Printing, Personal Computing and Mobile Boards Migrating to HP Support Forums

[Warren_Admin]

Hello Hewlett Packard Enterprise Community! With the division of Hewlett-Packard Company into HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, all HP Inc. product support is now provided by HP Support Forums at www.hp.com/supportforum.

All boards within the former Printing and Digital Imaging, Desktops and Workstations, and Mobile categories are now located at www.hp.com/supportforum.

This community is focused on enterprise solutions, hardware, software and services going forward, and no longer can provide support for printing, pc, and mobile products.

Redirects should still be working for up to one year from the original migration date.

If you don’t have an account on the HP Support Forums, you can create one on the HP Support Forums.

Thanks, 

The Administrators

[DavidZuts]

What goes on here?  I just found out about the move, logged into the new forum and have lost all my settings to include, Avatar, kudos, etc.  Can you not migrate all the users information from the Enterprise site to this site?  Really hurts to be a founder on the original site and now I find myself to be a "Honor Student"   Thanks a lot.

[Skylarking]

I agree with DavidZuts.

In my case I've gone from Trusted Contributer to Top Student so it doesn't hurt as much but it's still a slap in the face.

But why the need for change? Someone needing to meet some KPI?

[Chris H]

I also agree with David Zuts - I think that there will be a lot of disgruntled (to put it mildly) volunteers on these forums.

... and HP relies on these volunteers to help them answer lots of questions for which they'd otherwise have to employ rather more support staff to work on.

Surely not a good idea to give such volunteers good reasons to consider not bothering to help any more?

[Chris H]

@Warren_Admin

>> ... Posts from the recent past will be migrated over ...

Just what does this mean?

There is a wealth of useful information in posts which are not "from the recent past" as I understand the term - are you suggesting that we'll lose access to all such useful data?

For example: http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Printers-LaserJet/Logical-Page-vs-Printable-Area/m-p/741622

[DavidZuts]

The more I think about what HP has just done, the more disappointed I am with their action.  First off the Enterprise Printing and Digital Imaging Forum was a consolidation of 2 forums that used to be part of the Business Support Forums.  There is a major problem with now consolidating the Enterprise Forum and the Consumer Forum since you are now mixing questions from IT professionals and experienced users with first time printer users who have 1 printer and ask questions whose answers are in their manuals.  Business users expect to get expert advice when they post questions and will be very disappointed when these first time users clutter their posts with information that has nothing to do with what they are asking or answers that are just way out of line.  I really think HP needs to rethink what you are doing and return the forum to the Enterprise area.

[Chris H]

David

I certainly agree with your point about "... mixing questions from IT professionals and experienced users with first time printer users ...".

My area of expertise is with PCL5 and PCL XL Page Description Languages (primarily on LaserJet devices (except the cheap ones), and now on the later "Pro" OfficeJet models too.

LaserJets are now apparently part of the "Printing Issues & Troubleshooting"  boards on the merged forums - so that will contain a totally mixed bag (of worms).

They should have set up a a separate board (preferably restricted to commercial models, no the cheapo host-based consumer ones). 

But I can't see HP reversing the process of moving any of the printer boards back to the Enterprise forums, since the Enterprise and non-Enterprise split mirrors how HP (the company) has split into two - Enterprise = Services, non-Enterprise = (hardware) products.

...and as regards the migration of users - I think that you (and others) appear to have been very poorly treated - not exactly what HP should be doing to encourage participation!

I'm a bit more "fortunate" in that I already have an alter-ego DansDadUK on the Consumer forums - and (because I used the same log-in 'email address' for both identities), these two identities are supposed to have merged somehow - although, so far, I see no signs of that having happened!

All-in-all, a rather poorly planned and executed move, which appears to have taken place with little (if any) input from long-term users.

Chris

[Steve Begley]

Hi,

I also agree with David and Chris's comments - the forum should stay in ONE place and the above mentioned forums should be moved back to Enterprise.

Whilst I realise that HP has now split - information should still  be easily available.

