How to Get Help with WCF

There are many ways to get help with WCF, ranging from the free but not particularly reliable to the highly reliable but not particularly free. With paid options, such as Microsoft product support, you're generally trading money to get some kind of guarantee (for example, a guarantee that someone will look at your problem and try to give you a solution within a certain amount of time). I don't provide recommendations for paid services. However, if your problem is urgent and not having a solution is costing you money, then you want to be looking at paid services.

Since you're still reading this, I'm assuming that you're instead looking for free services. Free services have a tremendous advantage (being free) at some expense (sometimes being not particularly helpful). Here are the various classes of options:

• Microsoft Connect. Connect is a way to submit bugs and feedback about the product. This isn't very useful if you have no idea what's causing the problem, but if you've narrowed things down enough to know that the issue is in the product rather than your code, then Connect is a way to tell somebody about that. You may be able to get a workaround to a bug through Connect but you aren't going to get product fixes (except in future versions). You'll get redirected to product support once creating a fix is necessary.
• Microsoft Forums. Forums are the best way to get help when you don't know what's causing the problem. There are enough people on the forums that most questions get an answer within a few days (you will see many Microsoft employees on the forums but not every question can be answered). There are also newsgroups, but I recommend using the forums instead as the forums get more traffic, which attracts a greater number of people that can answer questions.
• The Community (many locations). Once you get outside of the official sites, there is great variability in both the services and quality of service provided. For example, I try to answer many of the questions I get within a week or two but due to the number of people writing I generally only get to about half of the questions that come in these days. Don't feel offended if you don't get a response! I try to answer the more interesting questions but you might also get directed to one of the other sources of support.