*** UPDATE ***
Please read the comments below.
Microsoft is working on a solution for this!
*** END UPDATE ***
This weekend, Microsoft apparently decided to migrate PartnerSource to a completely new platform – I was told: based on Sharepoint this time.. . And I hear you thinking: FINALLY. I definitely agree: something needed to be done. It wasn’t too easy to find stuff on PartnerSource, to not say: it was darn difficult.
And because it was difficult, many people in the Dynamics Community (and this time, I’m not only talking about the NAV community) were helping people their way, to guide them to really important information. For example, I have numerous (and I mean A LOT) blogposts where I refer to PartnerSource, like recently in the post about SEPA updates.
All these links, from the entire Dynamics Community, now have a dead link. All will fail. Dead. No endpoint. In fact, this is what happens when you click any link that refers to the old PartnerSource:
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Your request is being redirected:
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The page you requested cannot be found:
I can only assume that the intention was to redirect the “old” links to the new location on the new platform. Why else is it trying to do that .. . Well, there must have gone something wrong in the multiple test-steps and quality assurance at Microsoft, because that just doesn’t work, dudes! And I really hope that Microsoft can see the importance of it .. in my understanding, it affects the entire community. From feedback I get from lots of people, they use search engines to look for information, which NEVER ends up on PartnerSource, because that needs a login, in stead, it ALWAYS ends up on blogs, which refers to partnersource. Which means …
People will not find what they are looking for!
Another caveat, for all people that don’t live in the US (still think that’s the majority of the people… ) .. when you go to partnersource, you’ll end up on the North American page of PartnerSource. At least in my case, with my user account. It didn’t do that previously.. . So, when you click on this URL: https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource, it will redirect it to: https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/northamerica. Don’t exactly know if this has any negative effect in finding stuff .. but it doesn’t make sense afterall. I want to land on the European landing page.. and have all European related information.
No, Microsoft, you don’t get “thumbs up” from me this time … :(.
I added a poll on my blog. If you have an opinion, please fill it out .. it would be interesting to see if I’m making a fuss about nothing or not.. 🙂
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I want to positive (see http://dynamicsuser.net/blogs/vanvugt/archive/2013/12/02/the-next-generation-partnersource-customersource.aspx), but still having a hard time on this.
Author
Guess what .. “this communication” in your blog, has a dead link now :-). But I must have missed “this communication” (and yours .. sorry ..).
Did they announce that all existing links were going to die?
“in your blog, has a dead link now” -> I knew you were going to say that 😉
id they announce that all existing links were going to die?” -> Don’t recall they did and wonder how stupid this would have looked/sounded if they had. 😎
Fortunately, we are used to receive releases from Microsoft BEFORE they’re actually finished 😉
So no big surprise, really. When Microsoft sets a release date, they keep it, no matter how (un-)far they are …
Microsoft, please don’t get me wrong with that … But I think you would be much more popular if you would concentrate on quality, not release dates.
Thanks for the heads up, updated all links in my blog 🙂
Is there anyone for whom the search actually works to find “downloads”
What exactly do you mean with downloads? In general, or for a specific NAV version, or …?
I was looking through some of the links on my blog and tried looking for the Application Toolkit (Test objects). But the search returned nothing, actually, I haven’t been able to search for anything yet…
Don’t panic 😉
Microsoft WILL add correct redirections for all old links, but they cannot tell when exactly.
Source: http://www.msdynamics.de/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=22155
Until then, at least, the new PartnerSource search works for me and my PartnerSource Link List on msdynamics.de.
What exactly didn’t you find, Magno?
Author
Thanks, Natalie. If it comes from you, it must be true 😉
Natalie, If I try now, the results are loading, before I just had a notice that there were no results.
lol That must have been my good influence, Magno 😉
@Waldo
Concerning your Northamerica issue – it’s obviously intended by Microsoft.
