Exercise - Contribute to a Microsoft Learn documentation article

  • 4 minutes

Let’s practice the contribution workflow. In this exercise, you make a small change to an open-source documentation article on Microsoft Learn. Then, you propose your changes by opening a pull request.

Edit the article

  1. Sign into your GitHub account.

  2. In a browser tab, navigate to learn.microsoft.com/contribute/content.

  3. At the top of the article, select the Edit pencil icon.

    Screenshot of the Contribute article open and the pencil Edit icon highlighted.

  4. Select the pencil icon to Fork this repository and edit in your fork or Edit this file in your fork of this project.

    Screenshot of the Contribute article's source file opened in a browser and the Edit icon highlighted.

  5. If GitHub prompts you to fork the repository on the next page, select Fork the repository.

  6. The Edit file pane opens. You need to add a new sentence to the beginning of this article. At the start of the second paragraph, add the following sentence: “Microsoft Learn hosts all documentation for Microsoft products and technologies.”

    Screenshot of the Contribute file edited with a new sentence and the Commit changes button highlighted.

Open a PR

  1. Preview your changes by selecting the Preview tab.

  2. Once your changes are finalized, find and select Commit changes.

  3. In the Commit message field, type “TEST contribution”.

    Screenshot of the Commit message field filled out with TEST contribution.

  4. Select Propose changes.

  5. On the Comparing changes page, verify that the base says main. This means that your changes will be pulled into the main branch in the live repository.

    Screenshot of the page to verify that the Base is Main, meaning that changes will be merged to the main branch.

    Note

    If you don't see the base repository and head repository options on this page, select compare across forks. This will display the comparison options needed for this step.

  6. Select the Create pull request button.

  7. This takes you to the Open a pull request page where you can preview your PR.

  8. Confirm your PR and select Create pull request to open the PR.

    Screenshot of the opened PR.

Note

Because this is a practice exercise, your changes won’t be merged to the live website.

Congratulations on creating your PR! It’s not submitted yet, but you’ve finished the first major step in contributing. Leave the PR tab open in your browser. You come back to it in the next exercise.