I would be grateful of any comments or a rectification by HP...

regards,

Steve.B.

[John Getzke]

Where can we find more information on the ranking system for the new community? 

I currently am a honor contributor in this community and will be a honor student in the next. What does that mean and how do I move up?  What is the scale to the side of my avatar?  I can see that about half of my kudos have been migrated over, I assume that is because the remainder are too old and didnt make the cutoff date.

HP has wiped out forum status before.  It happens, I get it and I'm sure it will happen again.  But what was a really nice nod from HP was the "founder" flair that they attatched to the legacy support members/volunteers in the current enterprise community.  If you could hook us up with something like that in the new community it would be greatly appreciated.  Is the "Classic" greybox/flair the equivalent of "Founder" in the new community?  If so a simple rebranding of the flair would do us wonders.

[John Getzke]

How about something like this:

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Welcome-to-the-HP-Expert-Program/How-do-I-become-an-HP-Expert/ba-p/2837825

The expert program in the new community appears to be something I'd be interested in.  How can we get a fast track enrollment into this program based on our contributions to the enterprise community?

[Chris H]

@John Getzke

A brief description of ranking in the Consumer forums is described here: http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Community-News/HP-Support-Forum-Ranking-Overview/m-p/6 

I don't know if progress up the ranks is decided by number of posts, or solutions, or kudos, or some human overview.

As regards the Expert program - answer enough questions, and you will probably be asked to become an "Expert".

But (in my opinion) these ought to take into account your past contributiun to the Enterprise (and ITRC) forums in the merged boards.

[John Getzke]

Very brief description indeed, thanks for the link : ). 

I was hoping to find some kind of list saying Honor Student = 20 kudos, Top student = 40 kudos, etc.  Its good to know the hierarchy but that doesnt help me undersand what it takes to move up. 

They say "As you spend more time on the Forum, engage in positive conversations, and help other members, you will move up in rank." so basically there is no criteria to shoot for which is puzzling.  Surely there is some critera somewhere.

> As regards the Expert program - answer enough questions, and you will probably be asked to become an "Expert".

This makes me think that we would be excellent candidates for the Expert program as the description suggests human review is necessary to be awarded this title.  It should be easy to track back our contributions in the Enterprise forum and award us with this status in the new.

> But (in my opinion) these ought to take into account your past contributiun to the Enterprise (and ITRC) forums in the merged boards.

Agreed.  If evaluation of the Expert program is done by hand then they should be able to take into account our complete history.  It sure would be a step in teh right direction and help encourage a smooth transition to the new community.

[DavidZuts]

If you all will notice, I posted to the thread started by the person doing the transfer.  You see how much he respects us old guys from Enterprinse since he has not even bothered to address any of of concerns and questions.  Remember years ago when HP and Compaq merged and the beaufiful support staff and web access was taken over by Compaq people and it really went downhill.  Well I guess we are seeing the same thing happen with the breakup of HP.  I'll have to rethink if I really want to participate in the new forum.

[John_MB]

Thanks for sharing your feedback and thoughts on the migration.

The migration had a few bumps. We are currently in discussions with our platform provider as to why user statistics for the past two years did not accrue to users at the end of the migration. We will keep you in the loop as to our progress. Please be patient as this may take a few days.

As to bringing EB members into our structure, our plan has been to move commercial members into our ranking structure versus replicate the EB structure. This brings us parity across members. We have also planned to bring new members into the program sometime after the Meet-Up and HP Discover.  We like the idea of nominations as well as looking at historic contributions and efforts. Thanks for the suggestion.

For our new members, we want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your efforts in the Enterprise Community and welcome you to ours. We know our new and existing members are passionate about giving help, advice and solutions. No matter which community a user started in, the HP Support Community will be the Forum for customers to come to for help with HP products. We thank you for making this transition seamless and working together to support our users.

Stay tuned and thanks for your patience!

John_MB

HP Support Forum Administrator

[Dennis Handly]

I would have been nice if this was announced ahead of time.  It was mentioned in the Support forums on May 13.

