UPDATED COMMUNITIES Q&A CLINIC

Unknown said:

Frankie'

    you missed off the other Notifications problems that I and others have mentioned twice.

1: When you click on a thread in notifications, it needs to take you to the last posting, or at least the last page and not the first one.

2: reading any one of "x" notifications removes the highlights form all of your pending notifications, suggesting that you have read them all.

It would be nice to have these added to the list before they get forgotten again.

Bob

Hi Bob,

I haven't missed these, the notifications system works as the software company have built it so I have to classify these as feature enhancements, similar to those requested by other users such as being able to click through to the original posts from activity streams.

I'll address the points above individually:

1. Yes, completely agree, this would be a far more usable feature if this was the case - Please add it to the feature request thread when I post it tomorrow.

2. The "notifications" work like facebook, it shows that you have a number of notifications, however, it will not be grey once you close the list. I can't see this changing by the software company if I'm honest. We will of course consider this request as a bespoke change alongside all other requests.

Sorry if it sounds a little dismissive Bob, I'm not trying to be. Just want to get the technical issues sorted first and then look at how we continually improve the community to avoid "big bang" type upgrades as we've just had..... I think it'll make it a far less stressful time for everyone if we simply evolve rather than have a massive upheavel every couple of years!

F.

Unknown said:

We are hardly likely to evolve if you don't think the software company will be prepared to make changes. As for the "big bang" upgrades, they wouldn't happen again becasue you will have undergone a "lessons learned" procedure which will prevent that. It should be up to paying membership to have input into what their subscriptions buy, not up to Software Companies to dictate what they will get.

As I said before, I'm living with it though it may well be that plenty of others will disagree with me and see huge benefits and improvements.

Hi Bob,

I didn't say the software company aren't prepared to make changes, simply that this particular change is unlikely and this probably isn't the forum for the whys and wherefores of software companies and how they work.

The RSPB has bought an off the shelf package and we'll do our best to customise and modify that to meet both the user's needs and the RSPB's needs.

The alternative to an off the shelf package would be one we build, support and maintain ourselves, which in this instance would be a far more costly alternative. There may be a business benefit and justification for that.....it's not my call..... but we try to evaluate all the options, to work out the best way to spend the RSPB's money in support of our ultimate aims and objectives around birds, wildlife and conservation - whether that be online or not.

I am genuinely sorry you're very disillusioned with the Community and the way it works, we value everyone's input into how to make it better. As you have pointed out and I have already stated, we're working towards a gradual and continual improvement process rather than that of a big bang each time.

Despite some of the new features that have appeared and one or two performance issues, largely the community functionality, navigation and structure remains the same as prior to the upgrade. As I have stated before, this is the start of improving it, not the end.... It hasn't gone perfectly, we'll learn and get better at it..... I can't even promise we'll never make any mistakes again, we'll try to minimise the impacts though.

I don't want to get into a tit for tat and nit picking about individual pieces of functionality or who said/did what, we are of the same opinion of you, there's always room for improvement.... We're working towards that and will continually do so.

You are a valuable member of the community and I personally rely on you and many other community members' tenacity and help in what we're trying to achieve.

Thanks,

F.

Unknown said:

John & Judith Rogers wrote the following post at 4 Aug 2013 11:34 PM:

Since the last upgrade a number of items have gone missing from the Campfield Blog.

1. On the homepage we had made a 'useful information'  file at the bottom right-hand of the page, to which we had added a series of files like Tide Timetables for the area, a local weather forecast and a series about local accommodation - to mention a few, which would be of use to visitors to the Reserve. The file containing this information has disappeared from the page and we cannot see how to restore it.
2. Under 'daily page reviews and referrals', the referrals link has also gone missing.

Also since the previous update we are still waiting for a solution to the incorrect 'blue links' on the Homepage, i.e. 'visit our forum' and 'view our photos' which both link back to our blog posts not to the forum and gallery.

We would appreciate some help with these matters.

John and Judith

Hi, I moved this post into here to streamline the problem reporting and Frankie will be made aware of these issues.

Unknown said:

Clearly I'm a lone voice so will let it go.I will put up my suggestions in the "Improvements" thread and monitor what happens after that.

