Technically Speaking

Recently, Microsoft began moving support documents to a couple of new locations. The change is to help organize content in a more user friendly way and help them be found more easily by those needing support.

The documents affected are the Knowledge base (or KB articles) that are usually located at support.microsoft.com. The reorganization of kb documents will move the content for developers and IT Professionals to two new locations:

MSDN

Developer related content will be moved to MSDN to allow those looking for programming support or help in development. The content can be found at msdn.microsoft.com/kb. Specific articles found here can be accessed by entering the article id on the end of the above URL (/<article #>).

TechNet

Content for IT Professionals needing support with the use of existing products like Office or Active Directory will be migrated over to TechNet. The content can be found at technet.microsoft.com/kb. Specific articles found here can be accessed by entering the article id on the end of the above URL (/<article #>).

How does that help me?

Being an IT manager is a rough task at times, and knowing about the migration to TechNet for support documents will help in many ways. The integration with TechNet can further make the site a one stop shop for everything IT Pros are looking for.

Progress

According to a blog at Microsoft, the process of migration began this week. The test program will look at a subset of the massive quantity of articles to ensure that search engines are finding the content in its new location. Once all is well there, the entire batch of content will be moved.

So far I like this idea alot. The landing page for the TechNet side of things is quite pleasing.

The new support landing page at TechNet

The new site for support (at least on the IT Pro side) is very well organized and lays out a number of useful options right up front. I look forward to using the site for support and see this as the right move.

I also tried a search for Windows XP from the new search page and the results presented were in a very useful format as well.

A search for "Windows XP" using new support site

I also like the fact that from these pages I can get to other services offered at TechNet. This transition brings all of these resources together for specific groups, keeping them on the site longer.

Surely the habit of visiting support.microsoft.com will die hard. The site has been the place to get support documents for quite a while and will continue to get traffic as I for one will forget about the move when in a hurry.

Do you feel this is a good change for Microsoft to be making or are other things more important to you? Let me know in the comments.