Share your thoughts on new partner.microsoft.com

[Anonymous]

Partners have been telling us that it’s difficult to find the information they need to identify new practices to build and where the best resources are to help accelerate that.  We’ve also heard that it can be difficult to quickly get to the right content. That has changed. 

You spoke, we listened and partner.microsoft.com underwent a significant update today, including a new section dedicated to Business Opportunities – a place where we see rich opportunities for partners.

We are very excited about the new updates, and hope you are too! We want to continue improving your experience and request your feedback.

• What do you like and/or dislike about the changes?
• Where can we do a better job helping you find opportunities?

Please post your thoughts below, we welcome your feedback!

[paulkash]

I use the Partner Network for a variey of reasons, but mostly is to find digital reusable content for Marketing. I have a few issues that can't seem to get around, and the page to submit a support ticket, gives me Access Denied. Since I can't submit a support ticket, I am found this article, so I can post.

The good news is that your website is well organized and looks great.

The bad news is lack of information, no information, and not having access to information (Access Denied errors). For example, I wanted to access some of the Marketing Content such as blogs and all the links point to the same webpage, bringing me back to search page. Attached screenshot are all the blog assets that take me to the same link below.

https://partner.microsoft.com/solutions/intelligent-cloud/assets#

The only information available is powerpoint presentations and embedded cobranded campaigns. 

Everything else is either broken links, hashtag at the end of the link, or access denied pages.

[CollabTalk]

As a partner for the past decade, I’ve seen a few iterations of these partner solutions and sites. I’m enthusiastic about what you’ve built, but have some ideas for improving the MPC experience that will, IMHO, improve engagement:

• Improve the profile page, making it more of a destination – and something you can send people toward to connect with you – versus a boring-looking admin page.
  • Add color, make the focus the avatar and/or allow for us to upload background images
  • Put links to my other social account at the top
  • Add share buttons, so I can easily push my profile inside and outside of the MCP
  • Allow us to add widgets, like our Twitter feed, or even corporate blog feed (at least include our RSS link)
• If your goal is to get more partners using / collaborating, you need to add discovery tools
• Provide a feed for topics or people I follow, allowing me to quickly jump to new posts that are relevant WITHIN the MPC – not just send me to a internet search results page
• If you want companies to pay attention, create public-facing partner pages. Right now, the focus is on individuals within the community, which is great, but there should be some kind of top-level company page that connects individual profiles under one banner.
• If I do a Bing/Google search, how does my MCP profile show? It needs to be more discoverable.
• You might consider using LinkedIn company pages.
• A MPC search result for a company should bring back the community activity AND LinkedIn company page, filtered to those who verify the link – which would mean adding some kind of tag through admin tools on IN.
• Just as your individual IN profile can link to your company page, your MPC company and individual profiles should link to the IN company page AND your IN personal profile.
• Get rid of PinPoint. Incorporate anything good about it into MCP, and then shut it down. For a decade, PinPoint has been broken. I have spent countless hours at multiple ISVs setting up our company profile, working with Microsoft people and former employees who offer consulting services that include PinPoint profile management, only to find days/weeks later that “something happened” and our profile was broken, yet again. For the handful of golden partners who seem to show up on the front page of every search result in PinPoint, kudos to you. But the reason partners have not adopted is because it simply does not work.

Again, I like what I see so far, but at this point I’m not sure why I would use this site over the Microsoft Tech Community, or LinkedIn. If the MPC provided a stronger value prop for me as an individual and/or my company, I’m sure I’d be on the site more – and not just the month or two before Inspire, and then the couple weeks following Inspire.

[chriswright]

I like it, though it would be nice to see IUR info easier to find, as this is what lots of partners seem to hunt the site down for. 

[PerWerngren]

Thanks Karen! Well done! I like that we now have a section for Business Opportunities.

On my Xmas wishlist for MPC, I'm dreaming about an easier way to constantly be logged on! Similar to Facebook or LinkedIn where you never log out. I want it to be quicker and less of a hurdle to be ready to post! 🙂

Regards, Per

[Anonymous]

The links for the Internal Use Rights table is broken. Go to https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/membership/internal-use-software then click the link at the very bottom left for 

• License table for Competency Partners

Notice the link just redirects you to the same page. It used to link you to a PDF with the current IUR license table for competency partners.

Are announcements ever made when this PDF is updated with new software? Where? How often does it change?

Also, no idea why this page isn't linked in the top navigation. It's a huge pain to find drilling down through pages. I finally had to bookmark it just to keep track of it. Would like to see it linked off of the Incentives page.

[Anonymous]

Thanks @Anonymous and @chriswright for your feedback. I relay your feedback to our MPN Portal content lead.

Thanks @PerWerngren, that is on our christmas wishlist too! Continuing to improve the log in process for MPC is number 1 prioirity for our development team. It will not occur in time for Christmas but we will keep the community updated on its progress.

[jshuey]

Partner University seems cool, but it is not intuitive what a user is supposed to do to get started.

And, it seems to want us to download Silverlight. That's not going to happen.

So, for me ... PU isn't viable.

[Anonymous]

HI @jshuey, thank you for your feedback. I have forwarded onto the Partner University team.