There are many different types of existing help, including documentation, Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles, and forums: all are provided at no cost.
| Developer documentation is a good initial place to start so you can determine if a specific question or issue has already been addressed. | |
| The KB provides detailed help on specific topics from Microsoft that were created in response to specific developer issues. | |
| The forums contain thousands of existing questions and responses to developer issues, supplied by both Microsoft and the community. |
Use the forums to get help from the community at no cost. Because the forums are monitored and maintained by the general community, the time it takes to get a response to your question is unknown. If timeliness of response to your questions isn't critical, posting to a forum is a good approach.
With this option, you can talk directly to a support engineer. This option is good if you or your company needs a fast response, or if you are blocked from making progress. There is a cost associated with this option, but you get to see the costs and the time-to-respond before placing the request. MSDN Subscribers may be eligible to up to four free support engineer calls each year, based on the level of your subscription.
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