LiveSide - News blog : Help Community

Windows Live Help Community is now gone too

damaster — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:46:00 GMT

As I was trying to browse to Windows Live Help Community today, what turned up was not what I expected - Microsoft had silently removed the service and the link now redirects to Windows Live Help. This is the latest Windows Live/Live Search services being dropped. And Like Windows Live for TV, Help Community never made it out of beta.

For those of you who don't remember, Microsoft released Windows Live Help Community back in December 2006, providing another channel for users to get help for their Windows Live services. However, throughout the lifetime of the service, only three services ever utilized Help Community - that is Windows Live Admin Center (Custom Domains back then), Windows Live Call for Free, and Help Community itself.

As noted back then on LiveSide, there seems to be too many help and feedback channels for Windows Live services, including:

Windows Live Account - Help Central
Windows Live Account - Feedback
Live Search QnA
Windows Live Help Community (now removed)
Windows Live Message Boards
Windows Live public newsgroups

Seems like Microsoft is finally getting their hands on to clean up the mess they've created with Windows Live and Live Search.

New support site - Windows Live Help Community

Chris — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 23:50:00 GMT

Over the last week a new Windows Live Help Community site has rolled out, aiming to provide support for Windows Live services and products. Users can ask and answer questions, as well as sharing their experiences and feedback on the products. One nice feature is the drill-down Search menus, which would also work well on other search sites such as Live Qna.

Currently the only Windows Live service with a presence on the site is Custom Domains, which announced the addition of online community support in its December update.

While its nice to see an area for user support and feedback, there are now too many choices about where to get support: Help Community, the existing Windows Live public newsgroups, Live QnA, boards.live.com and the existing support and feedback websites. Hopefully there will be some migration of content to Help Community, in particular questions tagged with "Windows Live" on QnA and a structured support process that makes Help Community the first port of call for users.

General feedback on the help community is welcome, so let the team know what you think.

Windows Live Help Community: http://helpcommunity.live.com/