The new Microsoft support site brings changes to the path structure and site metadata. Microsoft combined its existing support sites support.office.com and support.microsoft.com into a unified portal, allowing users to find support and troubleshooting articles for Microsoft 365 on a single page.
The new Microsoft support site is working on a work-in-progress and offers a host of improvements to Windows release notes, Windows update history page and related articles. Microsoft also brought in a host of additional changes. For example, Microsoft will make changes to the format, user interface (UI), and type of metadata available to the new support site.
In its blog post, Microsoft wrote: “In addition to making it easier to find supporting articles using search engines, merging the 2 support pages helps us increase our ability to quickly export. revision of new articles and updates to existing articles “.
Specifically, Microsoft will roll out the following changes:
New URL structure
The new URL structure includes the Base ID (KB) on the page itself, allowing users to search for supporting articles by KB ID and distinguish between articles that look similar.
Buttons to share Social Media on social networks
Microsoft has added new social media sharing buttons on the support page. You will soon be able to share support articles on Facebook and LinkedIn. Meanwhile, email sharing options remain unchanged.
No change to content delivery
Microsoft is incorporating a content management system (CMS) and web endpoint without changing its content delivery strategy. These changes will not affect the company’s strategy of publishing documents related to the company’s existing 2016 support articles, in addition to new articles for the operating system and those supported by extended security updates (ESU). Furthermore, the distribution of content to existing channels will not be affected.
Metadata changes
Currently, Microsoft displays JSON-enabled posts. This changes with the new support website. The new support.microsoft.com page will display HTML posts. That is, the post metadata will be displayed in a block of meta tags, unlike with JSON. Some metadata that was previously present in JSON will be displayed in HTML.
