Understanding Programs and Engagements

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Microsoft Collaborate organizes engagements into Programs and each program belongs to a Business Group. A Microsoft Program Owner is responsible for managing the program and the default configurations for the engagements associated with that program. The Program Owner can pre-define feedback forms, publishing templates inherited by the engagements. Larger programs (for example, the Windows TAP or EEAP programs) will typically have many engagements under the program. Users may be in multiple engagements within a program, or in only one engagement within a program.

An MS Collaborate program has metadata associated with it that is visible to users within the engagements under the program. If the program has a landing page enabled, you can see additional information and helpful links for the program.

Click the Programs list on your Dev Center dashboard to see a list of the programs you belong to. You will be able to see the Business Group the program belongs to, as well as a description of each program.

Program Landing Pages

From the Programs list, click on a program name to launch the landing page for the program. Each landing page is configured and curated by the Program Owner. The program landing page is intended to be a location where you get all essential information about the program. How it is used depends on how the Program Owner choose to implement the page.

In addition to general text provided by the program owner, a program landing page can also contain the following features:

  • Your engagements in the program
  • Program announcements
  • Shared queries for the program

Program Announcements

Program owners can post announcements on the program landing page. You can search through announcements, sort by date, and expand/collapse an announcement to see the full text of the announcement. Announcements have an Effective date - the first date it will be available on the program landing page, as well as an Expiration date - when the announcement will no longer appear on the program landing page.

You can open an announcement on the Program landing page by clicking the announcement title.

Program Engagements List

The program landing page will show you the engagements you belong to that are under the program. You may belong to one or more engagements within a program.

You can open an engagement from the Program landing page by clicking on the engagement name.

When you open the engagement, you can see the following information:

  • title and description of the engagement,
  • the business group and program the engagement belongs to,
  • participating organizations (if any) - organizations that can see and edit feedback and content associated with the engagement,
  • the Terms of Use that apply for the engagement, including information about the agreement if it is a custom agreement,
  • a button to see a list of packages associated with the emgagement, and
  • a list of feedback work items available to the engagement, including a link to create new work items and any queries saved by you or shared to the program or engagement.

Program Shared Queries

Any feedback queries that are shared to the program will be available on the program landing page. You can click on the query to launch the query in the feedback pages. This is an easy way for all to have a consistent query to use. For more information about feedback queries, see Working with Feedback work items.