New Format

[DavidZuts]

Just logged on to the NEW support forum and some quick comments.  First off you have made it difficult to navigate to the posts.  I usually post many items and before I was able to see a listing of all threads for a certain area.   Printing and Digital Imaging has may sections like laserjet, designjet, etc and I could see all the posts to all the sections on one screen.  We now have to click on each section in order to see a listing of the posts.  Makes it more difficult since I want to see a complete listing of all threads to this area.  Also you have changed the position of the post vs. the reply area where you have to now scroll down in order to read the post you are responding to where before the question was above and you could see it as you were responding.  Not major but for someone who responds a lot, makes it difficult if you have to re-read the post.  I was under the impression that you were going to have all the posts listed when you replied so if you have to re-read a post by someone in the middle it was there for you to see.  Look at the format used by fixyourownprinter.com and you will see what I mean.  There you can navigate to any post while replying to the thread.  The spell checker is a nice feature.  Will add more comments as I have a chance to navigate the site more.

[Kevin_Paul]

David - thanks for your input and feedback.

1) The ability to see a listing of all threads for an entire category (such as "Printing and Digital Imaging") still exists, it's just reached in a slightly different way.  If you navigate to a category home page, and scroll to the bottom of the page, you'll see a "RECENT TOPICS" heading.  While that will only show you the five most recently-modified discussions/threads, there is a View All link right below that section.  I believe the resulting page will give you what you're looking for.

2) There is a way to reply to a thread without moving to a different page where you can only see one post, and that's via the "Quick Reply" button, which will simply open a small window where you can create a reply while still being able to see the entire threaded discussion.  Obviously you don't have all the extra reply features, such as spell check, but you can still see the whole thread.

Please do post any additional comments or findings as you experiment with the new environment - your input is very much appreciated!

[DavidZuts]

Kevin thanks for the reply. The quick reply is excellent, however, I do not know if possible but I am still an old netscape user and the box does not scroll down when it is filled. I can still enter text but can not see it. I know it works fine with IE, but I still like my old netscape. On the first item I have an issue with the way the items are listed. Before everything would be in date order by initial post or latest response. Now the first item is something posted last Tuesday for a deskjet item with no response where the first item should be the last response to a post for the category of Printing and Digital Imaging. Hope you get my drift. Like anything new this will take some time to get used to so bear with us regular posters as we may not see something.  I also see where you have an item for uploading images, etc but the link does not exist on the profile page so we can not use this feature.

[Kevin_Paul]

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@DavidZuts wrote:

The quick reply is excellent, however, I do not know if possible but I am still an old netscape user and the box does not scroll down when it is filled. I can still enter text but can not see it. I know it works fine with IE, but I still like my old netscape.

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Looks like you've stumbled across a limitation of Netscape - I tested that scrolling on IE, Firefox, and Chrome, and they all work correctly.  I know that doesn't help you and the other Netscape users out there, but it's difficult to provide support for discontinued browsers...

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@DavidZuts wrote:

On the first item I have an issue with the way the items are listed. Before everything would be in date order by initial post or latest response. Now the first item is something posted last Tuesday for a deskjet item with no response where the first item should be the last response to a post for the category of Printing and Digital Imaging.

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That's actually something we identified yesterday that's impacting the sort order in several different places - I included a brief note about it in a reply to my welcome message, and I will provide additional detail there in that thread as we work towards a resolution - it should be available soon.  Those types of thread lists should be, by default, sorting based on last reply date - as you've mentioned.  But in the transition of all of the historical content from the "old" BSC forums, something has gone a bit askew...

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@DavidZuts wrote:

I also see where you have an item for uploading images, etc but the link does not exist on the profile page so we can not use this feature.

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I'll have to look into that one on Monday - thanks for bringing it to my attention!  It may be that we will only allow users that have been registered for a minimum amount of time to upload images (in order to minimize the chances of a brand-new user not "attached" to their account posting something inappropriate within the community), but of course someone such as yourself, being a long-time contributor, should certainly have that ability.  Stay tuned!

[Kenneth Chan_2]

David,

Apologies for piggy backing on your posting but I've had a "senior moment" and  under this new format I couldn't see how to start up a new message/thread  but I too have some feedback/suggestions.

1. how do I get a forum search in a new tab? I used to click "Advanced Search"  with middle button on the old page

2. you can't get to do an Author search  until you do a "basic" search

3. the links from the old forum seem to be dead eg

[Broken link removed on 03-23-2017 by Admin]

takes you to the join in page

Ken

[sdrake48]

Don't understand where to submit comments - is a new message required, a new topic, ???

Anyways, after logging in, my support requests should be immediately visible.  They aren't.  Why not?  What else could I possibly want to see.  Only 3 things matter, in this order:

1.  My existing topics (support requests).

2.  Search of db to see if a problem is known

3.  The big button to create a new support request

None if this is intuitive in the new website - what user requirements were the programmers given other than the 3 above?

[Kevin_Paul]

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@Kenneth J Chan wrote:

1. how do I get a forum search in a new tab? I used to click "Advanced Search"  with middle button on the old page

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Kenneth - once you're on a search results page, you should be able to middle/right click on the "Advanced Search..." link to open it in a new tab/window.  You'll then need to back-up one page from the original tab/window, but hopefully that gets you to what you're trying to do.

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@Kenneth J Chan wrote:

2. you can't get to do an Author search  until you do a "basic" search

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From any page within the community, you can use the pull-down list in the blue search box, and specify "Users" if you want to restrict your search to authors.

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@Kenneth J Chan wrote:

3. the links from the old forum seem to be dead eg

[Broken link removed on 03-23-2017 by Admin] 

takes you to the join in page

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That's unfortunately a side-effect of migrating all of the historical discussions from the previous forums into the new community platform.  Over time those will obviously become less of a problem, but if you've got any posts where the link was critical to the meaning of the thread, I'm happy to manually update those on a one-by-one basis.

[Kevin_Paul]

sdrake48 - when you're logged in, click on the link with your screen name up near the top (just to the left of the "Sign Out" link - that will take you to a page that lists all of your posts (if you need to see more than the last 5, click the "View All" link below that area.

Hope that helps you find what you're looking for...

[Chris H]

I concur with Ken on the 'old links' issue.

I myself have used such links numerous times (to refer to different threads) and the lack of a link back seriously reduces the value of some knowledge base 'solutions'.

... and it appears to be rather inconsistent, in that some links DO appear to work!

For example:

The new forums thread http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Printers-LaserJet/PJL-command-for-resetting-Laserjet-2200d-page-count/m-p/1145603#M185807 , copied from the old forums, includes a link:

"See thread [Broken link removed on 03-23-2017 by Admin]"

which DOES work.

But the new forums thread http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Printers-LaserJet/Duplex-printing-Problem/m-p/1147511#M186382 , copied from the old forums, includes the link:

 "... comment [Broken link removed on 03-23-2017 by Admin]."

which does NOT work.

[Chris H]

I think I got the 'works' and 'doesn't work' links mixed up in my last post.

The one which works links back to an ITRC forums thread, whilst the non-working one is to a 'bizsupport' one.

But I would have thought that it should have been relatively easy to have automated converting the links for threads within the 'same' (old and converted) forums, although, of course, if and when the ITRC forums are also converted, old 'cross-forum' links from biz to ITRC would be much more difficult to convert.