Registration & Login
You need to register if you wish to post to the forums. Registering also allows you to
take advantage of all the features offered by the Microsoft Dynamics Community,
such as setting your own avatar, tracking post counts, emailing users, private messages,
access to private forums, and many others.
It only takes a few seconds to register, and it is recommended you do so.
To create an account you will need to sign in using your Windows Live™ ID by
clicking on the Sign In link at the top right of the page.
User Profile & Settings
A profile is information about your account that controls how you view information within
the community. This includes details about posts you’ve contributed to, personal information you wish to share such as your web address or weblog address, as
well as setting that control how you interact with this community.
Setting your timezone will enable this site to display all dates and time relative to your time zone.
A signature is a message that is appended to the end of any posts you make in the forums. You can edit your signature from the
profile page. This signature will then appear at the bottom of any messages posted by you.
An avatar is a feature of the forums which allows for an image to be displayed along with your posts.
You will see and avatar section when viewing your profile. From here you can complete the form to name the avatar you wish to use,
either uploading an avatar or specifying a URL to your avatar. You will also need to enable your avatar for it to be displayed with your posts.
The date format used to display any date information can be configured from your profile.
Email tracking is a feature which will send emails to you when messages that you are subscribed to change. You can turn off all email
tracking globally from your profile.
There are many different icons that can show up next to usernames in the forums. Common examples are administrators, moderators, or
top posters. Other images may be displayed based on groups the user belongs to.
Privacy & Security
Once logged in, you can change your private email address from your Profile page.
You can set the option in your profile and your name will not appear in any member listings, including the listing of who is online.
Navigation
A Forum Group is a top level grouping of related forums. A forum group contains 1 or more forums.
A Forum is a grouping of related threads of discussion. A Forum contains 0 or more threads and 0 or more sub-forums.
A Thread is a grouping of related posts. A Thread contains 1 or more Posts. The first post becomes the Thread and replies to the
original post increment details on the Thread, such as the reply count or last post.
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Thread Icon Legend
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Topic with posts you have not read.
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Topic with posts you have read.
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Popular topic with posts you have not read. A topic
becomes popular after a certain number of views and posts.
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Popular topic with posts you have read. A topic becomes
popular after a certain number of views and posts.
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Announcement you have not read
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Announcement you have read
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A pinned topic with posts you have not read. Pinned topics are
displayed before other topics until they become unpinned.
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A pinned topic with posts you have read. Pinned topics are displayed
before other topics until they become unpinned.
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A pinned popular topic with posts you have not read. A pinned topic
with enough views or replies to become popular.
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A pinned popular topic with posts you have read. A pinned topic with
enough views or replies to become popular.
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A locked topic with posts you have not read. Locked topics do not
allow replies.
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A locked topic with posts you have read. Locked topics do not allow
replies.
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A forum may not display any threads if there are no threads in the forum or if filters on the forms have been applied and no threads
match the filter. An example of a filter is filtering to display threads newer than a certain date, such as threads new in the past 2 weeks.
A forum may or may not be moderated depending upon how the forum has been configured. After posting a message in a moderated forum
you may receive a message stating that the post is awaiting moderation. Once the moderator(s) approve your post you post will become visible. The moderators
may choose to move, edit, or delete your post to ensure that the post is topical to the current forum.
The icons next to threads when viewing a forum indicate different status. You can move your mouse cursor over these icons to see what
the different status / types of threads are.
An announcement is a special post type that is always displayed at the top of a forum for a configured amount of time. The purpose of
an announcement is to increase the visibility of certain topics.
A sticky topic is a special post that causes a post to sort to the top of a forum for a specified amount of time. A sticky topic is
similar to an announcement, whereas an announcement is displayed separate from other threads and usually does not allow replies.
A locked thread is a special post that does not allow replies. Once a user locks a post or an administrator/moderator locks a thread
no more posts are allowed.
Yes, you can sort threads when viewing a forum by Author, Replies, Views, and Last Post. The default sort for a forum is to display
the newest threads first (Last Post descending). To sort simply click on the options button at the bottom of the screen and select your desired sort order
and click 'Apply'.
The XML icon is linked to the RSS feed for the forum. RSS is used to allow other applications to subscribe to a forum's posts.
This icon indicates the user’s online status. A green icon means the user has been active recently (usually within the last 15
minutes). A red icon means the user has not recently been active. You can hover your mouse over this icon to see details about the user’s past activity.
If you are attempting to access a forum that you have visited before, but now receive an ‘unknown forum’ error there are two likely
causes. The first cause is that the forum you are attempting to access is private and you are not signed in. The second cause is that the forum has been
removed.
Posting
Yes and no. You cannot type HTML directly into the editor. If you are using Internet Explorer the default editor for creating new
posts will be a Rich Text Editor that will automatically format posts using HTML. If you post with a browser other than Internet Explorer a standard HTML
textbox is used and BBCode can be used to mark-up posts.
BBCode is a special syntax for formatting plaintext posts.
Yes, however, this requires the moderator(s) or administrator(s) to enable this permission for user’s on a forum-by-forum basis.
Emoticons are graphical elements that can be added within the body of a post to add emotions to the post. Common examples are the use
of smilies within the contents of a post.
When viewing a forum you should see an image button reading New Topic. Clicking on this image button will take you to a form for posting a message or ask you
to login first.
If you do not see the New Topic image button you may not have enough permissions – even after logging in – to post a message to the forum even though you are
allowed to view the forum.
You can reply to an existing post using either the Reply or Quote image buttons displayed with the post. If you do not see the Reply
or Quote image buttons when viewing a post you either do not have permissions to reply or the post may not allow replies.
You will see an Edit image button next to posts you have made. Clicking on this image button will allow you to edit your post.
You will see a Delete image button next to new posts you have made. If a post you have made has one or more replies you will no longer be able to delete the
post.
Certain words that are deemed to be offensive are filtered and replaced with the ‘*’ character.
Private Messages
A private message is like email within this community site. You can send a private message to other users within the communtity that
is visible only to them. No private information, such as the user's email address, is ever disclosed.
