread items are still on the screen and I have to scroll through many of them to find something that I have not yet read, which can be very tedious.

  • AnnaChu's avatar
    AnnaChu
    Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
    Sep 01, 2017

    Welcome to the team Allen!  Great to have you on board :)

    • VasilMichev's avatar
      VasilMichev
      MVP
      Sep 01, 2017

      Welcome Allen, hope you like it here :)

       

      AnnaChu so you guys went from all girls team (and Mike) to all guys team (and you). Now that's equality hehe :)