topic List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum? in All Things Community

List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

PaigeMiller — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 13:09:16 GMT

In the old board, it was possible to view a list of all recent posts, regardless of what forum or community (if that is the proper use of the term, I don't really know) the post was in, by the date of the last post in that thread. So, for example, the most recent activity was in the forum about SAS Data Steps, and then the next most recent activity was in the forum about Statistical Techniques and then the next most recent activity was in the forum about Graphics, I could still see them all in one single list.

I am not finding any similar list in the new forum. In fact, it's not even obvious to me how to determine what forums or communities exist, or how I can easily naviagate from one forum or community to another. Related to this, there is indeed a box on most screens, with orange text that says "Find A Community", but when I place my mouse somewhere in this box (using Firefox), it appears that this box is not functional and not hyperlinked to anything.

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

PaigeMiller — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 13:35:06 GMT

I accidentally discovered the list I was looking for at

https://communities.sas.com/t5/forums/recentpostspage/post-type/thread

However, it is not sorted by the most recent activity, it seems to be sorted by (I'm guessing) thread creation date, which still isn't really what I want to see, I want it sorted by most recent activit.

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

Rick_SAS — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 13:38:43 GMT

From the Home Page scroll down and you will see a list titled "Latest Topics." That shows the most recent 5-6. If you click the "View All" link, you can see all the recent activity.

In IE and Chrome, when I click on the "horizontal line icon" in the "Find a community" box, it expands to a drop-down tree view of the communities.

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

PaigeMiller — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 13:41:45 GMT

@Rick_SAS wrote:
In IE and Chrome, when I click on the "horizontal line icon" in the "Find a community" box, it expands to a drop-down tree view of the communities.

It wasn't working in Firefox about an hour ago, clicking did nothing. Now, it works!

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

LainieH — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 13:45:26 GMT

@PaigeMiller, thank you very much. I share your concern. When I was responding to users, I found myself needing that recent activity list. What you suggest is possible in a variety of ways.

In the short term, you can use this hidden URL within the system:https://communities.sas.com/t5/forums/recentpostspage/post-type/message .. Note: the icon of the comment bubble: if it is darkened in it shows that new content was added. Is this something you would find helpful?

The Communities Team is evaluating all feedback and will be addressing these concerns soon Thank you! Your feedback makes a difference -

Lainie

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

Rick_SAS — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 13:48:48 GMT

Great to hear that it is working. I have experienced several glitches as well, perhaps because the administrators are busy tweaking the system. For example, I've been logged out on more than one occasion and had to clear my cache to log back in.

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

LainieH — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 13:49:34 GMT

@PaigeMiller, you're one step ahead of me that is great.

So the URL you have will show all topics

This URL shows all activity - even at the 'reply' level.

Which one do you like best? https://communities.sas.com/t5/forums/recentpostspage/post-type/message or

/t5/forums/recentpostspage/post-type/thread

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

PaigeMiller — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 13:57:08 GMT

@LainieH wrote:

In the short term, you can use this hidden URL within the system:https://communities.sas.com/t5/forums/recentpostspage/post-type/message .. Note: the icon of the comment bubble: if it is darkened in it shows that new content was added. Is this something you would find helpful?

I participate in a number of forums on many different software manufacturers web sites. The thing that is most helpful to me, and which I had in the old SAS forums, and which I have on many other manufacturers web sites, is the ability to sort by the most recently updated threads.

So, to answer your question directly, no it is not helpful to me. I might have to scroll through several pages to find the posts with recent activity (and never be sure I have seen all of the posts with recent activity), and I don't want to do that, I want to see the most recent activity on page one — and only have to scroll if there are more recent activity than can fit on one page — and know when I have seen all of the posts with recent activity.

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

Quentin — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 15:14:17 GMT

I agree @PaigeMiller the threaded discussion list has the most promise for how I like to browse.

https://communities.sas.com/t5/forums/recentpostspage/post-type/thread

But I definitely want it to be sorted by latest post each thread, rather than thread creation date.

Actually, what I would really want is the ability to sort by either thread creation date or most recent post, or any other field. Maybe even quick drop-down to filter by community. I would probably use something like that as my main landing page.

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

BrunoMueller — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 16:01:42 GMT

In case you have an RSS reader application like Sage for Firefox, then all the various forums have an RSS entry that will show you the last topics. the scrrenshot below shows what it looks like to discover the feeds.

If you go to home you get the RSS feeds for all the forums.

Once a feed is added you can then look at it from within Firefox

The Sage Addon for Firefox is described here: https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/sage/

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

PaigeMiller — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 18:01:56 GMT

This is what I see in the Adobe Forums. It would be nice to have this in the SAS Forums.

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

LainieH — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 01:45:16 GMT

@Rick_SAS wrote:
Great to hear that it is working. I have experienced several glitches as well, perhaps because the administrators are busy tweaking the system. For example, I've been logged out on more than one occasion and had to clear my cache to log back in.

Rick, that is correct - we are working on this as we speak: several glitches and the logout issue. I will follow up as soon as this is fixed.

