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Hey everyone,
Unless you're very new to the community you've likely noticed a few changes to how the forum looks this morning. As we announced yesterday the O2 community has been upgraded! In addition to the new look there are several new features, some requested and a few new ones for good measure. 😄
New home page
Starting at the top we have a new integrated header for the community. The new header contains some useful links. On the left side you have a link to the main O2 site.
You then have links to the O2 shop page > O2 help and support page > My O2 and your shop basket.
On the right of these links you will see your community notifications > private messages and your profile picture.
Clicking on your profile picture will bring up a drop down menu which contains the following...
Directly below the header you will find the new community navigation! The community categories are listed here and if you hover over you will see a drop down of the different boards.
The next level down is the community search bar and your latests stats and notifications!
Below this is our new featured content widget. This is similar to Latest News section on the old home page but is in a much more prominent place than before.
Next is the new trending topics section which is a live feed of the most popular conversations happening in real time!
Below to trending topics you will see the familiar Community Activity where you can see the latest topics and filter them by most recent > most viewed > most commented and most liked.
Down at the bottom of the home page you will see a feed that highlights the most recent guides and reviews. If you hit the View All button it will take you to the guides and reviews category.
Finally the familiar community stats can be found at the very bottom of the page.
New private messaging interface
We also have a brand new private message system which will display your message conversations in a threaded view so no more going back and forth between your inbox and outbox. Please note: Only messages exchanged after the upgrade goes live will be in the threaded view.
Solution highlight
The next new feature to talk about is floated solutions. When a solution is picked on a thread it will be highlighted at the top of the discussion for easy viewing. The solution will still be in it's proper position down the chain of messages.
The new version has an updated text editor box for topics, replies and private messages.
Please have a good look around the new community and let us know any feedback, questions or issues in the comments below!
Issue log and updates:
Text font and formatting - Fixed. To correct this please clear the cache on your bowser
Signature cut off - Fixed. The hight of the signature box has been increased.
Continuity problem on long topics - Fixed. This was an admin setting that has now been turned off
Guide and review boards formatting issues - Fixed. We now have a tiled view for guides and reviews.
Topics on the board level not sorting by most recent post -Fixed. The topics will now sort at the board level by most recent reply.
Image gallery missing from profile page - Fixed. You can now find your image gallery on your profile page and the public image gallery of other members on their profile page.
Increase emoji size - Fixed. The size of the emoji's in posts and messaging has now been increased.
Add friends from member profile -Fixed. Add and remove friend has been added to profile pages.
Missing options in text editor on mobile view (video link, quote and emoji’s) - Fixed. Quotes and emoji's have been added to the mobile view text editor. Adding videos is not currently supported however this will be added in a future platform upgrade.
Adding unanswered topics to homepage dropdown - Fixed. A widget for unread posts has been added to the home page.
Guide links not working - Fixed. Guide links now take you directly to the guide page.
Adding post count and views to replies - Fixed. Post count and views have now been added.
Errors in footer formatting - Fixed. We have now corrected all of the errors.
Topic first post is displayed on all pages of replies - Fixed. Now the OP is only visible on the first page of the thread.
Spell checker in text editor - In progress. We have 2 different options for the spell checker. Inline, realtime or with the old style click to check for misspelled words. We'll decide this at a later date.
Spell checker change from US English to UK English - Investigating
Your own posts showing in the unread message page - Investigating
Clicking an unread message takes you to different unread message then highlighted - Investigating
Using male/female emoji’s adds extra emoji’s - Investigating
Quoting options - Closed. Unfortunately there is only one way of quoting on the current platform design.
Guides and Reviews slow loading times - Closed. There was no issue found in the loading times of guides and reviews.
“View all” for posts and replies option on member profile - Closed. Unfortunately this option cannot be added to the member profile.
Cant see if sent messages have been read - Closed. Unfortunately this feature cannot be added to the new messaging system.
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Sorry to drag another issue up yet again...
UNREAD POSTS
Any news of when this is going to be fixed ??
Still shows MY posts as unread...
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Totally agree @Mi-Amigo
It seems to me (one of the regulars) we are always having to find a workaround to suit KHOROS. On one post by @Chris_K we were told the regulars are the life blood of this forum. Too damn right we are.
New members come and post once and that's it for them.
However, those of us who post a lot have multiple problems. This business about UNREAD posts is now more than ridiculous. Yes we can 'workaround' it by refreshing the page but that's it. If I forget, as I am busy answering questions, I am left with a page of MY answered questions showing as UNANSWERED.
More than pathetic that after all this time, it remains unresolved!!.
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@Anonymous before this change, if you scrolled down off topic, it showed you the last person to post with THE DATE they posted. Difference was, you could click on the DATE and you were immediately taken to the last post. Now you can only click on the name and that does NOT take you to the last post made on that thread, it takes you to ALL the posts they have made..We need it changing to clicking on the date would take you to the last post made.
If I access it via email then yes it will take me to that post.
If I access it via the Off Topic board whilst on the forum, it take me to the first post, which was probably made in 2016!
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@Cleoriff wrote:It seems to me (one of the regulars) we are always having to find a workaround to suit KHOROS. On one post by @Chris_K we were told the regulars are the life blood of this forum. Too damn right we are.
New members come and post once and that's it for them.
Which begs the question... Is that really what O2 want ? For new members to come and post once and then to leave and not stay?
We, the regular users of this Community, do all we can to encourage "newbies" to stay - with our messages of encouragement when the managers post the list of the latest new members of the Community, which might be appreciated...
but what is the point when there have been and continue to be issues with the New Look which won`t be fixed or are still outstanding, after a month, and still awaiting to be resolved ?
