Microsoft TechNet to receive facelift

If you’re an IT professional or simply just a technology enthusiast, chances are that you have a TechNet account. TechNet is a resource operated by Microsoft targeted towards IT professionals that provides them with support, information, a community, and product downloads for evaluation purposes all pertaining to Microsoft products. As such a service is pretty important to us geeks, Microsoft wishes to improve both the TechNet experience and the quality of the content it hosts with an overhaul that it dubs “TechNet 2.0” or “TN20”. Quoting ‘Softie Keith Combs’ blog, who wrote an article on the up and coming TechNet facelift:

We are on a mission.  We want to make TechNet the best possible online experience for IT Professionals. As you can see, our mission goes beyond just providing product documentation and whitepapers. Sure, we still want to provide the essential architecture and planning guidance for our products and technologies, but we also want to connect you to people inside and outside Microsoft and enable you to actually participate in the TechNet experience.

And, in order to do that, we focus on five key scenarios.

1. Help Me! - Help me find technical content and solve technical problems, quickly
2. Keep me Smart – Provide me with content and resources to increase my technical skills and stay up-to-date with the latest developments in my area
3. Connect me with the product – Show me your future plans and let me provide feedback
4. Connect me with people – Help me find and engage smart people at Microsoft and in the community
5. Downloads – Make it easy for me to find and download the bits, tools, and resources I need to do my job

Across all five scenarios, we invest in:

1. Content quality, relevance, and timeliness
2. Ease of discoverability
3. Opportunities for community participation and contribution

So, as you can see, TechNet 2.0 is more than just a new skin for the site. Microsoft will be implementing new mediums of participation, and improving content to further benefit TechNet subscribers. What will the shiny new design look like? Here is a screenshot:

(click to enlarge)

While there is a general design/layout throughout TechNet that remains consistent from page to page, certain product portals have a slightly different design that’s tailored towards the product at hand. In the above screenshot, you see that there’s a different design for the home page, the Microsoft Office portal, the SharePoint portal, and the Windows portal.

In order for you to more easily gain access to the content you need, Microsoft is also adding more organization to how everything is filed. For example, as products have different versions, you’ll likely be looking for content that’s specific to a certain version. To more easily get access to this content, Microsoft will have it where navigation bars for product pages link to version-specific content. In the above screenshot, you see the Microsoft Office page, with links for both 2010 and 2007; you can expect ordering like this throughout the service.

Another way Microsoft will help you access version specific content is through search. If you’re on say, the Office 2007 page and you were to search for something, the results will only be Office 2007-related. If you would like to read more about the imminent update or even hear Keith Combs and John Martin (who heads the TechNet team), hit up the source links (it’s a 2 part article). No word was provided as to when we’re going to see this update.

Source: Keith Combs’ Blahg (Part 1), Keith Combs’ Blahg (Part 2)