Which is the most suitable SP forum ?

Question

Note: This guide is for the 2007 and earlier SharePoint Products. Forums for the 2010 SharePoint products can be found here:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/sharepoint2010


Very roughly General is supposed to be for Pre-Sales and other kinds of General questions, but as you can see by looking at the posts there are a lot of Admin questions here and I simply gave up the effort of trying to move them (*). I also see a lot of posts here that come here but fit elsewhere than Admin and those I do move.  I've also started moving Backup/Restore/Installation questions to the Setup and Administration forum as they clearly belong there.

 
[(*) I am however grateful if Admin questions are posted to the Admin forum and not here.]

The three forums Setup/Admin; Design/Customization and Development/Programming are the general (small g) forums for problems in those areas that don't fit in any of the more specific forums.

Roughly

Setup/Admin is Installation issues and Administering the product as delivered; 

Design/Customization is for site customization i.e. amending the supplied code typically with SPD 2007 and 

Dev/Programming is for programming/coding issues (i.e. new code/ new functionality) often using VS - this is where you will find creating web parts; using web services; writing event handlers etc. etc.

The next bunch of forums are all much more specific and questions on those topics are correctly placed (only) in them even if for instance they also would fit in one of the above three.

BDC
Excel Services (the function of MOSS Enterprise - not Excel questions)
InfoPath/Forms Services
Search

Workflow (programming workflow using VS comes here ...)

 

are all pretty straightforward and cover what they say they cover.

Accessibility deals only with Accessibility issues for the physically challenged

Community Advancement has become a place for posting notices of User Group meetings.

Business Intelligence and Social Computing aren't named as clearly but in fact like the above 7 are also specialist forums that get all the messages in the areas they cover.

Business Intelligence: SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) with SharePoint; KPI

Social Computing: MySite; Blogs; Wikis and even things that call themselves "X for Social Computing :)

I personally don't like the term social computing and just see this forum as a place to collect ALL the MySite questions/answers; all the Blog questions/answers etc. for easier research into MySite/Blog etc. problems

Then there a couple of less-clear cut forums at least to me and where I mostly leave the posts that seem off-topic to me there.

Enterprise Content Management - where's the line between this and Admin?

Collaboration - clearly things about ECTS are on-topic but is anything else ?

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Then there's a seemingly SharePoint forum that isn't in this group of forums.

SharePoint Online you'll find here:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/onlineservicessharepoint/threads/

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Then we have some products related to SharePoint that DON'T belong in any of the SharePoint forums.

Search Server 2008 Express - has it's own set of forums that have just been moved to the new forum structure. They are here

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/searchserver

Performance Point Server 2007 - has it's own set of forums here 

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/performancepointserver/

Project Server 2007 where the Project Server people have in a post here

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/projectserver/thread/b333d85f-f43c-4815-9c30-b161615794e0

written that until forums are available, Project Server 2007 questions should go to the Project (Server) newsgroups

Team Foundation Server - there are several Team Foundation Server forums included in the "Visual Studio Team System" group here

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/vsts/

Team Foundation Server - Admin is for instance here    http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/tfsadmin/threads/

and Team Foundation Server - General is here  http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/tfsgeneral/threads/

SBS 2003 and SBS 2008 users should either post to the SBS newsgroup at microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs (msnews.microsoft.com) or if they have Partner status to the Partners-only SBS forum here http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/partnerwinserversbs

(The browser address for the above-mentioned SBS newsgroup is http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)

There is also an EBS 2008 forum somewhere which might allow SBS 2008 questions.

Commerce Server 2009 users' questions go to http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/commserver2009/threads/

Questions on all of the first three get moved to Off-topic along with a message giving the above-mentioned links. (It is impossible to Move a thread from a "new" forum to an "old" forum. Posting to Off-Topic preserves the text of the post for copy/paste into the other forum or newsgroup)) 

Questions to the TFS forum, I try to move directly to the correct TFS forum if I have time (they are only in social.msdn.microsoft.com and I use social.technet.microsoft.com usually)

Later: Performance Point Server 2007 added to this post on the 23rd of january 2009 following a minor deluge of posts here on it. (All moved to Off-Topic)

Later still: TFS added to this post on the 18th of February 2009 following a couple of TFS posts in rapid succession.