If we, the regular users, have to endure these issues and have had to come up with our own "work-rounds" so we can deal with the forum on a day-to-day basis, then the chances of "newbies", with no experience of this New Look or the old-style Community, being able to deal with the Community are minimal and so are likely to leave rather than stay and enjoy what is a great Community. The issue is not the Community, nor the members [long-term and new], but the platform provider`s lack of consideration for the requirement of the users of this Community.
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I went back and re-read what @Chris_K said, one thing struck me, he wrote:
the previous O2 Community design provided a sub-optimal experience. Because of this, we witnessed abandoned sessions and registrations as visitors became frustrated at the experience. For us this is a big problem
So, guys, the community is here to serve a customer base that come here looking for answers, however the answer is found (browse, search, ask).
Our regular events keep a core here but despite promotion, attract few "passing users" - a proportion of which are here to say goodbye to O2 anyway.
The new design may be responsive, but leaves a gap that needs to be filled, ie making it as easy as possible for O2 to hang on to a customer.
As it stands, the design is sadly not quite there yet - a sustained session of answering queries last Saturday left me having to restart the browser in the desktop a number of times to get, for example, the YouTube and other formatting buttons back (they keep disappearing, honest!).
As I am on mobile now, I have NO YouTube or font formatting buttons without switching Chrome on mobile into "Desktop Site/Mode", losing my words penned so far in the process...😳
So the responsiveness of the design is somewhat wanting when mobile is what O2 are aiming at - with the exception of a casual user who drops in, posts a 3-word message, and never comes back. That "nonsense post" metric is as important for UI/UX folks as is the number of visitors who get through registration.
So - a plan for stabilizing the responsiveness across all platforms might be a way to get satisfaction from both newcomers and grizzled (in the best possible meaning of the word 😆😲) "regulars".
Onwards, upwards and ever outwards - time to find a solid object to hide behind, methinks 😲😱🙀
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Hey guys apologies for the delay in replying to your recent tags in this thread. I’ve addressed questions/issues raised and added a more general update below.
@pgn I can ask about the time stamps within a message thread but it might not be possible to activate that right away. The messaging is a closed system so it’s not super easy to make tweaks like in other areas of the forum.
For the missing icon on your notifications I’ve not been able to replicate it. Please let me know if it happens again, save another screenshot and we can open a support ticket.
@Cleoriff yes I see what you mean about not being able to skip straight to the last post from the board level. The same thing applies on the community activity on the home page. It would be a better user experience so I’ll see this is something That can be activated or added.
@Mi-Amigo We don't have a timeframe for the unread posts issues. We have open support tickets for both problems and these have been passed to the correct teams to find out what’s going on and to implement a fix. I’ll update you as soon as we have news on these.
When we ungraded to the response design it was quite a leap from the previous version of the platform that our community was running on. The previous version was very old, but had received several customisations over the years, for example the last homepage was just a new skin and didn’t change the core platform in anyway.
It’s a bit like going from Windows XP to Windows 10 in one leap. Lots of things are different and some features from the previous version are no longer supported, so things like knowing if a sent PM has been read is not part of the latest platform version. We can certainly ask why things were changed or removed and the logic behind the decision but there are limits to what we can customise.
We do have the ability to suggest new features to the platform provider which will be taken into consideration for future updates to the platform. I completely understand the frustration with things changing that you have been using for years but day upgrading the platform was the right decision for the future of the community.
There are loads of really useful and interesting new features that we now have access to which we will be exploring and utilising in the coming months that will improve the user experience. In addition, we now have more control over certain customisation options (banners/side widgets etc) that would previously have needed a developer to make changes. @Chris_K also explained some of the other benefits in his earlier post on this thread.
I think we can all agree the home page is vast improvement to the previous one with the reduced banner size, the integrated header and the return of the community navigation bar!
We’ve managed to fix the vast majority of issues that were raised in this thread within 30 days and only have a few outstanding now which have open support tickets.
Over time we’ll continue to make improvements and push for any missing functionality to be added but if you look at the overall picture the community is in a really good place and things will only get better as we start to use the new features that we now have access to.
I'll provide updates on the outstanding issues as and when I have them. 🙂
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Another oddity I have noticed - you get a notification on the Forum when an answer you gave is accepted as a solution... But:
The only place where you see if it was marked as 'the answer', ie by the OP or by a Forum Manager, is in the e-mail notification:
Is this by design, or simply a way of masking who deemed your answer to be 'the answer'?
Notification on Forum:
Actual answer itself:
It makes no sense, and some people have their Notifications to e-mail turned off.
The Community Spirit is weak with this one, I fear, @Martin-O2 🤔😲
I've been here before but I still can't see a solution.
In the screenshot below I see the - Most Recent O2 Community Activity - The top latest post is by pgn, but nothing I click takes me to that post, the closest I get is by clicking the thread header and that takes me to page 20 out of 47.
What possible reason could there be for this happening? It's seemingly so random, and bizarre behaviour.
Why is there no - Click - To take me to the latest post?
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Isn't that similar to my complaint @Anonymous?
In your screenshot above, If I click on any of those topics, there is NO way I'm taken to the last post (which is where I want to go) I'm taken to the first post in the thread which could be 1500 pages long. On the old forum on each thread, it read 'last post by @pgn on 2/9/21' and you could click on that whole sentence and it would take me to that last post. Now it doesn't. 😩