Not a lone voice Bob just some of us have almost given up on this ,lot of the old regulars seem to be on much less,wonder why ?

Down grade is better name in my opinion but others may be very happy with it.

Wendy S said:

Clearly I'm a lone voice so will let it go.I will put up my suggestions in the "Improvements" thread and monitor what happens after that.

Not a lone voice Bob just some of us have almost given up on this ,lot of the old regulars seem to be on much less,wonder why ?

Down grade is better name in my opinion but others may be very happy with it.

[/quote]

Hi Seaman/Bob,

I'm not trying to dismiss or play down any issues but I have explained on this post: http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/about/f/1251/t/106455.aspx why the upgrade occurred and what happened.

We had missed a few peices of functionality and we've had one or two teething troubles. I have said before in several posts, this upgrade never set out to completely overhaul the community navigation and what's known as it's "information architecture" (technical term for how we structure the posts, pages, forums, blogs etc.)

Largely speaking it's the same Community structure.... If there are specific technical problems, we're asking you to tell us and we'll do our best to fix them.

When we come to do a full review of how we and you want to see the community work, we'll take into consideration our supporters views, our own aims and objectives and deliver a user experience that is a more satisfying one.

Seaman, can you elaborate on the issues that you're experiencing please that makes you feel this is a "downgrade"?

F.

Unknown said:

Frankie,

          Sorry, but you didn't really explain it all away - you didn't explain why you went for the vendor's "upgrade" over and above any other software out there that might have better fitted csutomer requirements and expectations, knowing that over the last few years customers have been expressing their views on the overall structure. You haven't explained how much leverage that you think the RSPB has in persuading the vendor to modify their off the shelf product, which I'm quite sure they feel is good enough.- other than you clearly have opinions as to what they will and wont change. I actually find it rather worrying that their new version dovetailed so badly over their old version.

Again, I will say that I will live with it, put in my suggestions and monitor what happens. Certainly the first 3 weeks was a "downgrade" and I have seen little that would classify this as an "upgrade".

Yours,

Bob

Hi Bob,

I'll try and address this as quickly as I can.

Firstly, the software version we were on, was version 5.6. This version is version 7.5. So we've jumped quite a few versions.

Secondly, and probably most importantly, the software vendor doesn't determine how a community should be laid out from an information architecture point of view, you can see from here: http://community.macmillan.org.uk/ it's the same software, different architecture..... We chose a structure wayback in the dawns of time and very little has changed, it's grown large and now grown cumbersome.

So.... it's up to us as RSPB to look to the future on this and turn the community around.

We're now on the latest version of the software, we're supported by the software vendor, we have the ability to customise the functionality to a certain extent.... we can now (after these small issues are resolved) move on.

The first three weeks were problematic yes, we're addressing that for future improvements, I don't really want to keep re-iterating that point however, I can do very little about it now to change what happened..... we need to move onwards and upwards.

Frankie do I take it my own problem cannot be resolved?

I am still stuck in plain text version of the Contents Editor in my original account and unable to change to Enhanced. Each time I select Enhanced from the dropdown menu and click 'save' I get bounced over to the Basic Options tab without it saving and the 'save' button is then greyed out. This happens in all browsers.

Ok so my second account works fine in that department but for various reasons I would prefer to be able to use my old account instead of having to start afresh with everything.

Hi Frankie, Before you close this thread could you provide a link to the 'issues thread' that will be replacing it. apart from the 'insert' and post' buttons not working in certain situations I am particularly keen to get the delete option working from the profile page - it is deleting OK from the profile page itself, but not from the actual forum page where the post appears. As I have multiple versions of a new post caused by the 'post' button not working I would like to get these cleared.  I don't know whether this is an issue caused by your software, my browser (Safari) or my OS (OS X) but presume that your software is platform independent as it always worked before. thanks

Aha! OK. I've just discovered that in this forum there is a 'delete' function on the little triangle drop down menu but in posts on the forum that I tend to use frequently (Newport Wetlands) it doesn't exist. To some extent this isn't an urgent problem because this forum has joined the Norwegian Blue, since the upgrade most regulars have just stopped using it.

Hi Alan. thanks for that, as you can see I've just found that on this forum you can but not on my local  one.Help.tiff