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

LainieH — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 01:50:13 GMT

@PaigeMiller excellent -- thank you for articulating what you want to see. And for being candid. It means a lot.

This community platform software is very flexible and the community team actually has a meeting tomorrow to discuss the feedback and plans for next steps.

I need that recent activity feed that you speak of, too -- I didn't realize I needed it until we lanched the site and I started interacting with folks. So I will be bringing this to the table tomorrow.

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

LainieH — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 02:01:38 GMT

@Quentin, @BrunoMueller , thank you for the additional details that you provided along with what @PaigeMiller articulated. These details are perfect and just what we need to understand!

We are still tweaking the foundational elements (bear with us a few more days) but wanted to get the new site out so we can collect input for the long-term. Over time, we can evolve the community--with your help--to suit SAS User needs.

The good news is that this platform gives us greater flexbility to respond and change.

Thank you for your patience as well as your honesty!

@ChrisHemedinger, @ShelleySessoms, @BeverlyBrown, @AnnaBrown and I are listening to you all.

Sincerely,

@LainieH

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

PaulHomes — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 02:25:01 GMT

As Bruno suggested earlier in this thread, RSS provides one possible solution to reviewing all activity regardless of forum. I have been testing some of the communities RSS URLs over the past couple of days and, so far, it seems that the following RSS URL provides all activity across all forums including replies and ideas etc.

https://communities.sas.com/kntur85557/rss/Community?feeds.replies=true&count=30

Thanks to Lainie, in one of my previous questions, the count parameter allows some control on the number of items fetched each time.

BTW I use NewsBlur as my RSS reader - I like it because it show lots of information in a single view (no excessive use of white space) and it allows me to access it, and maintain the state of what I have and haven't read, across which ever device I have to hand - desktop browser(s), iPad and iPhone etc.

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

PaigeMiller — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 12:19:24 GMT

@PaulHomes wrote:

BTW I use NewsBlur as my RSS reader - I like it because it show lots of information in a single view (no excessive use of white space) and it allows me to access it, and maintain the state of what I have and haven't read, across which ever device I have to hand - desktop browser(s), iPad and iPhone etc.

I have gotten used to viewing many forums from many different software manufacturers without using RSS, and I don't feel that I want to go that way just because the SAS forums don't have a feature I am looking for. Nevertheless, RSS seems to be a valuable suggestion if SAS can't provide this feature.

I agree with your point about "excessive white space". While this is very subjective, and probably different people will have different opinions, it does seem to me that there is a lot of excessive white space in the list views I have seen here in the new SAS forums. Furthermore, I don't see an option to change the space between items on the list, or change the font size, or change the fact that part of the first sentence of the actual forum post appears in the list view. So, in my web browser, after I scroll down a little so the SAS header is gone, I can see 10 or 11 posts without scrolling further down. At the Adobe forums, I can see 14 posts without scrolling down.

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

Tom — Sat, 12 Sep 2015 13:49:56 GMT

IE10 works with that RSS feed without having to install any extra add-ons.

I like the format better than the main page since it does not include all of the extra headers and sidebars. But in IE10 it still does seem to include a little too much white space between the entries. Perhaps some other RSS feed browser would work better than IE10.

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

PaulHomes — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 00:12:07 GMT

Hi Tom,

This is how I see SAS Communities via the NewsBlur web site - just quick snippets (title and part of the first line) of unread posts. If I see some thing I'd like to read I click on it and see the full text. If I have something to contribute I can then click on the URL to go to the site itself. I like this view because I get the same consistent experience across a large number of sites/blogs/forums (currently 88 sites). I find RSS readers (the few that don't try to emulate a magazine experience) provide a great format for scanning lots of posts in a short amount of time.

I discovered this particular RSS reader after trying a bunch of different ones when Google Reader was shutdown (and have been a very happy customer since). RSS is not for everyone, but I'd be lost without it - having to visit individual sites to get news is too inefficient for me.

Cheers

Paul

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

PaigeMiller — Tue, 15 Sep 2015 18:13:32 GMT

So, with regards to this topic of having a list of posts that have recent replies, this is what happened today.

I got into work and checked the Forum. I replied to a post that was several hours old. As the day went on, I wanted to check to see if there were additional replies, but becuase the Forum does not have the feature of sorting by recent replies, I had to scroll through three pages to find this post.

This is not a good use of my time. And furthermore, the quantity (and possibly the quality) of replies that this post will get is low, and the value of the Forum is also lowered without this feature.

Of course, since the problem we are discussing also applies to this post, I don't know how many will read this, including the bold paragraph above. I specifically bring this to the attention of @LainieH, who it seems does read these types of posts, even though the likelihood is low that anyone else will page through ten or twelve pages of posts to find that there is a new comment to this thread.

Re: List of All Recent Posts, regardless of community/forum?

LainieH — Tue, 15 Sep 2015 18:16:54 GMT

@PaigeMiller, I just saw your post. I hear you - I will see if I can escalate the solution - to be clear: you are saying that it would be most helpful to have recent posts (that includes replies) in a prominent location). I agree this would be helpful. I will get back with you asap. Thanks

@ChrisHemedinger