Microsoft to phase out public newsgroups

I could not help to see a post that was circulating yesterday on the microsoft.public.greatplains and the microsoft.public.dynamics.gp.developer announcing the discontinuation of the decade old public newsgroups. While the transition off the old Microsoft Exchange-based platform is not expected to be until the end of May, clearly the intent is to get it done sooner than later. For example, today the service was down the entire day. In addition, the broadcast to the Google newsgroup appears to have (at least for now) been suspended.

I will personally say that this is the best that could have happened to the Microsoft Dynamics GP community in general - though I am a bit sadden to see them go away, since they are the main reason I was awarded my MVP status. The transition of the newsgroups to the more robust forum-style Community platform should benefit both users and partners alike. The newgroup transition will also bring some much needed consolidation. I am really tired of having to post responses in 4 different places :-)

The only thing that worries me a bit is the lost of all this accumulated knowledge. After all, it's been almost 10 years of postings. There are thousands and thousands of questions with thousands and thousands of responses currently available on both the developers' and the users' newsgroups which will potentially be unavailable after the migration. That would be a significant lost of knowledge if no one can search these anymore.

I welcome your thoughts and have initated a discussion on the topic on The Dynamics GP Blogster Facebook page.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
Maximum Global Business, LLC
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/