So if there was a better way to migrate your users over, etc.

When I last looked I noticed all of the boards were read only, then a few hours later, they were gone.

I just thought of another bunch of boards hiding in the Software categories but it looks like they were moved too:

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/PC-Software/ct-p/SW_PCS

Seems to be moved to:

 http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Commercial-PC-Software/bd-p/CommercialPCSoftware

As people have complained in the past, the category should never have been named PC Software and now there is nothing left dealing with PCs at all.

Strangely, I can still see one of those moved boards:

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/HP-PC-Client-Management/bd-p/pc-client-management

[Dennis Handly]

>If you don’t have an account on the HP Support Forums, you can create one

I didn't have one but I used my mail address and now I have a 800+ posts and a few kudos.

It seems my tags are gone?

And claims I registered in 2009?

It would be nice if this process was explained, so you don't have to panic and start all over.

>But why the need for change?

Due to the Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. split.

> First off the Enterprise Printing and Digital Imaging Forum was a consolidation of 2 forums that used to be part of the Business Support Forums.

Or from the ITRC forum.  :-)

You may want to ask if they can merge your existing two David Zuts users, while they are at it.  :-)

>I was hoping to find some kind of list saying Honor Student = 20 kudos, Top student = 40 kudos, etc.  It's good to know the hierarchy but that doesn;t help me undersand what it takes to move up.

Why would you expect that?  :-) They never provided that info for the EBC.

>We are currently in discussions with our platform provider as to why user statistics for the past two years did not accrue to users at the end of the migration.

Why mention just two years, why not all?  How about tags?

>We thank you for making this transition seamless

Isn't this something that the forum admin needs to do, not us?  :-)

[DavidZuts]

Dennis,

The more I look at this move, the more troubling it becomes.  First off the majority of posters with questions on the Enterprise Site were IT professionals or users who worked with many printers, mostly laserjets in a network situation. These people were responsible for ordering, servicing and maintaining large groups of printers and when they had issues, they counted on the Enterprise site to provide the answers.  These same people probably provided much input to their superiors as to what printers to purchase and how they would be used.  The members who provided the support on the Enterprise site were also IT professionals, some like me who work for an HP Authorized Support Provider.  Look at where they migrated everything.  The site has no sense of order (There is not even a thread for Laser Jets) as it is a mish mush of posts, mostly for inkjet printers.  Just about all the posts are by consumers who have 1 printer and are having issues.  Moving the Enterprise Forum into this site is a major blunder on HP's part as the IT professionals with printing and digital printing issues will have no place to go.  They will not expect to get answers at the new site when just looking at the current posts and answers does not provide a lot of confidence.  HP you need to rethink what you have done.  If anything I can suggest that you start a separate forum at the consumer site moving an exact image of what you had at the Enterprise site and label it for IT professionals.  Also you will need to make one change that I see right now which is the ability to attach documents and files to posts which is not available on the consumer site.  This is a case of doing something without soliciting input from the people you count on most for your success.

David

[Dennis Handly]

>the majority of posters with questions on the Enterprise Site were IT professionals or users who worked with many printers, mostly laserjets in a network situation.

I've also seen a lot of home users but that would depend on the board.

>The site has no sense of order (There is not even a thread for Laser Jets) as it is a mish mush of posts, mostly for inkjet printers.

I would have thought they would have dropped each board intact, so they don't have to do any thinking of where to move.  Then later spend time on a re-org, if needed.

Or at least asked for opinions.

>Moving the Enterprise Forum into this site is a major blunder on HP's part

Well, HP Inc.'s part.  :-)  There would be legal reasons why it can't stay in the EBC.

>I can suggest that you start a separate forum at the consumer site moving an exact image of what you had at the Enterprise site and label it for IT professionals.

Well, not a forum but separate boards or categories.

>the ability to attach documents and files to posts which is not available on the consumer site.

Wow!  I would have thought they would have had that, unless they think it could be or was abused?

Is there a corresponding topic on the Support Forum about this?

