New recent activity list on support community home page

[Community_Help]

Hi there - I have updated the support home page with a list that shows Recent Activity for all communities. Before, what you saw listed was Recent Content. Recent Acvitiy gives you the ability reply, preview, "like' and view more information in a single list.

To vew all content in support communities,  you can always click the Content Tab on this page or go here: https://communities.sas.com/community/support-communities/content

You can also subscribe to RSS feeds here: https://communities.sas.com/community/feeds?community=2007

If you like or dislike the new "Recent Activity" feed, just let me know. I definitely want your ideas.

Community Admin

[MichelleHomes]

Whilst the new Recent Actvity list provides additional functionality and categorizes the content by community, the list is long and I prefer what it use to be. Having a succinct Recent Content list vs Recent Activity list that doesn't require much scrolling is my preference. My thought is that users can gauge the content and interact with a thread they are interested in by clicking on it, and having the reply, preview, "like" and view for each thread in the widget just makes the widget and main page very long.

I'd like the Recent Activity widget to be the Recent Content widget for all communities as it was previously.

[Quentin]

I agree with Michelle.   Recent Content was just a list of subject lines and author, right?  Much more succinct.  And easy to eyeball a couple hours worth of posts (depending on volume).   With new format, too much scrolling.  And clicking "load more items" feels like going to the second page of google results.

Also liked that the previous layout had the sas ballotware ideas on the home page.  I was hoping there would be more ideas and more commenting/voting about ballotware ideas once it was opened up to let anyone post an idea.  And I'm still hopefull it could pick up.  So free advertising could help.  (Aslo happy when I see someone new voted on my EG batch submit idea. : )

[art297]

From what I've seen, thus far, I like the new configuration!  I presume it means that we will see posts in communities that we normally don't see.

[MichelleHomes]

I thought the previous Recent Content list also showed posts from all communities, it just didn't separate them out as in this Recent Activity list outlining what community the post is in.

[art297]

Michelle: I've NEVER seen a DS2 post and am hoping they and previously unseen community posts will start appearing.

[Community_Help]

Hi Art - actually since the DS2 posts are currently private -- those won't show up here.. just the public forums for now.

[art297]

Then, if we're only talking about format, I agree with the others!

[Reeza]

I dislike.

Your webpage is communities.sas.com, so if I type that in it brings me to the support home page.

Then I have to click to the communities.

Then I have to scroll all the way to the bottom to see the bigger threads than previously before. I dislike the scrolling portion and smaller size. 

At least you haven't broken the 3 click rule yet (a scroll counts as a click)

[art297]

Fareeza: That changed, for me, a couple of weeks ago.

[Community_Help]

Hi I just saw some of your comments. I might give the RSS feed a try here and see what you think -- the reason I removed the "recent content" widget is because due to a minor bug with that widget- it was causing the system to slow - or even crash for several minutes. I was advised to test out the Recent Activity string - but I think I might test the RSS feed based on the recent feedback...

[Community_Help]

Thank you all for letting me try that test -- I reverted back to how it was before. Since there might still be some intermittent performance issues with that widget - I will try to brainstorm ways to fix and see if there are other options. For now it should be okay. Thanks again!!

[MichelleHomes]

Thanks for raising this with the community for our feedback and being responsive to our requests.

Cheers,

Michelle

[Community_Help]

All who responded to this test on Friday. This morning, I spoke with our technical team and the software vendor. 

I have a better understanding now of some underlying issues with the "recent content widget" that gives you the view that you like at the bottom of this support communities home page. This view lists all recent content by sub-communities (such as SAS Procedures, SAS Visual Analytics, etc).

Apparently there is a known bug with our current version of the community software that causes a problem with the "recent content widget" when it is configured to be recursive. This may eventually get resolved - but for now it is a bug we need to deal with, unfortunately.  What happens is that this widget gets overloaded and causes the community site to crash.  Per the software vendor, the "widget is configured to be recursive and is placed on the top level space it essentially has to traverse the whole space tree checking which spaces the user has permissions to view every time someone hits the homepage."

To correct this issue - and try to come up with a happy medium between what (I believe) you like to see on this main page and what I need to do to handle the performance bug, I have made the following change:

1. I made the 'recent content" widget non-recursive - meaning you will only see a list of discussions that are coming in at the top level of the SAS Support Communities (not from the sub-communities - such as SAS Procedures). There is a lot of activity at this top level - of course, as you know,  one issue is that many questions are being asked at this level (vs. inside a community).. that is another issue to address soon.

2. I added the "recent activity" widget that shows activity from ALL communities so that you do still have visibility to individual activity at the individual community level.

• You can also always view ALL content by clicking on the Content Tab on this page -- or by looking at the "recent activity" list below "recent content". I realize this is not ideal - but believe this might be a good opportunity to analyze the current community layout and get your input into what will work best moving forward.

Questions for you:

1. I am working on some other ideas for the near future - I may need your input. I'm interested in creating a private community to test ideas (for example, to analyze the structure of the community, test adding categories and showing you other layouts for you to vote on that we could roll out based on your input). Would anyone be interested in participating? If so, let me know and I can invite you to the testing ground.

2. So that you can view all content on the page better - I would like to make the "available support communities" list more compact. There are a few options. I could just make the current list more compact by putting them in columns of 5 each -- or I could move it to the left or right nav in a longer list. Are there ways I should groups this list better?

I know this was a long message.. Thank you very much for your input, flexibility and ideas.

Community Admin ( )

[Tom]

Sounds like (and looks like)  the ability to see all recent activity directly on the main page has been lost now?

So now we goto http://communities.sas.com

Then click on SAS COMMUNITIES (instead of say Analytics U).

Then we have to click on the CONTENT tab to see actual discussions.