If you followed all of what took place earlier this week at the Year In Infrastructure 2014 event in London, you have to admit that there was a lot that happened. One of the primary focuses of that event was on the incredible infrastructure projects that…
Another thing introduced in the recent Communities upgrade is the inclusion of a "syntax highlighter"
Programmers and developers should find useful when providing or including code in a Communities forum post or blog or wiki article. To take…
If you are getting a good number of notifications through email relating to activity in Communities forums (e.g. forum threads started, forum reply posts, etc.) that you had not been receiving before, this could be due to some services that existed previously…
As you add a question to a forum (i.e. start a new thread)
whatever you enter will invoke the site's search utility to see if what you are asking had been asked previously:
In situations where no of the returned results is what you are looking…
When you use Search, results appear as you are entering what you are searching for. As you start, you will see one set of results:
and then as you enter more information, you will see a different set of results:
Subsequently, when you enter all…
As mentioned previously, Search results are based on the scope of where you are when you initiate your search. So if you are in a wiki, the results will default to being scoped to that community's wiki content:
You can dynamically expand that to…
The Communities Search function provides a better user experience by supporting "natural language" search for content, users, etc. within scope of the application (e.g. forum, community, site, etc.) that you are currently in, but with the flexibility…
Regardless of the browser, device, or size of the browser window, search is always present in the interface.
This provides continual, almost persistent reminder that search is a primary form of getting information and answers to questions.
Something else that helps provide assistance in finding solutions to issues is a dialog that appears and suggests other content that could be relevant or recommended as it relates to what you are looking at. As you scroll down through forum threads and…
In the activity streams, replies to posts and answers to posts are linked directly to the thread they are part of:
So there is no longer any need to have to expand the "View original post" to see what the response is to.
Something else to provide more obviousness is the elimination of tabs for options in the Forum post editor. All options are now on the same page as the editor:
This makes it much easier to "see" all options available to you when creating or maintaining…
The "More" button combines a number of user interface items (e.g. tabs, "hidden" glyphs, etc.) that competed for space or were just plain not obvious.
Forum thread presentation got a good deal of user experience improvement. When looking at the forum thread list...
If you click on "Answered" or "Suggested Answer", you will see a preview of the answer without having to "open" the thread.…
Another great new capability included with the Communities platform upgrade is responsive design. With this scheme, site elements appear almost identically on different formats and screens -- whether from a desktop browser or from a mobile browser. With…
One of the various things we heard from members when the Communities site was migrated at the end of 2013 was what the new things were. In this migration, there is something called "Tour Tips" included, which are meant for first-time, new members and…
A tag is a keyword or term associated with a piece of content. In the context of Bentley Communities, that is a forum post, wiki or blog article, file or image, idea, etc. It links the content to other content that it relates to contextually. Tags give…
There has been news recently about something called the Heartbleed vulnerability (also known as "Heartbleed bug"). This has actually been around for a couple of years and allows hackers to exploit a flaw in OpenSSL encryption software (used by some websites…
Be Communities provides a rich Web experience that gives members the opportunity to interact with other community members (including Bentley colleagues) through online forums, blogs, files/images galleries, and wikis. To increase participation and productivity…
For those who knew Keith Little, it is with a heavy heart that I must share the sad news of his passing. Keith worked at Bentley during "the early days" and always greeted you with a smile and the positive side of things. Although he is no longer with…
"Ideas" is a Bentley Communities application module that adds category posing and idea generation, rating, commenting, voting, and triage to communities. The Ideas application can be customized with a look and feel that encourages innovation and community…
The Document Preview feature provides the ability to preview certain documents in the media galleries before downloading them. Here are some things to know about this function:
Here are just some of the things that are included with the new-and-improved Be Communities:
Search
There is now more prominence and improvements to the site's search. The search field is located closer to “the action” on the home page as well on the…
When you insert an image that is larger than the width of the widget you are in inserting the image into (in pixels in the x direction), the image will either get "resized" to the pixel width of the widget or the image will get "cut off" on the right…
