An update on the ITRC forums migration

[Kevin_Paul]

On June 26th, we completed the initial transition of the legacy ITRC forums content into the HP Enterprise Business Community.  Approximately 2.5 million posts, and 712,000 users were migrated from the old forums platform into our new, consolidated community.

While the migration is now complete, we are aware of several open issues/concerns, which we are working on addressing:

• Google (and other 3rd party search engines) still showing ITRC forums results in searches

While the content that was migrated has been indexed by hp.com and 3rd party search engines, the "old" locations for the ITRC forums content are still appearing in 3rd party search results.  We are working on this issue, to "force" the removal of the old urls as quickly as possible (rather than allowing it to happen naturally, which can take weeks if not months) - we hope to have a resolution soon, as we appreciate the fact that this causes confusion for customers who utilize sites such as Google for searching community content.

• Redirects from old ITRC forums links bringing users into the new site without explanation or additional information

Originally, any attempt to reach an ITRC forums url (forums*.itrc.hp.com/*) would bring a customer instead to the "top level" of the new community.  We quickly realized that wasn't the best customer experience, and updated the redirects to instead bring customers directly to a thread that explained that the migration had taken place, how to run searches in the new site, request assistance, and links to other important topics.  This should greatly reduce the confusion originally occurring with the initial redirect strategy.

• Links from one migrated ITRC forum post to another

There are some migrated ITRC posts which contain links back to different ITRC threads (as many times when a question is asked, it has already been addressed - so users would include references back to past discussions on similar topics).  These links are being updated, post-migration.  We are starting with the most recent content that contains links, and working backwards.  Messages more than a year or two old may not be updated, as content going back that far is likely not used nearly as often as more recent postings.

• Site performance

Due to the sheer number of users coming to explore the new community, the first few days we were experiencing slower performance than what we had hoped for.  Analysis was performed, and we have made several internal changes to improve the responsiveness of the community.  Moving forward, we will continue to monitor the situation and make additional changes as necessary.

• Layout/design of the new community

The new community represents a significant change for many of our long-time users.  We realize there are several things we can improve upon already in the new site (for example, the amount of space being used on a board to display how many total posts and new posts have been made to a thread, which in turn is compressing other columns, such as thread title), and we're already addressing items that can be changed easily/quickly.  For other issues, which require more development and time to implement, we are working on a longer term plan for making the site easier to navigate, easier to use, and more "streamlined".  We should be able to announce specifics and schedules for those types of updates in the near future.

• User profile issues

Some users have experienced duplicate profiles, or problems accessing their original ITRC accounts.  For several months prior to the migration, we had posted notices in the ITRC forums about the necessary steps customers needed to complete before the transition took place, but we do appreciate that some people may have missed that communication for one reason or another.  So for those users, we have been working individually on addressing their particular problems via the "Feedback" section of the new site.

• Missing posts that don't appear to have migrated

We are aware of a situation that has impacted a small percentage of the ITRC forums content, resulting in some threads/discussions not yet being available in the new community.  We are already working on a solution for this problem and will have it deployed as quickly as possible, to ensure that all ITRC legacy content is fully available.

We are seeing a tremendous amount of activity in the new community, so while we are working on these issues, and hope to continue to make improvements to the platform moving forward, we're excited to see that the majority of our users have made a smooth transition into the new HP Enterprise Business Community!

We will continue to keep the lines of communication open as we work through these issues. If you experience additional challenges while utilizing the new site, please don't hesitate to contact us via the feedback forum within the community.