This may be a bit premature (and not taking into account bugs) but so far as one in a sea of users, I like the new forums. Though a little bit hard to find at first, the new layout and wealth of user perferences is great.
A couple of suggestions:
That's all, so far so good.
steve
I also like that old overview of the forums, so you easy could see the forums had recent post and those that didn't. Now I have to open all the forums and see if something is new.
So I have some groups in my favorites, but that only takes me to the home page of the group, then I need to open the forum. It's a lot of more clicks needed.
MicroStation 08.11.09.829MicroStation Connect Update 11ProjectWise 08.11.11.590LumenRT Update 11
steve.k said: I've liked forums that list a "number of times viewed" column. It helps to know what other users have looked at, what they have found helpful, especially threads I have started.
Yes, I see what you mean. There is a "Popular Discussion" widget at the top-level forum thread listing, but we will look into showing the number of views (first to see if that is possible :)
steve.k said: Probably not suitable for a company forum, but I also like a Thanks feature, that you can thank a user and it is a user statistic - I think it encourages user contribution more.
Hmmm... that is an interesting suggestion. Not sure if this system provides that, but it will be looked into also.
steve.k said: Is the "answered" category similar to the "solved" feature in other forums? Ie where the user who posts the thread can tick a "Is Solved" box when the question is answered.
Yes, that is precisely what that is for. It existed in the previous system, but was only engaged in a couple of forums there... we did not think it looked that good, and what exists now is so much nicer.
Answer Verified By: steve.k
Thanks Phil for taking notice. And I only saw the "Did this answer your question?" button now :) That's great!
Daniel, you can add groups to favourites and you can also add forum's to favourites, so that saves the extra click :) - you should see it on the right bar in each forum like you do with groups.
On that, when you are in a forum the bit up the top is a but confusing, though I understand they all go to different places. eg:
Home » Products » MicroStation » MicroStation V8i » MicroStation » MicroStation V8i
"when you are in a forum the bit up the top is a but confusing..."
Yes, we saw that early on... it should be only with the MicroStation ones, since there were subforums in the old site (and that did not map too well to what the new site supports...) There may be ways to clean that up, eventually, but it was the only way we could find to get that to work properly. It was either the minor UI issue or not bring any content over -- we took the lesser-of-all-evils option :)
I very much agree with Daniel Jarlestig. This new format is very tedious to find information on. It's is even more frustrating to me that the server response seems very slow compared to other forum sites I have used. I click a link and can almost count to 5 every time before the page loads so the less pages I have to navigate through the better.