They write on website “Welcome to the new PartnerSource” (https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/global/News-Events/News/NextGenerationPartnerSource):
“The default experience when you first come to PartnerSource will be the North American site. From there, you can choose the country site you want to use, and save that site URL as a favorite so you can continue to gain access to region specific messaging and content. ”
The only real issue I have is: When I search (or when I use one of the predefined searches on the category portal pages) and click through pages 1, 2, 3 … quite often an error is shown after some page changes. Hopefully this will improve.
Hi Waldo,
First, thanks for being an avid contributor to our community of Dynamics users. We appreciate the support and work you do to make our extended community of Dynamics partners and customers thrive.
I’m responsible for the PartnerSource and CustomerSource launch. We also build the Dynamics Community site on my team. I’m sorry that you’re running into issues around broken links with the new site – my team is working with our technical provider (Microsoft IT) to address the issues around URL redirects that you’ve hit on in this blog entry. It’s a known issue and we’re trying to mitigate it as fast as we can. There are a variety of issues for why it’s occurring – some have to do with how SharePoint handles redirects, others are IIS issues, and still others have to do with incorrect content redirects in place.
If you would, please send me a few of the links you’re having problems with, so our team can actively triage and get at root cause for some of these things. You can mail me direct at jaxtma@microsoft.com.
We’re excited about the release, but we also know that there are issues – we will continue to improve the sites, and would love continuous feedback, so reach out to me whenever you can with issues or ideas for improving things. Thanks for the feedback, and let’s keep the dialogue continuing.
Jon Axtman
Director, Dynamics Community Team
Author
Don’t get me wrong. I’m also very excited to the new release. It needed a thorough redesign, and it’s looking very promising… . Can’t wait for the redirects being implemented and the first “child bugs” are out of the system!
I’ve sent you a mail.
There is now a big nice button to press under Support, if you need to create a Service Request.
I really like that, now they just need make it possible to create it, since this is not possible.
Thanks all for the feedback. Sorry for the inconvenience/frustration. Shipping on time is important to us – because the upgrade to Partnersource is long overdue. That said – we slipped the release date to ensure we tested properly – this should not have slipped through. The team are on it.
Author
Thank you for this confirmation.
I have the feeling that I made a bigger fuss then necessary, but on the other hand ,, I just checked my stats. I have about 125 clicks to PartnerSource each day .. only on my site. from about 60 different people. And that’s only on my little blog.. . I can only imagine what the consequence is on mibuso or msdynamics .. or the other places my blog is posted.
I’m glad that people are working on it. I already sent Jon a mail with the remarks I have in more detail.. .
From the changes I see on the new PartnerSource .. I’m definitely excited and can’t wait for it to be finished!
The only consolation is that, at a glace, search functionality works much better thant before 🙂
Author
Oh yes, definitely .. I totally agree! 🙂
True; the only things that the column width of the result is to narrow. I found it less easy to have a good ovrview over the result.
Any news regargind this links fixing? I guess it’s still in progress…
Author
Well, what i read on PartnerSource is that there is going to be an outage due to maintenance on the 8th of February. Let’s hope that’ll fix it …
Nope, nothing really changed. The redirections still don’t work. In the meantime, I have updated my PartnerSource link list on msdynamics.de and I am glad I already did it. It is still the most secure way to find relevant information as some sites are not shared across all local portals and some are found, but the found entry is linked to search instead the actual article.
The redirections are working! 🙂
Site does not work at the moment! This is quite frustrating, I need platform update to because of bug in Dynamics NAV and site is down because of bug. I really hope that Microsoft stops finding ways to make life harder.
Author
Can you specify which bugfix you need? Or at least which version of NAV?
Platform hotfix for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 (Build 34904) because of “There is a syntax error in a ‘Translation Import’. The text is too long” error message when you import a translation file
Site seems to be up again.
Hi all,
I am not able to login my Partner source account, it is giving me error like, “Sorry, you currently do not have access to this site.”, It may be because of upgradation of partner source. Can Anybody please help me how to get out of this error
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