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Last Friday, I came across a post by Susan Bradley encouraging users of Microsoft Small Business Server and Microsoft partners to complete a survey posted by the Small Business Server (SBS) Product Team.  Essentially, the SBS Team is looking to get feedback from the SBS community, and they are looking to see what sources of information the community uses for SBS.
As I am responsible for SBS 2003 at the office, I figured I would do my part in completing the survey.  Admittedly, after I completed the survey I filed it away in the back of my head and went on my merry way.  This morning, when I checked my Gmail, I had an email from Kevin Beares, the SBS Community Lead.  Long story short, he works for Microsoft now, but he hails from Baltimore and read my blog as a result of the feedback I left.  I have to admit I was pretty amazed that a Microsoft employee actually read my feedback, let alone took a look at my blog.

As a result, I am encouragin the small gaggle of technical folks who read this blog to head over and take the SBS Community survey here.  I realize some of you probably don’t even run SBS in your environment, and I have to admit I was a bit puzzled, given that I am used to the Windows admin mantra of spreading services out among multiple servers as opposed to putting everything on one server.  Surprisingly, this is something that SBS does quite well.

If you use SBS or participate in deploying it as a partner, go take the survey here.   The instructions (which can be found here) are below for those who wish to jump right in.

You are invited to participate in the Windows Small Business Server Community program on the Microsoft Connect Web site at http://connect.microsoft.com.  This site has been set up to directly gather feedback anonymously from the SBS User Community.

Your role in the SBS Community is important to us. Microsoft Connect enables you to connect with Microsoft developers, product managers, and other development team members to help us make our products the best they can be.

To accept this invitation and become a member of this program, please follow these steps:

1.) Use your Internet connection to visit our Web site at http://connect.microsoft.com.
2.) Click on “Invitations” on the left-side menu.
3.) You will need to sign in using a valid Passport and before you can continue to the “Invitations” page.
4.) Enter your Invitation ID in the blank.  Your invitation ID is: COMM-GKXK-WJKV
5.) Click “Go.”
6.) If you have not previously registered with Microsoft Connect, you may be required to register before continuing with the invitation process. This a light registration and we will not use any information that you provide to contact you later unless you tell us otherwise.

Please follow the steps shown to you by that program to become an active participant. Once you complete the steps, you will be automatically approved. From that point forward you should be able to log into this site using your passport account and take any surveys that are available to you.

Following your login, a link to the survey will also be accessible under the link for Small Business Server Community Site.

Thanks for lending a hand in making SBS a better product and connecting with what has become a surprisingly responsive product team.   Now there’s something I never thought would come to pass from Microsoft.