Happy Thanksgiving from the Windows Live Custom Domains team!\

We've had a couple folks ask why we don't specify the requirements for a temporary password.

Currently, the password must be at least 6 characters in length. You can use almost any characters.  Numbers, letters, and most symbols can be used.  These are temporary passwords, so don't make them too difficult to remember!

The first time you sign in to the account, you will be asked to change the password.  This is for security reasons.  Some have requested that we not require the password to be changed.  We'll have to review this with our security team.

We've been up and live for a few days now.

Thanks to everyone who has sent us feedback and posted comments about the product.  It has all been great and we appologize if it is taking us too long to respond.  Hopefully we can answer most of your questions in this blog.

Also, thank you to everyone who likes the product.  It really makes us feel great when people like the work we do.

Now onto your questions.....

Calendar

Some of you have noticed that the MSN Calendar doesn't work with accounts created through Custom Domains.  We've found a work-around to this problem.  If you go to http://accountservices.msn.com and add a birthdate to your profile the Calendar will work fine.

Ads

Some of you are asking questions about ads.  Right now we do display ads when reading your mail.  If you don't wish to see these ads, or simply want a richer e-mail client we have lots of subscription products that can be applied to your account.  These include MSN Premium, MSN Hotmail Plus, and others.  You can purchase these subscriptions at http://join.msn.com.

Regarding the ad in outgoing mail: this ad is also hidden for subscription products but we hear your feedback on this one and are exploring options.

IMap/Pop3

Right now these protocols are not supported for free or paying users.  We are evaluating adding these protocols to the product in the future, but likely as part of the above subscriptions.  We currently do support protocols for rich e-mail clients like Outlook and Outlook Express in the above subscriptions.

Inbox Size

A number of folks are still having problems getting the right inbox size for their accounts.  By default Hotmail will create a 2MB inbox size for accounts that do not have a country in their profile.  So if you want a bigger inbox you need the country in your profile.  Unfortunately this must be set before you sign-into Hotmail for the first time. 

If you've already signed into Hotmail you can "close" your Hotmail account.  There is a link to "close" your account from the Hotmail help pane.  Then you can update your country and go back to Hotmail.

Initially accounts are 25MB and grow to 250MB after a short period of time.

And as folks have pointed out, Kahuna (the new e-mail UI) inboxes will all be much bigger.

Kahuna (the new AJAX e-mail UI)

Speaking of Kahuna, we are launching an invitation program to get people into the Beta.  We are also working on getting all Domain adminstrators assigned a number of invites.  Stay tuned for this. We'll get this out to you as soon as we can.

EASI Passports

A few more advanced users noticed some odd behavior with EASI Passports.  EASI Passports are Passports that use an existing e-mail address as the sign-in name, and as such don't have an inbox hosted by us associated with them but can be used by other Passport services (e.g. Messenger, Spaces).

We are working on allowing EASI Passports to be "imported" into a Custom Domain and be assigned an inbox without losing any data.  In fact, if the domain adminstrator of a domain is in the domain.  For example, if EASI Passport user@xyz.com is the adminstrator of xyz.com this should in fact be the case.  When the MX record is validated, user@xyz.com is allowed to use Hotmail.

What doesn't work is if there is another user in the domain.  Say there is an EASI user user2@xyz.com.  If the domain administrator creates a new Passport user2@xyz.com, a new Passport is created and the original EASI Passport owner of user2@xyz.com is asked to pick a new member name.

We realize this is a major shortcoming and will add a feature to "import" other existing EASI Passports into the managed domain.  We just didn't have time to get this into our M2 release (which is what you are all running right now).

In the meanwhile, those of you who do notice this issue should be able to minimize the pain by exporting your messenger contacts from your old Passport and importing them to MSN Messenger once you sign in with your new account.

Sign-In

A few folks are still having some problems signing into the service.  As a reminder, simply sign out of Passport and then sign-in again and things should work better. 

Invalid Domains

Some folks are getting error messages that your domain is invalid for this service.  This can happen for several reasons. 

• You might have bought a domain with the old MSN Personal Address product.  We'll allow these domains to be used in an upcoming release
• You might be trying a domain that isn't a valid "root".  We allow many of these, including .com, .net, .org, .name, .info, .edu, .co.uk, etc.  What we don't allow is subdomains beyond one level past a root.  So we allow xyz.com, but not abc.xyz.com.  Why no subdomains?  We want to ultimately allow this, but need to do some work to make sure that it is secure in how subdomains are managed within a domain and deal with MX records that may come and go. 
• You might be bringing a domain that is popular and has lot's of existing Passports.  We have a way to enable this type of domain, but you'll need to contact us to set this up.

We also realize that our error message when this occurs isn't the most informative.  We'll work on improving that too.

CatchAll/Wildcarding/Forwarding

These are great feature requests that we'll get to work on.  We hear you loud and clear.

Waiting Period

Some people have been deleting accounts and trying to recreate them with the same name.  Our current policies and infrastructure requires us to wait a period of time before an account name can be reused (approximately 30 days).  We are working on ways to shorten that time.

Other e-mail features

People have been asking about a number of e-mail features that might be available. The short answer to all these questions is simple.  If it is a feature of "free" Hotmail, it is a feature of accounts in Custom Domains.  If there is a feature available in a subscription on a Hotmail account, it is also available in a subscription on a Custom Domain account.

• Right now the product is limited to 20 accounts.  Nobody seems to have noticed that you can create more than 20 accounts but the UI only shows you 20 of them.  I
• As we get the kinks out of integration with the other live services there are bound to be a few problems.  This is why we call things Beta.  A notable one is the size of the inbox.  Remember to update the country in your Passport profile before visiting Hotmail and the inbox size will be correct.
• We certainly want to have these accounts work on the new Windows Live Kahuna UI.  Rest assured that these accounts will work with this new UI, and soon we'll make it possible for these accounts to automatically use this great UI.
• Regarding the certificate (one blogger noted that our SSL cert isn't trusted by Firefox), I humbly ask for patience while we fix the problem.  Mea Culpa.
• Programatic access to your inbox follows the same rule as a free Hotmail account.  You can use our Web UI, and if you want to use a rich e-mail client we have lots of subscriptions that include this functionality
• Right now the product is "free".  Free is a euphamism for "advertising supported" of course.  The marketing folks say never promise anything forever, so I won't do this.  But folks are asking what our plans are here so I'll state that this is the current model.
• We have some big ideas for integration with spaces.  Stay tuned.

The product everyone is playing with now is the first of many versions to come.  We are busy working on many of the other features folks are suggesting and those mentioned above.  We'll update this site frequently, and certainly want folks to keep the feedback coming.

Thanks,

The Domains Team

• You tell us your domain name
• You pick an administrator
• You edit the MX record of your DNS to a value we give you

Once you do this we allow you to create accounts for your domain.  It is that simple and easy.  We sometimes call the product "BYOD" which stands for "Bring Your Own Domain".

 

We'll be updating the site frequently with new features over the coming months.  In the meantime, we would love to hear from you at dsupport@microsoft.com.

 

Thanks and enjoy the product!!

 

Sincerely,

 

The Custom Domains Team