Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

Welcome to the Assistance Platform Team Blog!

What is the Assistance Platform (AP) Team? We're a team that is focused on providing a great Help experience for Windows users. Our first deliverables will be new assistance Web sites for Windows and the new Help experience in Windows codename “Longhorn”. The team previously known as the Microsoft Help team is part of the AP team, but our charter goes beyond the old client-based assistance model. This includes AP Client, Server, Authoring, Publishing, and Analysis.

In addition to new Assistance Platform technology, our team owns WinHelp (legacy RTF-based Help), HTML Help 1.x (the current general purpose Help system), Microsoft Help 2.x (the Help engine in Visual Studio and MSDN), Communities infrastructure, and enhancements to the search that currently powers TechNet and MSDN Online.

For those of you interested in Help/Assistance technologies, we hope this blog will be a useful and informative source.

Cheers,

The AP Team

Published Tuesday, May 03, 2005 10:51 AM by apblog

Comment Notification

If you would like to receive an email when updates are made to this post, please register here

Subscribe to this post's comments using RSS

Comments

Tuesday, May 03, 2005 3:40 PM by Char

# re: Welcome to the Assistance Platform Team Blog!

Thanks! This is a great addition to the Help community :-)

Char (Help MVP)
Tuesday, May 03, 2005 3:46 PM by Paula Stern

# re: Welcome to the Assistance Platform Team Blog!

Yes, this is a great idea. Thanks for coming up with it. It would be great, once things get up and running, if we could receive more updates about where Longhorn stands, how it is progressing, new intended features, etc.

In the meantime, congratulations on a great new asset for the help development community.

Regards,
Paula
Tuesday, May 03, 2005 4:03 PM by Ron Miller

# re: Welcome to the Assistance Platform Team Blog!

This is a huge improvement over the Wiki technology you were using. Simple, elegant and easy to use and I can subscribe using RSS. Great move. Applause. Applause.

Ron Miller
Tuesday, May 03, 2005 6:54 PM by Nick

# re: Welcome to the Assistance Platform Team Blog!

You might consider changing the skin.

Mousing over a link changes the link colour to pale grey on white...it's exceedingly hard to read.

Anyway I look forward to reading future posts :)
Tuesday, May 03, 2005 7:30 PM by techcommdood

# re: Welcome to the Assistance Platform Team Blog!

I am really looking forward to content to come! It was great meeting some of you on the AP team at WritersUA back in March.
Tuesday, May 03, 2005 8:52 PM by Paul Neshamkin

# re: Welcome to the Assistance Platform Team Blog!

Thanks Shane! Now lets see who comes.


Paul Neshamkin
Wednesday, May 04, 2005 12:06 AM by Frank Palinkas

# re: Welcome to the Assistance Platform Team Blog!

Hi Team,

Congratulations and all the best!

A short question please:
Topic: Integrating H2 Collections into the new VS 2005 Beta 2 IDE.

Is there a new Help Integration Wizard available yet for VS 2005 Beta 2? I've downloaded and installed the new SDK, but it doesn't seem to contain a new Help Integration Wizard. I want to integrate all H2 Collections built for the VS 2003 IDE into the VS 2005 Beta 2 IDE.

Kind regards,
Frank
Wednesday, May 04, 2005 3:39 AM by Alastair Dent

# re: Welcome to the Assistance Platform Team Blog!

You say "Authoring". Does this mean you are looking beyond the Help Workshop, to a more complete authoring package?
Wednesday, May 04, 2005 7:47 AM by David Owens

# re: Welcome to the Assistance Platform Team Blog!

Excellent. This should prove to be a great resource for help authors. Thanks for setting it up!

-David Owens
Wednesday, May 04, 2005 10:34 AM by David Knopf

# re: Welcome to the Assistance Platform Team Blog!

Glad to see this new resource. Thanks to the AP team!
Wednesday, May 04, 2005 10:37 AM by apblog

# re: Welcome to the Assistance Platform Team Blog!

Thanks for all the feedback and encouragement! We'll be stepping up the number of AP contributors soon, so you'll get a variety of viewpoints here.

> You might consider changing the skin.
Done
> You say "Authoring". Does this mean you are looking beyond the Help Workshop, to a more complete authoring package?
Internally for Microsoft, definitely yes. Whether this ever becomes a product or becomes available outside Microsoft depends on many factors, not the least of which may be the fact that right now it is being designed very specifically to meet the needs of one very large customer--Microsoft.
Sunday, May 08, 2005 3:39 PM by ukulle

# re: Welcome to the Assistance Platform Team Blog!

Glad to see this resource. Thanks to the AP team setting up this!
Tuesday, May 10, 2005 9:05 PM by Helpware

# re: Welcome to the Assistance Platform Team Blog!

I like it! :-)
And now I have an RSS reader I like it even more. Great idea MS.
Friday, February 10, 2006 12:22 PM by Where is the blog for Windows Support?

# re: Welcome to the Assistance Platform Team Blog!

I guess this blog is a (very small) step in the right direction. Doubt if anyone reads it or does anything about the content, tho!
But where does one complain about the awful search engine that tries to look up answers in the knowledge base.
http://search.microsoft.com/advancedsearch.aspx?mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US
or http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1
For example one asks it to look up a query for a product and restrict the search to that product only. 1000's of answers come up, half pointing to different products. Ask it to look up a query for a product and put answers for that product first, and only a few answers are returned.
How can MSoftee ever compete with Google when it can't get its own house in order???
Wednesday, July 19, 2006 6:07 AM by Hutch

# re: Welcome to the Assistance Platform Team Blog!

Sounds like a good idea but not many posts. Is this blog still blogging?
Thursday, August 03, 2006 9:04 PM by words_help_is_NOT

# Make HELP helplful !!!

I have been searching, and can not find HOW to open the Document Recovery pane.
WHAT A PAIN!
Auto recovery had been on but I was NOT able to retrieve a file when I needed it (in a hurry).
NOW the stupid Recovery pane comes up, but now it's just a waste of time, as I have already re-typed the work I had "lost" - I knew it was somewhere, but I could NOT find out from "HELP" - what a joke - HOW to open the Document Recovery pane.  
I STILL DO NOT KNOW HOW TO OPEN THE STUPID PANE !!!
WHY will Word NOT tell me how the pane can be opened manually.
At HOME, I made a point to buy Word Perfect.  WHAT a smart move that was.  TOO BAD at work I have no choice but to use MS wORD
Sunday, December 30, 2007 9:30 PM by Dave S.

# re: Welcome to the Assistance Platform Team Blog!

I've used remote assistance in the past with some success. Many times I can't connect to a computer and the message I get is;

"Remote assistance connection could not be established because the remote host name could not be resolved". I don't know what this means, how to correct the issue, and be able to use remote assistance effectively.I've dropped the firewalls and this didn't help. Any suggestions? Can anyone help?

Leave a Comment

(required) 
required 
(required) 
 
Page view tracker