[Dennis Handly]

Found a migration problem with @name entries.  My name was mentioned in a topic:

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printing-Issues-Troubleshooting/Accessing-a-Printer-Hard-Drive/m-p/5069728

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printing-Issues-Troubleshooting/Accessing-a-Printer-Hard-Drive/m-p/5069729#M149529

@DennisHandly had a hyperlink that was converted to:

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/22676

It seems that the site was translated but not the ID part.

>Posts from the recent past will be migrated over

It appears this means anything before 2013-01-01 will be lost?

>but don’t worry, your links to these posts will be redirected to the new boards in the HP Support Forums.

Huh?  They don't seem to be redirected, ones in the posts:

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printing-Issues-Troubleshooting/Extra-Page-print/m-p/5051262#M142807

And ones that shouldn't change, since into EBC:

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware/Can-t-find-drivers-for-Zbook-15/m-p/5055893#M177772

And ones that shouldn't change:

[Dennis Handly]

Found another problem.

The board Toptools seems to be in the process of moving to the Support forum.

But this product supported servers and not Workstations/PCs.

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/ITRC-Top-Tools-Forum/bd-p/itrc-246

If anything it should be moved to Obsolete:

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Obsolete-Products/ct-p/SW_OBP

It's creation topic:

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/ITRC-Top-Tools-Forum/Changes-added-to-the-OpenView-forum/m-p/2499994

[Chris H]

>> ...  the ability to attach documents and files to posts which is not available on the consumer site ...

Until you reach a certain rank (not sure which one).

As well as being a "founder" member (ex-ITRC) on the Enterprise forums for many years, I've been a member of the consumer forums for several years (and have reached a rank which allows me to post attachments).

But I've, at times, found it frustrating that most question authors cannot post evidence files on those forums, when the content of such would often prove very useful to analysis, and potential resolution of the problem.

They can post images, but these appear to be subject to approval (not sure if by human or machine intelligence), and this takes a finite time - sometimes 48 hours or more, it seems - which again hinders making progress on a possible solution.

[Chris H]

@Dennis Handly

Huh?  They don't seem to be redirected, ones in the posts:

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printing-Issues-Troubleshooting/Extra-Page-print/m-p/5051262#M142807

This appears to be because they have migrated the topic, but to a different board, and with a different topic number:

Your original link was http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printers-LaserJet/Laserjet-4100TN-printing-an-extra-page-with-some-printed-details/m-p/5779739

This now appears to be at

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printer-All-in-One-Install-Setup/Laserjet-4100TN-printing-an-extra-page-with-some-printed/m-p/1794023

edit: I posted the above without checking it properly - the link I provided is not to the topic containing Dennis's solution, just to an original post on the Consumer forums which advised posting the question on the Enterprise forums!

[Chris H]

Returning to the issue of where to post & find LaserJet questions: the "Printers & All-In-Ones" section in the Consumer forums contains the following boards, with the following descriptions:

• Printer, All-in-One Install & Setup - "Forum to discuss all out of the box set-up and installation experience topics like installation issues and how to set-up and use your product. Issues include, but not limited to, fatal errors, USB connection, FPLA"

• Scanning, Faxing, and Copying - "Topics related to USB and Network scan troubleshooting, faxing and copying. Issues include error communicating with scanning device, digital scanning, can’t scan from front panel, scan quality, can’t find my scan, and general how do I questions."

• Ink, Toner, Cartridge, & Printhead Issues - "Topics related to printer ink, toner, and printheads. Issues include, printer not printing a particular color, cartridge not recognized, and ink/toner compatibility."

• Printer, All-in-One Software & Drivers - "Forum to discuss all topics related to using HP products with third-party software applications. Also topics related to driver download and install."

• Printing Issues & Troubleshooting - "How to perform common printer functions and troubleshoot printing issues. Examples: paper jams & feed issues, error messages, improving print quality, double-sided printing, etc."

• DesignJet, Large Format Printers & Digital Printing Press - "This forum is for discussions on DesignJet printers, Large Format Printers and Digital Printing Press products. Including installation, usage, maintenance, upgrades, etc."

