Contoso and its website,
contoso.com, are used in documentation and help files for many Microsoft products. Contoso's website redirects to microsoft.com. Examples of its usage include:- A February 26, 2010 Microsoft white paper examined "the potential outcomes of a pilot implementation of Google Apps from the vantage point of a hypothetical company" called Contoso Ltd.
- It is used as an example app in the Windows Phone documentation for Flip Tiles, Iconic Tiles and Cycle Tiles.
- It is used in Microsoft Dynamics AX for demo purpose and training.
- It was used as a demo app in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
- Contoso.com is used as a demo domain in Microsoft Exchange training material
- "Contoso Toolbar", a fictional toolbar, is used to demonstrate the Add-on Performance Advisor in Internet Explorer 9.
- Contoso.com is used as an example domain in Microsoft Exams 70-511, 70-515, 70-640, 70-680 and 70-685
- Contoso.net is used as an example domain in the account configuration wizard from Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook 2007, Microsoft Outlook 2010 and Microsoft Outlook 2013, while Contoso.com is used as an example in the help file.
- Contoso Bank's website is used as a demo site for SmartScreen Filter in Internet Explorer, which consists of a demo online banking site.
- Contoso Pharmaceuticals is also sometimes used
- Contoso Hotel & Casino is used for Microsoft Sharepoint Demo Build examples
- Contoso Hotel is widely used in Microsoft Office and WebMatrix Examples and Tutorials
- contoso.com is used as an example domain in Windows Workspaces Center
- A "Contoso University" website is used for demonstrating ASP.NET MVC capabilities in the Getting Started with EF using MVC tutorial, through ASP.NET MVC and the ADO.NET Entity Framework.
- Contoso is used as an example company in many MSDN Blogs blog posts
- corp.contoso.com is used as an example FQDN in the "Active Directory Domain Services Installation Wizard" in Windows Server 2008
- Contoso is used in IIS 7.0 as an example for site bindings in the Edit Site Binding dialog box
- Contoso is used in SharePoint 2013 as an example for bindings in the Web Apps
- Contoso is used as a news agency delivering a collection of news articles, blog posts, white papers, case studies, videos and comments on fictional news in a demo News app in Windows 8.
- Contoso is used as training program (Contoso v2.0) in Windows 8 Speech recognition
- Contoso is used for all tests in both Sandbox and production for the company SF.
- The Windows 7 Help article 'Automatically get recommended drivers and updates for your hardware' includes an image of a Devices and Printers screen showing 'Contoso 4GB Flash Drive' and 'Contoso Touchkey 300' as installed devices.
