• Illustration: Paid Support Options at Support Site

Updates to two Web sites will make it easier for customers to get self-serve support and view licensing rules for their Microsoft software. The sites, one maintained by Microsoft’s Customer Service and Support Group and the other by its Worldwide Licensing Products Group, still have a few shortcomings, but are substantial improvements that make it easier for customers to get relevant information and reduce the likelihood that they will encounter outdated information.

Product Licensing Web Site

A new Web site for volume licensing customers solves several common problems they face, including the following:

Complex documentation. Rules about purchasing, deploying, and using software are not spelled out in the software itself. Instead, volume software licensing is governed partly by Microsoft’s Product Use Rights (PUR), outlined in a long document (97 pages as of fall 2004) that is updated quarterly. The PUR is supplemented by the Volume Licensing Products (VLP) list, a complex 90-page document that is updated monthly, and by ad hoc licensing briefs that address still other licensing issues. To fully understand the licensing rules that apply to them, customers need to consult all of these documents and understand licensing features such as upgrade options.

Poor search facility. The search engine for Microsoft’s own Web site will not rescue those in search of useful licensing documentation. In addition to failing to locate some relevant documents, it will sometimes locate outdated documents with inaccurate information on current licensing rules.

The new Product Licensing Web site (PL Web) is a major step toward solving these problems. The site brings together, on a single Web page, sections of the PUR, extracts from the VLP list, and licensing briefs that are relevant to a given product. As a bonus, it also lists current promotions that affect the product.

The site should be useful both to new customers who want to make sure that they understand the licensing rules before they purchase and existing customers who need to see how current licensing rules affect use of their products. (Note that the product use rights that govern a software license are those that are in effect at the time it was purchased, and modifications to the PUR document do not affect previously purchased licenses. As a result, customers should keep a copy of the current PUR document from any quarter in which they purchase software.)

While PL Web is a significant advance in licensing documentation, it remains a work in progress. Directions was unable to print a readable copy of the page listing sections of the PUR document and Volume Products list, using several different browsers, including Internet Explorer. Some browsers print portions of the page; others hang. Printing is a useful feature for this site because it lets customers create long-term records and is useful for side-by-side comparisons of products.

Nor does Microsoft post on PL Web (or anywhere else) end-user licensing agreements (EULAs), the licensing rules that customers sign off on, implicitly or explicitly, when they install Microsoft software. The company argues that EULAs change so frequently that it would be confusing for customers to make them public. (The company says that EULAs are not even available to Microsoft employees on the company’s internal network.) However, a good argument can be made that EULAs should be published on PL Web precisely because they are complex, legally binding documents that change frequently, and customers should be able to see what a EULA says before they purchase the software. Moreover, making EULAs public might make Microsoft more careful about the language it includes in EULAs, and how frequently it changes that language.

Microsoft Support Site

The starting point for support on Microsoft’s Web site was formerly a spartan menu of options that shunted customers off to subsites within the Microsoft Web. Customers were then required to navigate from another top-level page to locate the more detailed information they were seeking.

The support site now offers a more intuitive set of links to three types of support: self-help resources, assisted support from Microsoft and third parties, and information about paid support packages from Microsoft.

The self-help pages, like the licensing pages at PL Web, bring together much of the most important information about specific products on a single page, designated on the support Web site as "Product Solution Centers." A typical Product Solution Center contains information such as the following:

• How-to information focusing on specific features or capabilities
• Recent downloads and updates associated with the product
• Common troubleshooting questions and their answers
• A comprehensive menu of related topics, such as issues that arise when using the product with Terminal Server
• Links to relevant resource kits, newsgroups, TechNet articles, and product pages.

Product Solution Centers are available not only for current products but also for OSs going back to Windows 98, and for older applications, such as Office 97.

The assisted support options (also accessible from a link at the bottom of each Product Solution Center) link to free or paid incident support available by e-mail, Internet chat, and telephone. Prices and eligibility for such support are clearly specified, and customers can initiate some types of support, such as e-mail or chat, by clicking buttons on the Web page, such as a button to "Start e-mail request" or "Start Chat request."

The assisted support pages also link to Microsoft partners who provide support (in some cases at lower prices than Microsoft charges) and to additional information about business-oriented support packages, such as Microsoft’s Premier Support. (For an illustration showing an assisted support page, see "Paid Support Options at Support Site".)

The support site appears to have reduced its dependence on PDF documents. This is a user-friendly move because Microsoft PDFs are inconsistent in their design: many are laid out for commercial multipage printing, are unreadable on a standard office printer, and difficult to read on-screen.

Missing from the new pages is life-cycle information about products, such as the date when a product’s Mainstream support will end. This information is currently available at a different and far less intuitive site that forces customers to view lengthy and badly alphabetized product lists for product life-cycle dates, as well as a completely separate list for service-pack life-cycle dates.

Resources

PL Web is located at www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights.

Microsoft’s main support site is at support.microsoft.com.

Microsoft’s support life cycles were described in "Support Life Cycle Extended" on page 38 of the July 2004 Update. The Microsoft site listing support life-cycle information is at support.microsoft.com/lifecycle.

For a list of the most recent Directions on Microsoft coverage of licensing topics, see the Recent Changes to Microsoft Licensing page.