As Microsoft Corp. evolved its businesses, so did its online resources which were scattered all over the microsoft.com and other websites. Initially, it started without a corporate URL strategy which was thought was early. This resulted in too many problems and then Microsoft started its aka.ms (A branded URL shortener).

Corporate messaging

Microsoft had to redo most of the content, retire old content that did not fit the newer strategy and had to ensure that across the whole corporation, everyone and anyone needing a hyperlink needs to get one issued first from the aka.ms team and they will issue it according to the known ‘URL strategy’.

The problems were too many to list in this short blog but what they achieved is summarized below:

URLs in presentations

All URLs shown in presentations now are aka.ms URLs. They are designed to be easy to remember or at least type of hand while looking at the presentation and by pausing the video.

Non-Clickable Media

All non-clickable media including videos, print Ads, TV Ads, webinars etc. now show shorter aka.ms URLs instead of longer original URLs.

Version Control

As newer versions of help files, documentation, legal documents, financial documents continuously come out, the aka.ms short URL targets are continuously updated to point to latest versions. This is especially easier when the URLs are inside a product which is being shipped or is going to be installed on a machine with little chance to change URLs. Now Microsoft only has to update the target URL for the same short URLs.

Expiry Control

Some content keeps expiring and otherwise has to be retired. While posting the content online, the expiry can be embedded in the aka.ms short URLs. This naturally expires the document while still keeping the backend resources at its target (without being accessible through its published URL).

Corporate Messaging and Branding Control

Users now know that a URL with aka.ms is from Microsoft official. Many users prefer to type the URL by hand instead of clicking on it. Smaller URLs make it easier.

Typing from Memory

Users can type common URLs from memory like aka.ms/Windows10 takes the user to Windows10 page.

Other common short URLs include:

  • aka.ms/ge: Graph Explorer
  • aka.ms/in: Intune Admin Center
  • aka.ms/de: Microsoft Defender
  • aka.ms/sspr: Self-Service Password Reset

Purpose Driven Prefixes

There are many purpose driven prefixes e.g. aka.ms/community space reserved for different communities. aka.ms/community/li points to Microsoft’s LinkedIn community portal.

Setting up public GitHub page

To make access to their different portals through admin and public access, Microsoft has published a public document at https://github.com/microsoft/aka

The page serves as a gateway page for the whole organization and its tens of different portals.

Introducing 3u.gg Branded URL Shortener

3u.gg is a premium URL shortener service. A Branded Shortener account for your organization will look something like pre.3u.gg/_ _ _ _ where you can choose the prefix ‘pre’ to represent your organization and then you will all the space after pre.3u.gg/ to design your own corporate URL strategy.

An early adoption for a corporate URL strategy will save your organization a lot of rework as it costed Microsoft when it adapted aka.ms

Visit 3u.gg now.