• ePrint, Print Apps, Mobile Printing, and ePrintCenter - "Topics related to Cloud Services. Issues related to the following Cloud Services: ePrint, AirPrint (iOS), print apps, eFax, Google Cloud Print, HP mobile apps, ePrintCenter."

• Printer Networking and Wireless - "Topics related to network printer installation, set-up, and troubleshooting on a home network. Issues include, but not limited to, printer not found and printer offline."

• Web Printing Software - "Board to discuss printing effectively from web browsers, web sites and photo creation software. Topics related to HP’s MarketSplash, SmartWeb Printing and SmartPrint software."

• Mac Printing and Scanning - "Topics related to utilizing HP products with Mac OS. Topics include, but not limited to, product set-up, networking, printing, scanning, and troubleshooting."

• Other Printing Questions - "Have a question not covered by one of the other boards? Post it here."

Whilst a commerc ial LaserJet user could easily discount a few of the above boards (e.g. "DesignJet, Large Format Printers & Digital Printing Press", "ePrint, Print Apps, Mobile Printing, and ePrintCenter") it is not at all clear which board or boards should be used.

As there is a product-specific board for "DesignJet, Large Format Printers & Digital Printing Press", why not have a product-specific one for "commercial LaserJet printers"?

e.g. there are sometimes issues with LaserJet toner and fuser related problems - which I know are often answered and resolved by @DavidZuts

With the "Ink, Toner, Cartridge, & Printhead Issues" board, responders will have to wade through pages of consumer questions about "inkjet cartridges not printing black", etc. for these laser-related questions.

... and I mean no disrespect to volunteers like Bob_Headrick (or his alter-ego @Bob_Headrick ?) who do answer many questions about inkjet devices.

[Dennis Handly]

>most question authors cannot post evidence files on those forums, when the content of such would often prove very useful to analysis, and potential resolution of the problem.

Yes, that's where it is needed.

>they have migrated the topic, but to a different board, and with a different topic number:

The board doesn't matter, only the ID.  Basically you can't just update the site in the URL, you must map the ID.

It seems they didn't learn their lessons on the ITRC to EBC migration.  :-(

And it appears that the target of the link wasn't moved to the new forum since created in 2012!

(At least google can't find it.)

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Printers-LaserJet/Laserjet-4100TN-printing-an-extra-page-with-some-printed-details/m-p/5779739

[John Getzke]

I have been testing out the new community to see what I would be getting myself into.  There are a few features that seem nice but there are a few major issues that could be addressed to make it easier for us Enterprise guys. 

1. Threads with No Replies - I like this feature.  I dont normally respond to anything that already has a response on it unless I already know the solution.  I find that the ones without a response are the most challenging and offer me a chance to learn something new.

2. Thread headers - Product name and OS - I like this feature.  Forcing the user to select an HP product and OS is half the battle.  Hard to fix somethinig when the user doesnt confirm what devices they have or the enviornment they are working in.  I wouldnt mind expanding this to include a few more criterea for a new post such as USB/WiFi/Ethernet connected.

3. Tags - I see some potential here - Could we find a way to automaticlly tag certain printer models as Enterprise devices or not?  If so that would be fantastic. 

4. Following/trending/filtering - Feeding off of the tagging system, if we could setup filters to show us the threads that are interesting to us that would be fantastic.  For example someone creates a new post and enters HP Color LaserJet Pro M252dw.  The forum would auto tag it as "Enterprise", "LaserJet", etc.  Then your fellow experts could setup filters and views to show us threads recently tagged with that criterea.  Boom, now we filter out the junk we dont care to be bothered with.

5. Attachments - This needs to get improved - Waiting 48 hours for a simple image attachment to get approved (or whatever the delay is) needs to go.  Approve all images and let your user flag inappropriate content as we always have.  Its stupid to have to wait and see what a user is trying to tell us based on some invisible green martian approval process.  It delays troubleshooting and is a huge PITA.