Newbie Newsgroup Users

Today's guest blogger is Nithya Balasubramanian who is one of our international CRM MVPs. She describes some of the very interesting users of the newsgroups that we hear from when reading the thousands of newsgroup posts a month. How many do you recognize?

The CRM team's invite to write for the MSCRM team blog set me thinking on what to write about. Most MSCRM 3.0 questions have been asked and answered and when it comes to Titan I’m still busy being a sponge. So, I decided to keep it simple and present a light-hearted perspective of the different types of users that can be found in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM newsgroups.

Here are 4 categories – each with a quirk!

1. There’s only one way to find out if the post button is working! – This person keeps submitting the same post over and over (and over!) again! After you’ve posted, please refresh the page and check to see if it has been published before you post it again.
2. “The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.” (Oscar Wilde) – There are quite a few instances of people looking for sales opportunities on these newsgroups. Please attempt to resolve users’ issues before trying to reel in a prospect!
3. Out of sight, out of mind! – People who post their issues and forget all about them! There are several examples of people writing about issues without mentioning the details of error messages and the like. Please present as much information as possible, during your first post itself. The amount of information you provide will, in most cases, determine how quickly you find a solution.
4. Help thy neighbor! – Here are the people who actually get into the depth of the issue and make sure they provide all the necessary information to help the user. May their tribe increase.

I’ve found answers to most of my newbie questions on these newsgroups. Do remember to first search the existing posts before posting a new question! In most cases, the truth is out there – you just have to look for it!

Nithya Balasubramanian