Even later: SharePoint Online added here on the 21st of February 2009 after one person asked where it was; was redirected to "What is the Forum for ...?"; posted there and then posted (himself) the answer there! (Thanks whoever you were)

Even later: SBS 2003 and 2008 section added.

Even later than even later (!) Commerce Server 2009 reference added after a Commerce Server 2009 post appeared in a SharePoint forum. 

Finally: When posting a question to a SharePoint forum you should remember that you are one of many people who have questions that are equally as important to them as your questions are to you. DO NOT in any way try to push your question in front of the queue either by saying that it is urgent or that you want it asap (etc.) or by trying to attract attention to your post by adding non-relevent information to the Title such as more than one question mark or one or more exclamation marks or "Help me".

All these things will be removed and if the same poster continues to use these techniques their posts which use the techiques will be deleted.

Answer 1

Mike,

 

Thanks for this very helpful re-post.

 

I would like to comment on a couple of issues and ask a couple of questions.

 

It seems that the forums are designed around a product technology framework rather than a "platform" framework.  With SharePoint now being recognized for it's broader platform infrastructure capabilities it seems to me that it might be helpful to interject a forum which focuses on the critical aspect of Business Purpose and the Management of SharePoint Projects. This is the weakest skill set for many techs who are otherwise evangelizing SharePoint with great enthusiasm and commendable skill.

 

I am thinking of a forum that would encourage techs to ask questions about how to implement business solutions regarding a SharePoint deployment.  How for example do you approach a SharePoint implementation for a Health Care Solution or a Hospitality Solution.  I know there is some fantastic content and help on this but it is very hard to find. Corralling knowledge for SharePoint projects is a daunting task to be sure and I realize this is the developers forum but that is my point.  I posted a question in the General SharePoint forum which has not gotten answers and I wonder if it is because we are just so divided in our roles. Tech, Developer, Implementation, Design...you get my point.

 

Another example of this is your reference to the Project Server and Performance Point Server forums. Again I realize this is a developers forum and those areas are for technical questions about those products but when I approach a SharePoint project it would be helpful if I could go to a forum that can address the big picture before I break it down and start the project in ernest.

"Management of SharePoint Projects" might be a good forum for people to share their experience and approach to projects. Most of us can lay claim to one or two areas of technical expertise, few can be approach project lead responsibilities with all encompasing skills.  Please see my post here to get more context:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.sharepoint.portalserver&tid=97b88ce8-3f6b-4805-85f5-d7c0a0324e39&cat=&lang=&cr=&sloc=&p=1

 

Thank you,

 

Keith Caravelli

MOSS - MCTS

Seattle

 

Pasted from <http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointgeneral/thread/312f17f3-7050-43e4-81c2-7653b1cd518a >

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Keith Caravelli

Answer 2

I will no doubt get into trouble with some one when I comment this post but here goes.

1. Any suggestions for new forums shouldn't go to me but should go direct to Microsoft in some form or another. Perhaps via the Suggestions for the Forums forum here: 

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/suggest/threads

2, The above is really it as far as your post goes but here's an aside on Project Server and Performance Point Server.

When Project Server users started posting questions in the SP forums, I did try to ask for some Project Server forums to be created so that I could move those posts to them. That didn't happen. Instead the Project Server forum was created here; a single message written to it (which I quote the URL of above) and then the forum was closed. So all I can do is respect the wishes of the Project Server team and inform people about that message which says to post to the Project Server newsgroups. There are some very good Project Server people there (or were last time I looked) and they might well take your more general project posts there.

On Performance Point Server: at the moment it is a different product with those different forums - only the licensing has changed not the product(s). We've been publicly told several months ago that the next version of SP will include *some* Performance Point Server functionality. I suspect that questions on that will then either go to SharePoint - BI or to a newly created forum but until we are there I don't know. I may wake up one morning and find a new SP - PerformancePoint forum there. As I wrote above I don't create forums.

I hope this answer satisfies you as far as it goes. The plusses and minuses of your forum suggestions will have to be discussed with MS - perhaps in the forum I mention above.

Mike Walsh (back from holiday hence the delay in replying) 

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