TechNet 2.0 – Episode 4 – Troubleshooting and Download Finders

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Have you ever received an error message or number in some software product, and wonder what it means or how to resolve it? Where is the first place you search? In my case it really depends on the browser I happen to have launched. The vast majority of the time that’s IE8 so I enter the error message in the search field and hit enter. My default search engine is bing.com and it typically returns a huge array of information from sites across the planet.

What I would rather have is a smarter way to search the Microsoft information domain. We discussed some of that in Episode 3 Search, but this week we are going to talk about some of the new “finders”.

With that in mind, I called up John Martin to record his thoughts around the some platform features that will help you find Troubleshooting information and Downloads. Here's the podcast recording for Episode 4 and as before, you'll also find an .MP3 version attached at the bottom for your iPod or Zune pleasure. I'm recapping some of the main points just below the Silverlight player

Episode 4 Podcast

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Introduction

Last week we talked about search, search result formatting, and other aspects of search that will take advantage of the platforms that are part of the TechNet brand. Searching is tricky and care needs to be given to crafting a query that will return great results. For key scenarios like finding a Download or Troubleshooting an issue, we want to help IT Pros get past that challenge with new features specialized for finding things. Informally we call those features “finders”.

Let’s talk about downloads first.

download finder

The Download finder offers three fields for making selections. They are short menus that help you filter and find the content you are looking for. For example, let’s say you don’t have a TechNet subscription but you want the Exchange Server 2010 Evaluation download. This download finder lets you quickly and easily scope that search. This Bing query returns the Top 5 or so results and are shown right under the finder. If you want to see more information, you can click More and see the full results in TechNet Search.

Where can I find the Download finder?

Everywhere!!! You’ll see the Download finder as a standard part of the Downloads pages in the various TechCenters across the site. When you are in a product TechCenter, there will be no need to supply the product name. That will be done automatically for you. This is very similar to the TechCenter scoped searches we talked about in Episode 2. In addition to download finder, we also added another feature that will help with troubleshooting issues you might be seeing.

Troubleshooting

A week or so ago I rebuilt one of my machines. During that process I needed to sync the offline address book Outlook uses but it was failing with a particular error message. It wasn’t apparent to me what the issue was so I plugged the hex error message into the IE8 search field and searched Bing. Just for grins I also searched Google. As you might imagine, I received a ton of information back from those engines and many of the results were at a variety of sites.

We know from the site usage at technet.microsoft.com, many of you come to do searches. Nearly one fourth of all visits are for that very reason. With that in mind, we wanted to improve the features that help you troubleshoot an issue like the one I was having with the Offline Address Book (OAB).

troubleshooter finder

The troubleshooting finder has several input fields you can use.

  • Search all resources: Enter keywords here and find matching content in the TechNet Library, Forums, KB, and Downloads
  • Search the KB: Enter a KB number and the feature executes a scoped search of the KB only
  • Search Events & Errors: Enter an Event ID or Error Code and the feature executes a scoped search of the Events & Errors database only.

In each case the Troubleshooter feature takes your search and builds a smart query using the target database(s) in order to bring back the best results. This feature would have been especially helpful with the Outlook error message I received in the sync results for my attempt at downloading the OAB.

In another case, I was trying to fix a shutdown issue with a laptop. A smart hardware god I know was aware of the issue and told me to go grab the hot fix for a KB article. All I had in hand was the KB number. Again, the troubleshooter above would have been perfect for that scoped search.

What do you think? Let us know!!! Keep the great feedback coming. Very soon you will be able to try all of these features right at technet.microsoft.com. In the meantime we’ll continue blogging and podcasting to inform you on the cool stuff that is coming.

Next Tuesday we’ll publish Episode 5 on the Video experience. Come on back and join in the conversation. If you’re using twitter, please add the #TN20 hash tag. See you online.

https://msinetpub.vo.llnwd.net/d1/keithcombs/podcasts/tn20/episode4/TN20_Finders.mp3