New Forum Settings
So. Apparently now we're kicked off the old forum, and they want us in here. Sigh.
How do I condense this so I can actually see stuff?
How do I turn off the AOL-style boxen to just give me a normal list of topics / threads?
Why do I see followers everywhere? What is a "follower" on a forum? Is this supposed to be some kind of Facebook-style integration into a user forum..?
Is Flex importing all the threads/responses from the old forum, so the knowledge/answer base is maintained into the new forum? Or is that pretty much just sitting until Flex at some point just deletes the entire thing eventually?
Is Flex actually going to be present in this forum? Or is it going to be pretty much just Bigs and maybe some occasional answers from other Flex users? Looking at the Recent Activity section, I see two posts from Bigs over five threads in nine days. Clicking "View More", I see only ten threads over three months(!), and it's just a few more replies from Bigs, four threads with ZERO response, and only two responses from Brandon (employee), both three months old. If we look at the old forum, I can only see recent activity for 100 posts, and that only takes us back two-and-a-half months.
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Hi Richard,
Sometimes change is a little discerning. Flex personnel aren't necessarily active in the forum. The will hold true for the community as well. The Flex forum(old forum)/community (new forum) are for customers to interact. If Flex support is required, choose the icon/button in the lower right of the community.
As I stated in the announcement, new posts will be in the community (the new forum). All existing posts will be kept in the old forum. You can continue to reply to existing posts in the old forum. We'll keep it active for the foreseeable future as it has many good topics many customers would find helpful.
Once everyone begins using the community, it will become as robust as the forum, it just takes time.
*We are reviewing the migration options and if plausible, we'll make it happen.
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Devon,
So is this Flex support button replacing the support@FRS? Or is it just another link to do the same thing? And is it any different from the "Submit a Request" link at the top of the page?
But what about forum settings? The only options I can find are "My Activities" and "My Profile", neither of which give any option for condensing the forum view. Profile shows activity, about me, and also 'following'? 'votes'? 'subscriptions'? (of which I somehow already have one?)... My Activities shows "Requests", which appear to be imported from previous support emails? (Some of which were responded to in the forum, and not via email, so I have a couple still awaiting replies?) Also, how is 'Contributions' different from the above "My Activities"? It appears to just be the same list of forum posts..? Then, I have 'Community Comments' and 'Article Comments', which are also somehow different from just regular forum posts?
Are there any settings I can edit to change the AOL view back into a normal forum view?
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Hi Richard-
Personally I like that there is now only 1 forum. Some people were cross-posting here and in the old forum and getting answers from different people in both places, which is just silly. As Devon mentioned, we still have the old forum as a reference, but all new posts can only be made here in the Community. We can always link to forum posts to reference them in discussions here. I also think it's good to have a bit of a reboot - all the information in this site is current whereas many forum posts are years old and no longer relevant. That will be even more true once the transition to Flex 5 is complete.
As you mentioned, I've been pretty active here in the Community. I'm sure that since this is now the singular place for new posts, activity will increase shortly. There are some things that I like about this interface more than the old one, for example being able to copy-paste screenshots directly into a post is great!
When you click on your 'My Activities' page, the different sections are as follows:
- "Requests" are support tickets - usually submitted via email but you can see them all in one place here which I find very helpful.
- "Contributions" are comments or posts that you have made here.
- "Following" lists all the Help Center topics or Community posts which you have followed. Meaning you will be notified when there are new posts / comments.
Give it a few weeks, I'm sure you will get used to the new interface.
Regards
Bigs
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[i]Personally I like that there is now only 1 forum. Some people were cross-posting here and in the old forum and getting answers from different people in both places, which is just silly. [/i]
Yes, I definitely agree with that. Having multiple locations for discussion is messy and disjointed.
[i] I also think it's good to have a bit of a reboot - all the information in this site is current whereas many forum posts are years old and no longer relevant. That will be even more true once the transition to Flex 5 is complete.[/i]
Again, sure, but that's something easy to (on the old forum) move all the posts into an archive section, and clean out the current threads. That could easily have been done with the release of Flex5 / Beta release. Really, being a Flex-maintained forum (even with minimal Flex participation), they should have been clearing out old threads and deleting obsolete answers. Of course, there's tons of old threads there that never even got any response, so looking for any kind of moderation was really moot.
[i]Give it a few weeks, I'm sure you will get used to the new interface.[/i]
I doubt it. This new interface is a clunky combination of AOL from the 90's, and the current FaceBook/Disqus commenting style on every news article I read. I don't like it on other websites that have gone "modern", and it's not going to grow on me here. It generally just means I'll be using it less. On the old forum, all I had to do was click on the tab, refresh, and I could easily see every topic group that had new posts, and within that, see each thread that was new/unread. Here, I have a pile of boxen on the front page, and it takes a while to even find what topic I'm looking for if I need to post a question, and there's no way to tell which sections have new posts or not for me to assist others.
The pages are huge, with tons of empty space all over my browser window. The actual post/responses take up maybe half the width of my screen, making for less readability and more scrolling up and down. I like stuff simple and efficient, not complex and more effort.
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Hi Richard,
Understood.
Regarding "there's no way to tell which sections have new posts or not for me to assist others," have you seen that you can scroll past the "AOL Boxes" to see the list of Recent Posts? Alternatively just click the 'Community Topics' dropdown in the top left and switch to 'Show All Posts' - default sorting is by most recent.
One cool thing that I just noticed is that a single search box searches community posts and knowledge base articles. That's very useful.
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Hm well I guess the italics tagging doesn't work in posts anymore.
have you seen that you can scroll past the "AOL Boxes" to see the list of Recent Posts?
Yes, but that doesn't bold all recent unread posts, that's just a most recent list. It's not part of the normal threads, it's its own separate section. Getting back to that whole multiple locations/disjointed thing again.
Alternatively just click the 'Community Topics' dropdown in the top left and switch to 'Show All Posts' - default sorting is by most recent.
Again, it shows the most recent stuff but it's not organized into topics/sections or anything. And, it's huge-empty. I have barely nine threads before I have to scroll. The old forum has 20 per page, and that doesn't even fill the screen!
One cool thing that I just noticed is that a single search box searches community posts and knowledge base articles. That's very useful.
Yes, that is definitely a nice feature.
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